**1. Introduction**

Sugar consumption has increased globally from 130 to 178 million tonnes (World Cancer Research Fund, 2015), and the general consumption of sugar was noted to exceed the WHO guidelines in many countries. This global rise in the consumption of added sugars has been linked to obesity which causes the prevalence of most Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) that have resulted in strained national health budgets [1]. Regrettably, South Africa has a population that is increasingly adopting poor dietary habits with the South African Demographic and Health Survey (2003) reporting adult men and women across all races who are obese using their measure of body index at 29.8% and 54.7% respectively.

In a study conducted in Gauteng in 2006, health awareness and lifestyle behaviour were associated with reading nutrition labels. Habitual readers of food labels who also understood their interpretation proved to be concerned and more conscious about their health.

This research sought to investigate the level of knowledge of added sugars in sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) by the University of Limpopo postgraduate students.
