As leading health experts gathered in Washington Monday to discuss the dramatic rise in obesity and type 2 diabetes over the last three decades, PepsiCo Inc. announced goals to slightly reduce added sugars in beverages—a significant driver of the health crises.

According to its new “sustainability agenda,” PepsiCo is giving itself until 2025 to cut back production of beverages that pack more than 100 calories from added sugars in a 12 ounce serving. (Added sugars are those added during food production and processing that are not naturally included in foods, such as the natural sugars found in milk and fruits.) Currently, about 60 percent of PepsiCo’s beverages contain more than 100 calories from added sugars; the company’s goal is to get that down to 33 percent in the next nine years. The efforts, the company said, will help "meet changing consumer needs."

High-calorie culprits include the company’s flagship beverage, Pepsi, which contains 150 calories and 41 grams of sugar (or about 10.25 teaspoons) in a 12 ounce can. PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew contains 170 calories and 46 grams of sugar in a 12 ounce serving. And Starbucks Frappuccino coffee drink, also made by the company, contains 290 calories and 46 grams of sugar in a 13.7 fluid ounce serving.

The latest federal dietary guidelines recommend that added sugars make up no more than 10 percent of calories per day (one gram of sugar is around four calories). For a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet, that’s a daily maximum of about 50 grams of added sugars (or 12.5 teaspoons)—just a little more than what’s in a single Mountain Dew. And for a 2,500-calorie-per-day diet, the recommended maximum is about 62.5 grams. The World Health Organization recommends keeping added sugars down to just five percent of daily calories.

The federal government reports that most Americans get much more than both of those recommended quantities. Beverages, such as sugary sodas, energy drinks, and alcoholic beverages, are the biggest single source of those sugars. Currently, about 70 percent of US adults are overweight, including 38 percent that are obese. More than 29 million Americans have diabetes, with 86 million living with pre-diabetes. To help consumers easily identify and cut back on added sugars, the Food and Drug Administration announced changes to food nutrition labels earlier this year. The new labels, which will become mandatory July 26, 2018, specifically separate out added sugar content from natural sugars.

To cut back on the added sugars in its beverages, PepsiCo said it plans to offer more zero- and low-calorie diet drinks, as well as reformulate its current high-calorie refreshments.

"These are good steps. But when we have an obesity crisis, I think there is more that we can be doing," Mindy Lubber, president of nonprofit organization Ceres, told Reuters.

Just last week, the World Health Organization pressed world leaders to institute soda taxes that could discourage consumers from buying the drinks. “If governments tax products like sugary drinks, they can reduce suffering and save lives. They can also cut healthcare costs and increase revenues to invest in health services,” Douglas Bettcher, director of WHO’s Department for the Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases, said in a statement. To be effective, the taxes would need to increase the retail price of sodas by at least 20 percent, the WHO said.

PepsiCo and other beverage makers, namely Coca-Cola, have fiercely opposed such taxes as well as tweaks to nutrition labels. The industry has spent millions on lobbying efforts to defeat proposed legislation at the state and federal level in the US. A recent study also found that beverage companies, including PepsiCo, have spent millions on sponsorships to health organizations, which may hush health campaigns aimed at reducing or taxing soda consumption. In one example, the charity Save the Children abruptly stopped supporting soda tax legislation after receiving more than $5 million in funding from PepsiCo and Coca-Cola.

As consumers and health experts wait the nine years for more low-calorie, low-sugar options from PepsiCo, the company notes on its website that it already offers 350 such beverages. Those choices include bottled water and a 7.5-ounce can of Pepsi that contains 100 calories.