sugar tax on drinks? nine sugar cubes in my can of cola?

I cant believe I used to put sugar in my tea.
stopped about 15 years ago and now it seems as surreal as snuff

snuff as in the stuff dirty old men used to sniff
not the snuff dirty old men used to watch

If you don't want to eat Sugar don't

Don't try telling the rest of what to do, we choose for ourselves

There should be no tax on sugar, alcohol or tobacco

that post was directed at OP

Huge, swingeing taxes on sugar, alcohol and tobacco is the way forward, only a moron would argue otherwise.

It's about time somebody made it easy to tabulate how much sugar is in food. Take a bow, Jamie Oliver.

I reckon his days are numbered, Tate & Lyle are virtually the Illuminati.

The first thing they need to do is stop ambiguity.
Tea spoons and tablespoons as measurements are ridiculous.
They are like measuring things in monkeys feet
Is it exactly level, slightly heaped, its hardly accurate is it.

Everyone needs to talk in grammes imo

Second thing is stop the allowable bilge like 'can be part of a balanced diet' or 'no added sugar' when they add sucrose or other alternatives instead

Torquemada  • October 21, 2015 2:32 PM BST 
Huge, swingeing taxes on sugar, alcohol and tobacco is the way forward, only a moron would argue otherwise.
I take it I am that moron.

We are adults we need to be responsible for own health, and make our own choices

I don't want Governments or Medical Hitlers telling us what we eat or drink

I would also legalise all drugs. Hard and Soft.

The thing is some people have poor quality of life, they do not compete well in our society
They need all this stuff to hold them up make their life easier, so being a kind man, I would give it to them

ps
I drink Pepsi Max, no sugar at all

I'm fit and healthy and consume loads of sugar. Who cares if a can of coke has 37g of sugar. Next they'll be taxing calories


Most people are stupid and/or lazy. That's why we have fat wasters not because of McDonald's or Coca Cola

Lets go the whole hog Ebul and legalise everything including murder.

I think there is a fair point here akabula

Do we control our own health or do we want the government to do it for us?

I believe we control our own health, it is not the job or responsibility of government

1in5 imprisonments last year were drug related which seems baffling.

However, people need Gastric bypass surgery because they cant walk past the sweet aisle. I dont think theyll cope well with heroin on the shelves

Some seem to assume that conscious decisions are always made when buying stuff.

The marketing industry spends billions to discourage us from doing so.

Many kids are addicted to the stuff because their idiotic parents brought them up liking the stuff.  Is that being kind to them?

We need protecting from ourselves.

We need help in protecting our own health.  It is not just 'our job'.  One reason why we must have help is that we all have to pick up the pieces
via the NHS for self-inflicted health problems.

If the fatties paid for all their NHS treatment for diabetes, gastric bands, joint replacements etc etc fair enough - but they don't and many can't because
a lot of the fatties struggle to perform any job.  Many end up on benefits and in mobility scooters.  We all pay for this.

Do we control our own health or do we want the government to do it for us?

Its funny because you hardly ever see private enterprise giving health advice (unless they have 'healthy products' themselves or are taking advantage of public opinion to increase exposure to their brand.
Health advice comes from the state, as does regulation when it is lacking (too seldom nowadays). Reminders to eat well etc arnt in the interests of those wanting to profit.
There is a 15 year gap in life expectancy between the affluent and the impecunious and much of that is down to the way ill educated sorts are targeted by nefarious organisations to consume their crap.
The contemporary diet has worsened over time, enterprise says its about choice, about necessity but they all follow each other in attempting to hook the consumer on their own brands so they can return profit to share holders.
They dont care about you, your family or whether life expectancy decreases, they care about money.

Nobody is saying ban sugar totally, nor salt nor tobacco, but they all have their lobby to garner insidious support of the sale of their wares and the daft need to be protected.

The answer to the OP about which is the correct price is that a sugar tax if implemented would be on the producers at source, which would then increase the price of the product for retailers irrespective of type who then have the decision of whether its still a product they want to offer.

A tax on sugar won't make a scrap of difference to people getting fat.

It's our wallets that will get thinner not our waistlines.

Oliver couldn't care less about the amounts of sugar in our diets.
It's the amount of publicity he gets from his campaign about it that he's interested in.

Zazu  • October 22, 2015 5:04 AM BST 


1in5 imprisonments last year were drug related which seems baffling.

However, people need Gastric bypass surgery because they cant walk past the sweet aisle. I dont think theyll cope well with heroin on the shelves



We should not give gastric bypass surgery unless people pay for it

I eat too much sweet stuff, so what? I do not expect society to pay for that. All children have a sweet tooth

I am afraid we are  turning into  a society of weak, wimpy women aren't we? With pathetic trivial values.
that is the sad truth

Oliver might jump onto the cause but he isnt the cause in itself.
That has been going on since MPs lobbied parliament since the navigation act created the problem in the first place hundreds of years ago.

Companies dont lower sugar, salt or fat content by their own devices, they will use any and all to get people eating their product rather than a competitor, then they all end up doing it till we have to act.
Its all well and good saying people should know better but look on the shelves in the shops, look at the adverts on tv or the leaflets through the door, they are all saying 'your life is hard, let us cook for you'
Non of the CEOs of the major tobacco firms are smokers, and I suspect non of the food processors eat their own produce either.

Since I live in a country with publicly funded healthcare I would find it reasonable with a tax on sweet drinks. If it makes some people drink more water instead - great. Those who keep drinking as much sweet drinks as before, well at least they get to pay a bit more to the healthcare system, which only would be fair since they are more likely to need lots of healthcare than those who don't drink much sweet drinks. Hopefully any such tax will be on all sweet drinks, including fruit juices and artificially sweetened drinks. It's only studies funded by the food industry that find no link between artificially sweetened drinks and weight gain. This article http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/04/08/diet-soda-weig... contains links to several scientific studies on the subject.

But most of all I would like to see warning labels on all sweet drinks. Something along the lines of: "High consumption of sweet drinks (including fruit juices and artificially sweetened drinks) is strongly linked with obesity and an increased risk of several serious diseases and health problems."

I would also welcome restricted advertising, and maybe also plain packaging.

We managed to decrease the number of smokers via several strategies.

Taxation
Public Information/Anti-Smoking
Legislation
Limitations on Marketing, Advertising, Promotion

Need similar strategies to curb obesity.

The only thing that led to me packing up smoking was the health warnings.
I used to love cigarettes.

Drinks are just an easy target because people will still just buy them as normal and pay extra. Heard today they were trying to ban promotions (buy one get one free etc)



Jamie Oliver hasn't exactly got the body of a gym rat.

Oh dear. The latest moral panic gathers pace.

"All the evidence indicates that per capita consumption of sugar,
salt, fat and calories has been falling in Britain for decades. Per
capita sugar consumption has fallen by 16 per cent since 1992
and per capita calorie consumption has fallen by 21 per cent
since 1974"

"According to the British Heart Foundation (2012 :107):
‘Overall intake of calories, fat and saturated fat has decreased since
the 1970s. This trend is accompanied by a decrease in sugar and
salt intake, and an increase in fibre and fruit and vegetable intake.’

http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/in-the-media/files/Briefing_The%20Fat%20Lie.pdf

I agree with ebul. Sentient adults should have the information to make informed choices and then be free to choose but they should also take responsibility for their actions.

About sums it up perfectly eternaloptimist.

Got to get the balance between education and nanny state right.

I've just found out it will not be the first time "sugar", namely sucrose has been taxed in the UK, it was heavily taxed until 1874. It was only after Gladstone lifted the tax that the poor could afford sucrose.

I am happy enough to agree with research that obesity is in part a product of a change in physiological and psychological condition, rather than just lazy greedy fatties being lazy greedy fatties.

However, the thing i don't get, is that if we are going to lump sucrose together with other addictive substances like nicotine and alcohol, why has there been such an explosion in the number of fatty boombooms over the last 20 years? Why haven't we all been getting fat since 1874.

This is the question that needs answering. If it really is all about HFCS and its prevalence across all food products then that culprit should be addressed before imposing a blanket tax on soft drinks containing "sugar".

Oct 22, 2015 -- 11:24AM, Room 0182 wrote:

Oh dear. The latest moral panic gathers pace."All the evidence indicates that per capita consumption of sugar,salt, fat and calories has been falling in Britain for decades. Percapita sugar consumption has fallen by 16 per cent since 1992and per capita calorie consumption has fallen by 21 per centsince 1974""According to the British Heart Foundation (2012 :107):‘Overall intake of calories, fat and saturated fat has decreased sincethe 1970s. This trend is accompanied by a decrease in sugar andsalt intake, and an increase in fibre and fruit and vegetable intake.’http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/in-the-media/files/Briefing_The%20Fat%20Lie.pdf

iea, as in the Institute of Economic Affairs, the think tank that has been revealed to happily do some lobbying on behalf of the tobacco industry in return for some funding? 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/cigarette-packaging-corporate-smokescreen-liberty

Not a very credible source on issues of public health.

Why haven't we all been getting fat since 1874.

- Nobody walks anywhere any more - particularly kids to school.
- Fewer sports facilities / fields
- Fewer children playing sports, etc, at school
- Far more sugar in lots of foods, like the total proliferation in ready meals, baked beans, tinned sauces, etc, etc, combined with how many cook these days compared to eating quick ready meals
- Pure and utter laziness
- Advertising

"iea, as in the Institute of Economic Affairs, the think tank that has been revealed to happily do some lobbying on behalf of the tobacco industry in return for some funding? 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/cigarette-packaging-corporate-smokescreen-liberty

Not a very credible source on issues of public health"

You missed the quote from the British Heart Foundation. And how about DEFRA?

"This statement may come as a surprise to some people, but it is
factually correct. All the available data support it. The Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has carried out
annual surveys of the British diet since 1974. These surveys are
based on diet diaries compiled by a cross-section of the public and
are supported by till receipts (DEFRA, 2013)."

Why haven't we all been getting fat since 1874.

- Nobody walks anywhere any more - particularly kids to school.
- Fewer sports facilities / fields
- Fewer children playing sports, etc, at school

apparently, these reasons aren't true. we're generally as active as we've always been, certainly not massively different.

- Far more sugar in lots of foods, like the total proliferation in ready meals, baked beans, tinned sauces, etc, etc, combined with how many cook these days compared to eating quick ready meals

this is apparently closer to the real and primary reason. Sugar, in the form of HFCS, is f*cking everywhere. Also since the doctors told us how awful fat was for us, we've been cutting down on fat and loading up on refined carbs, i.e. polymerised sugar, instead.

Taxing one type of product isn't the answer to the problem. It's like taxing spirits and saying everything else isn't harmful.

- Pure and utter laziness
- Advertising

A 1.75 litre bottle of Robinsons double strength squash and several crates of 2 litre Tesco Perthshire (aka Highland Spring) carbonated natural water lasts me a couple of months and tastes just as good as any canned fizzy plop.

Couple of pints a day cost maybe 20p(?) and it's a whole lot healthier too.

Why haven't we all been getting fat since 1874.

Quite possibly because from roughly the 1870s dietary advice was to avoid sugars and starches if you wanted to be slim. That was overtaken by the lipid hypothesis that fat was the cause of heart disease, starting in the 1960s, which eventually led to HFCS being used in foods to replace the fat that had previously made it palatable by the start if the 1980s. While fat satiates anything carbohydrate does not. So it really is a double whammy, not only do you store fat via insulin on the 'up-spike', you switch on appetite on the down-spike - the slump.

Is "he" going to cut out sugar in his restaurant's Tiramisu,Chocolate Fudge Cake, Baked Cheesecake, Profiteroles, Banoffee Pie etc
or use it as an excuse to put up his already outlandish prices?

People eat for pleasure, that's why they get fat.

Cut out cakes, biscuits, chocolate bars and sweets and your weight will look after itself.

You could add booze to that list Dr C but not many would listen.

Fizzy drinks stooge just been on news telling us what we already knew; that they don't think it's a good idea.
Well let's try it and see shall we?
He said many of the drinks are sugar free......then you've nowt to panic over then have you.

Says drinks are treats and can be part of a balanced diet.
I can never get those old cigarette adverts out of my mind whenever I hear that waffle, the ones where nicoteen was selling fa gs to kids in the playground and superman came and battered him for being a pr1ck

Oct 22, 2015 -- 11:52AM, Room 0182 wrote:

"iea, as in the Institute of Economic Affairs, the think tank that has been revealed to happily do some lobbying on behalf of the tobacco industry in return for some funding?  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/cigarette-packaging-cor... a very credible source on issues of public health"You missed the quote from the British Heart Foundation. And how about DEFRA?"This statement may come as a surprise to some people, but it isfactually correct. All the available data support it. The Departmentfor Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has carried outannual surveys of the British diet since 1974. These surveys arebased on diet diaries compiled by a cross-section of the public andare supported by till receipts (DEFRA, 2013)."

Such is my contempt for organisations that lobby for the tobacco industry that I'm not going to follow any links to the Institute of Economic Affairs. But now that you have mentioned DEFRA 2013 (your first post didn't mention DEFRA), I have not only located that report, but also skimmed through it. (It can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/38... if anyone is interested.)

What exactly is DEFRA 2013 supposed to prove? Reading it does very little to convince me that there shouldn't be warning labels on sweet drinks. I see in chart 2.3 that consumption of soft drinks (not including water and fruit juice) has increased since 1992. There's a quite drastic increase in purchases of "low-calorie" soft drinks in recent years. Presumably that's because people have switched to artificially sweetened beverages? As you can tell from one of my posts above I don't think using artificial sweeteners is better than using sugar. I think it's just as bad or even worse. I can't find any diagram showing how the intake of artificial sweeteners and other sugar substitutes has changed over the years. My guess would be that the use of artificial sweeteners has skyrocketed in recent decades?

The IEA say "These surveys are based on diet diaries compiled by a cross-section of the public and are supported by till receipts", but if you check DEFRA 2013 it says: "Survey participants record their food and drink purchases in a two week diary. They are able to attach till receipts or to write in diary entries to cover amount spent and quantity purchased for each individual item." That's a bit different. Participants can attach till receipts if they want to. No doubt the IEA want to give the impression that the survey is very accurate. But to think that the numbers in the survey are very accurate would be a mistake I think. I've found an article discussing problems with Dietary Intake Studies:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/why-calories-count-the-problem-with-dietary-intake-studies/254886/

A quote from that article: "Nutrition scientists have put enormous effort into trying to evaluate the magnitude of reporting errors. They find that people underestimate their true calorie intake by astonishing percentages, typically 30 percent, with a range of 10 to 45 percent depending on such factors as age, sex, body composition, and socioeconomic status. Underreporting of food -- and therefore calorie intake -- increases with age and is greater among women, people who are overweight, and those of low education and income status. People also tend to exaggerate intake of foods they think are supposed to be good for health".

The section in "DEFRA 2013" that discusses potential problems and inaccuracies in the survey is way too short.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11947892/Revealed-Sugar-tax-report-which-was-suppressed-by-Government.html

Published yesterday.

Any research been done on the AMOUNT of food eaten today compared with previously?

Never seen any.

Food has been made to taste nice in recent times - via a widening scope of international cuisines and more relevantly, the stuff all the food manufacturers
add into the food.  In previous times, food often wasn't very appetising, particularly for the majority who were poor.  Go back less than a century and people were often HUNGRY.  They didn't have the money to buy food.  They ate less.

The subject is a perfect storm.  Add in convenience food which is always processed and the lack of home cooking from scratch, the relative cheapness and convenience
of much processed food and the fact that so few people eat at home from scratch.

I don't believe that kids walk to school as much as they used to.  Rubbish.

Tate and Lyle - sold a few years ago - to big corps. Borrow money at zero percent and buy a real asset.

Nobody is saying ban sugar totally, nor salt nor tobacco,

The recommended daily intake is 2.4 grams of sodium.

A pretty solid study was done recently (2014) on sodium. Studies that rely on what people tell them, via diaries etc, are not very compelling evidence. This study was more clinically based.

102,000 people’s urine samples from 17 countries were tested for sodium. These people were then followed for 3.7 years and the deaths from all causes and from cardiovascular events was recorded, allowing an assessment of risk of death/cardiovascular event per gram of sodium to be made.

The study showed that the lowest risk of death from all causes occurred for those taking 5 grams of sodium per day. Those who ate 8 grams per day had slightly higher risk, while those below 3g of sodium per day had the highest risk of death.  Even those taking 12 grams of sodium a day had less risk of from cardiovascular events than those eating 2.4g.

Mr Anderson,

I'm delighted we agree that, according to government figures, per capita consumption of sugar in the UK has been decreasing
for years.

What people eat and drink is their own decision...as long as warning has been given

People should be able to smoke at a reasonable price as long as they have had a clear warning

Some people at the bottom of our society, having to survive on £70 a week, these things help

These Medical Hitlers, quite an appropriate word here, should stop telling other people what to do

If everybody did this in our World, we would have a happier World

I would even legalise heroine if it made people happier

I will let you into a little secret we will are all going DIE

We can run but we can't hide

I would recommend we all live healthily, but please don't flog ourselves like some Ascetic monk, unless people like this sort of thing

But we do not inflict this others please

Leave it to personal choice, for better or worse

The only thing Ebul is that others, ie the healthy, have to pay for those who make poor choices.

But do they akabula?????

Have you seen the tax on Alcohol and Tobacco, I suspect this vastly exceeds what may be required in extra expense to the Health service.
So I would only accept a sugar tax, if there is a reciprocal reduction in taxes on Alcohol and Tobacco

Also if you stop people drinking and smoking what do you think they are going to turn to, well eating of course
particularly sweet stuff, we do not show much sense at times do we

Have you seen the cookery on BBC2, if that is not an incitement to eat more, I don't know what is?

There is also something worse here

What is being proposed is we put a tax on the poor(direct tax on sugar) to reduce a tax on the rich(income tax)

I am not going anywhere near that...to me this is totally unacceptable

I do not  believe in societies which are run solely for the benefit of the rich

Keep the Red Flag Flying

Exactly how much of a tax is being proposed?  It would need to be quite steep to make much of a difference in my view.  Hard to imagine the average Coca Cola drinker going without their daily fix for the sake of a few pence.

You only need to take a walk down a typical working class small town high street in Britain to see the obesity epidemic.

it isn't all down to sugar.  Although I would be in favour, a sugar tax would be a knee jerk reaction.

What the government should do is commission a wide-ranging INDEPENDENT study and report on the reasons for obesity with comprehensive proposals on means to
help curb the problem.  No expense should be spared in throwing money at this problem.  If they spent a billion on a report and solutions that worked, it would save us
that many-fold in the future.

The problem is that, unless something is done quickly, that the growing acceptance of fat being the norm will continue.

Interesting that ebulGery talks about the rich and the poor.  Obesity is a problem that affects the poor more than the rich and the status quo is a situation where the poor
are buying the carp that the rich (corporations) are telling them to buy.

It's an odd stance for ebul to quote the red flag and not be in support of regulation.
To say that junk processed food and sugary drink should be kept low in price because it's a luxury for the poor is in essence social cleansing in itself.

We shouldn't allow enterprise to dictate policy when their goal is simply profit.
It's Hobson's choice in the end ofc because the politicians are nuts deep into enterprise, but you have to form a logical approach and private enterprise arnt the ones trusted enough to decide that.

It's true that the manifestation of a capitalist state doesn't act truly in accordance with the best interest of the people however. Ebul mentioned the tax on alcohol, the figures were released a few months ago, the state is essentially in league with the drinks industry to the tune of around 5 billion net profit a year (the revenue minus cost to treat alcoholism and other drink related problems)
But this figure has to be taken in the round. Only a very small figure die quickly through drink, but all have a shorter life than had they not, so the excess of taxation is actually relative to the amount of life that's lost as a collective.

Have you seen the tax on Alcohol and Tobacco, I suspect this vastly exceeds what may be required in extra expense to the Health service.

It currently costs the NHS 10 billion pounds a year to treat diabetes and its consequences. That figure is set to rise to near 17 billion in the next twenty years. Now that estimate was made before the figures come out that diabetes had risen by 60% in decade. That’s on top of a 74% rise from 1997 to 2003.

The tragedy is type 2, which forms the bulk of the above figures, is a completely avoidable disease by diet. If this goes on how long before the NHS goes broke?

I agree with one thing, a tax on sugary drinks will punish the poor most. But what people have is an addiction masquerading as something they ‘like’. If they can’t afford one sugary item they’ll probably buy another they can afford, I doubt it’ll solve anything. What needs to be done is to get people’s appetite in check and that means reducing sugars and increasing fats. It’s not possible to over eat fat, it restores the body's ability to manage its own weight.

On a related note, I think we should use prisoners to improve our understanding of nutritional science. Everyone sentenced to more than three years in prison should randomly be assigned an interesting diet. Like the traditional Okinawan diet, or standard prison food, but with water as the only drink available etc. Many interesting opportunities, and the perfect environment for controlling and keeping track of exactly what people eat.

the food should be measured in sugar cubes. 4g is a level teaspoon. but a heaped spoon could be about 8g. So sugar cubes seems obvious. put how many cubes are in your sweet junk food ye slobs.

don't buy stevia - it is terrible. saving money there.

Sugars and edible fats are cheaper than they would be in a notional free market because the agribusinesses that produce them get 85GBP/acre farm subsidies, plus business rate exemptions and cheap red diesel. ( Agricultural assets are exempt from inheritance tax to boot ).

People who want a sugar tax should ask themselves if they are happy to use some of the taxation on the bad thing being taxed to subsidise the production of that bad thing they don't like being purchased.

Or to put it another way: "Supporters of ( sin taxes ) should be prepared to explain to what extent they think the aim of cajoling
people into adopting healthier lifestyles justifies forcibly reducing people’s living standards." Kristian Niemietz