Berlin, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The average German consumer bought almost 31 kilograms of sweets last year, spending 97.05 euros (109.6 U.S. dollars), 0.1 percent more than in 2017, the Federal Association of the German Confectionery Industry (BDSI) announced on Thursday.
"Per capita consumption is very constant," said BDSI Chairman Stephan Niessner. In recent decades, this figure has been relatively stable between 32 and 40 kilograms per year.
Chocolate was the most popular product among German consumers last year, with each person purchasing on average almost nine kilograms. This figure was 1.5 percent lower than in 2017.
The most popular types of chocolate in Germany are whole milk, favored by almost every second consumer, followed by nougat and dark chocolate, according to an earlier survey conducted by BDSI.
The strongest increase in demand last year was for ice cream. The unusually long and hot summer meant that German consumers ate an average of over 4.2 kilograms of ice cream in 2018, according to BDSI. That was at least 14 percent more than in the previous year.
Like in many other industrialized countries, sugar intake in Germany is well above the World Health Organization's (WHO) recommended daily amount of not more than 50 grams, which corresponds to 10 percent of total daily energy intake.
Sixty-seven percent of men and 53 percent of women in Germany are considered overweight, and about a quarter of all adults are severely overweight, i.e. obese. According to the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, 15 percent of children and adolescents aged between 3 and 17 are overweight and 6 percent are obese.
According to Euromonitor, soft drinks play a major role in Germans' sugar intake. Per capita sugar intake from soft drinks averaged 26 grams a day in 2016. Sugar intake from chocolate was only 18 grams per day, or about 6.5 kilograms per capita and year.
In Europe, Germany has the third highest number of consumers of sugar-sweetened soft drinks, preceded only by the Netherlands and Slovakia. Globally, Germany ranks 11th behind countries such as Argentina, Chile, the United States and Mexico.
