The off-on idea of a sugar tax to help tackle obesity in the UK is off again. Prime Minister David Cameron has reportedly changed tack for the last time, . It also looks as if a long-awaited strategy to cut childhood obesity may be kicked down the road yet again.
Just today Cancer Research UK and the UK Health Forum estimated a by 2025.
Unless the sugar tax decision is reversed, it will be yet more proof that Cameron and his government is in thrall to the food industry and the sugar barons will have won yet again. The heel dragging over the strategy only adds to that impression.
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The problem is that child and adult obesity could spell the end for the UK鈥檚 most cherished institution, its National Health Service.
We have had 16 years of frustration in which the charity I represent, the National Obesity Forum, has witnessed successive governments threaten to regulate or legislate against food industry barons who failed to remove excessive sugar from their processed products.
Toothless pledge
They all threatened but buckled and backed off after industry lobbying. The last attempt, the Responsibility Deal 鈥� whereby manufacturers 鈥� was toothless. It didn鈥檛 work as intended because the pledges were not compulsory.
Some parts of industry did play ball but . Witness campaign group Action on Sugar鈥檚 for 鈥渄angerously鈥� lacing a hot flavoured drink with 25 teaspoons of sugar per serving. That is more than three times the for an adult never mind a child.
A sugar tax is way too important to be shelved. It was the first intervention proposed by world obesity specialists in a 2011 summit of the United Nations and World Health Organization in New York. Since then countless UK think-tanks have echoed the proposal, the most prominent being the , representing some 200,000 UK doctors, who, in 2014, demanded a 鈥渢rial鈥� of the tax at the very least.
The doctors wanted at least a 20 per cent tax but the Forum believes the figure should be closer to 50 per cent. Retail specialists have told us that the higher the tax the greater the disincentive to buy.
Real health benefits
We believe that a substantial fall in the consumption of sodas with excessive refined sugar would bring real health benefits and would not penalise 鈥渢he poor鈥�. No one needs fizzy drinks to quench thirst. In the words of Susan Jebb, professor of diet and population health at the University of Oxford, a sugar tax is a 鈥渘o brainer鈥�.
Without a high-profile 鈥減reventative鈥� tax that could be imposed relatively quickly, the framework for obesity prevention will struggle to get off the ground.
The alternative best option 鈥� substantial reformulation of food and drink 鈥� will take years and, with the NHS in a parlous condition, time is not on our side.
Other measures such as restrictions on food promotions, limiting advertising of junk food to children and improvements in labelling must all play a part, but none have the clout of a soda tax calculated to wean people off a damaging product.
Tam Fry is spokesman for the
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