Tax on fizzy drinks and curb on takeaway outlets to fight obesity: good idea or not?

I think the fizzy drinks levy is worth doing, if they include diet drinks in that.

However, I'm not sure education is the whole answer. I can cook. DH can cook. We both know how to eat healthily. We just don't do it enough. Chocolate tastes good, as do takeaways/cake/biscuits etc. I'm hovering around a BMI of 25 but DH is somewhere in the region of 28 or 29. Sometimes it is time - if you're tired after a long work day, the last thing you want to do is cook from scratch when you get home. We do try to batch cook at weekends and microwave something, but to be honest, sometimes the chipper has more allure on a dark winter's evening. Hot, instant food.

It's also a bit ingrained - if you have visitors in the afternoon, you offer them biscuits/cake. I buy or DH bakes something specifically for people coming round. Then we eat what's left over the next few days.

Alcohol's a big thing for some people (it's not one of our major vices as I've been pg/bf for the last 3 years) - people put on weight from alcohol, but they also lose inhibitions and maybe buy chips/kebab on their way home, or decide after a few drinks to order pizza instead of cooking, or perhaps they have a fry-up/bacon roll in the morning to deal with the hangover.

Food is really tied up with manners - it's impolite not to accept if your host offers you something, for instance. It's also a comfort thing - we say 'comfort food' all the time. Chocolate is seen as a treat, or a reward. All of these things combine to create a culture where if you like chocolate/cake/chippers and can afford them, then why not?

Is there an answer to well-educated adults making poor choices? How about cracking down on advertising? That might help. Or, as various posters have suggested, banning artifical shite - even when you think you're eating healthily you might not be, half the time. More transparancy of what goes into food to preserve it.

Elderflower cordial when mixed with water, has as much sugar as a can of coke...

I agree that sugary and additivey fizzy drinks and all sweet drinks sold in bottles (This Water has as much sugar as pop, but has a healthy sort of image and is still) should be taxed equally - driving people to aspartamane and sorbitol instead of sugar is nobody's victory.

And politicians need to consider this: it's all very well going on and on about healthy food and cooking from scratch, but I heard a politician from S London on the radio saying that the poorest constituents HAVE NO COOKER. Only a microwave.

Actually, Sesame Street in America sort of does that, PQ.

Except they call them 'sometimes foods'. Fancy way to say 'unhealthy'.

Sorry, Lacka, I misunderstood.

Yes, lets introduce Healthy Snacks, like fruit and Unhealthy snack like chocs, biccies and cripss.

Oblomov:

" And the answer to obesity? well it clearly isn't that simple, or else we'd all know what it is. And clearly none of us do. "

Oblomov, you are confusing contradictory advice with their being no answer. It's a common mistake by "reasonable" people - thinking that the truth must be some sort of synthesis between opposing positions - when there is no possible synthesis it is not necessarily that there is no answer, it can be that some of the positions are just wrong, and others are right.

Some people do know the answer. It's not conventional advice - which is low fat, high carb - but that doesn't make it wrong.

It's also about the fact that eating nothing, on occasion, is an important part of a healthy diet. All dietary advice seems to be about substituting x for y. How about just shutting up and waiting till lunchtime? (not aimed at anyone in particular, except, perhaps, myself)

Here is my opinion:

1. No, not because fizzy drinks are not of the devil (they are) but because this is a regressive tax
2. More particularly it is financially penalising people who are just complying with the dictates of neoliberal capitalism. If They (whoever They are) really gave a shit they would look at how consumption of all kinds is pushed, even to the huge detriment of individuals' health and happiness; and at providing realistic, alternative, healthier routes to personal satisfaction, whatever your class, whatever your income.
3. People shouldn't be financially penalised for not following Their dietary advice, whatever it might happen to be at any given moment, because They are very likely to be getting it wrong (good dietary advice is subtle and personally tailored ideally. Current conventional advice is terrible)

This would lead to a two tier snack system.

That's why I said I didn't know what the answer is Tee. Those were suggestions as to options that may be considered, not what I actually think should happen. I don't know how to address the issue. And I'm speaking as someone at risk of type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and more from my own obesity.

Oh and my children have tasted horse,nothing wrong with that if you know what your buying and its horse that's intended for human food.

Caiden, how to put this, you dont have to try to sound goady and patronizing to get your point across. And no need to offend people with name calling.

sheeple.

I would have been more than happy to discuss the dangers of aspartame with you, but not at that level.

How many people now live in areas with no proper greengrocer or butcher or fish monger,if your lucky you may have a farm shop near by but loads of those are so expensive and do not reflect the cost of producing the food that it beres no relation to the normal shops we used to have.

Some one who does all there shopping in chain supermarkets will have limited idea of what proper food tastes like, fruit and veg is selected by look alone, fish is brought based on how much can be provided and you really don't want to know what is done to allegedly plain unprocessed meat and how that's picked. Or how old all of it is by the time its a available to the buying public. Even bread,how many people think bread is actually surposed to stay soft then go green?

We think we are buying what we want but no we are buying what they say we can have,its a con

That's what the big change is since the 60's and why its getting worse and has done ever since.

Obviously it would be very hard to revert back to he we shopped in the 60's but we could try and make it easier for proper food shops to prosper and be available to buy real food from,

The sweeteners in diet drinks and children's cordial drinks are ARTIFICIAL ..lets see the new generation of cancer victims...have been warning folk about aspartame for years ;) wake up and smell the roses sheeple ;) xxx

Smoking has gone down since cigs got very pricey and the ads - a doc was on tv saying this yesterday

I know loads of people who have stopped smoking in last few years

so yes, i think if fizzy drinks get very expensive, people will drink less of them

"making people pay for treatment for obesity related illness?"

I have type II diabetes, due to being (formerly) obese.

There was a man in my 'how to live with this horrible thing' class who wasn't obese at all, but who also had Type II diabetes.

Should he have to pay because his illness is considered obesity related?

How about people who do extreme sports? If they break something, shall we have them pay for their treatment? After all, it's their fault they did the sport and hurt themselves. Or any sport, actually.

Where does it end?

Yes. Good idea. Also:
Tax on crisps until they are quadruple the price of what they are now, and feed the funds back into the NHS to help pay for the burden obesity is placing on the health service.

Yes to "Health tax" on crisps, fizzy drinks, junk food, tobacco and alcohol.

No...take-aways and fizzy drinks existed when I was growing up and there were only rarely obese children...because we moved more and didn't indulge as much or sit on front of computers and video games all the time. And personally a 20% tax on fizzy drinks wouldn't stop me from buying them when I wanted to, or I would switch to an own brand variety rather than a name.

Not sure what the answer is though...

making people pay for treatment for obesity related illness?

educate children more? Bring back domestic science in schools?

make people watch embarrasing fat bodies on a constant loop till they get it?

stop the retailers pushing low fat but high sugar, "healthy choice" food at us? and filling our foods with aspartame etc and telling us that orange juice, or the talbespoon of mushy veg in my crap ready meal counts as one of my five a day.

YY undercoverhousewife. Totally agree, and esp on the sanitary products, by god.

No, no, no, no. Fizzy drinks aren't the problem, the problem is overindulgence and lack of activity.

No problem has ever been solved by taxation.

YES! Most things we buy attract VAT at a rate of 20%. There are a few exceptions that do not attract VAT (technically, they attract VAT at the rate of 0% and so are known as zero-rated items). These zero rated items are supposed to be things that are social goods or necessities eg medical equipment, books, children's clothes and most food (but not hot takeaway food or chocolate biscuits). Fizzy drinks are not a necessity (unlike basic food stuffs) and are not even good for anyone so why on earth not standard rate them for VAT? The administrative procedures are already in place for retailers to be selling mixed VAT goods (as mentioned above, some luxury food is already standard rated for VAT - eg chocolate biscuits, although not cake.) Save the tax breaks for food stuffs that are healthy basics. Personally, I would like to VAT standard rate all items that are very high in sugar, and, as a trade-off, get female sanitary products (which are a necessity!) zero rated instead.

I'd of thought the way they blow up the stomach with gas wouldn't help much either.Your stomach would never get used to needing only a little amount in it to feel full.

Sorry Rosie my post probably was a little strident.

Rosieeo it might be worth a Google on the subject - there is lots of evidence linking consumption of 'diet' sodas with obesity.

I read something very similar Sieglinde, about the sweeteners used in diet drinks.

Not sure I can blame lettuce though

Polkadot, bless you, you say it with the air of someone giving away some great secret. Talk about pointing out the obvious - it's not rocket science and most people who are overweight are aware of those basic facts. Thanks though :)

Rosie, there is a correlation between obesity and diet soda. Weird, but there is.

Not sure about the lettuce

But my point is that there are MANY reasons to tax sodas, of which the least good is that it will rid us all of obesity. It won't, not on its own. But it might play a part.