Jamie Oliver and his sugar tax

[IsThat]

Pub grub, school meals chef know it all!

Turns out he was wrong about replacement of sugar.

Yep, he failed.

He tried to educate us about sugar and how we ate too much. How we should be aware of it in our diet and make our own choices about how much we eat. He obviously didn't manage to get the point across to some.

He talks a reasonable amount of sense.

I can't stand him, advocating for great big unnecessary oil slicks on top of food then moaning about sugar.

I don't particularly like him either, but again, he isn't the person to blame for this. Have a think again?

It's not his fault that companies replaced sugar with an awful substitute. He did loads for school meals. It's bizarre to blame this on him.

You really can't blame him for this. He campaigned for a reduction in sugar consumption which is very much a good thing. Unfortunately the might of the food industry has ensured it was just replaced by sweeteners when what was needed was for us to reduce total consumption of sweetened drinks but that's not his fault.

I like Jamie Oliver he uses his 'platform' to try and help. I mean trying to get kids to eat healthier food what a bastard eh!

You sound rather uninformed op. 'Oil slicks on top of food' .... what are you on about ? If you're talking about olive oil then EVOO has been shown to have numerous health benefits and can reduce glucose spikes in carb heavy meals. There are published studies on this if you care to read them.
JO never at any point advocated for the use of aspartame; in fact he has spoken out about it.
We do generally, as a population, need to reduce sugar in processed foods and start eating more whole foods.
Other natural sweeteners are available for example agave syrup. I put a dash in my tomato sauces and it works a treat.

@Itisyourturntowashthebath He didn't fail. Companies that profit off people's addiction to sweetness are what failed. The government not regulating what can be sold to consumers as 'healthy' substitutes failed. The marketing regulations failed. And people's greediness and constant obsession with blaming someone other then themselves failed.
Jamie Oliver actually did something. He could've sat and enjoyed his money on a beach, instead he relentlessly campaigned for healthier options for our kids. If not for him, it's very likely kids would still be eating the same trash American kids are fed.

And what have you done OP to try and improve society for the better?

It's not Jamie Oliver's fault kids are guzzling soft drinks, fast food and junk food though. It was this that he was campaigning against, not pushing soft drink manufacturers to swap sugar for artificial sweeteners. Many people are digging their graves with their teeth - Jamie saw this and tried to highlight the dangers but he gets pilloried.

Sweeteners aren't the answer, but drinking cans which contain 7 teaspoons of sugar - and I know folk who drink 3 or 4 cans a day - that's 5 ounces of sugar in old money. No wonder we have an obesity and diabetes epidemic.

I don’t think we can blame JO for the prevalence of chemical sweeteners everywhere but the sugar tax definitely has a lot to answer for. You can’t pick up any packaged food or drink today without seeing Aspartame or Asulfame K (sp?).

I’d put money on lots of research coming out in the coming years about how bad they are for you (I realise this is already happening to some extent ).

To be fair, he copied what the Scottish government and some local authorities were already doing and didn't credit them afaik.

Surely he's not that thick that he thought they would just reduce the sugar and not replace it with something else? I know it's down to the manufacturers but he must have realised.

I have a couple of soft drinks a week but most drinks have now been ruined. I'd rather have the option to pay more and have something decent than sweetened shit.

@Foxesandsquirrels Ok maybe not fail. The very existence of this thread proves his campaign to educate was not an unmitigated success.

This is why non-experts should stay out of policy. An important thing during policy design is considering unexpected outcomes of public and firm behaviour. The shift to sweeteners was a fairly obvious outcome. He put the government in a position where they couldn’t refuse the sugar tax lest they be accused of not taking children’s health seriously, only for the reality to be kids eating large amounts of sweeteners instead.

The food manufacturing industry had to find a way round the sugar tax didn't they? FWIW, I hate any products containing aspartame and avoid as much as I can. I love my Irn Bru and I know it's probably in that but will suffer as I drink it very rarely like for a pub meal accompaniment. I prefer the original recipe but hard to get a hold of.

If Jamie Oliver hadn't pushed the issue about the school meals I agree none of this nanny state nonsense would be pushed on us, reducing our free will.

It's not just the cancer link that's concerning.

There are also links between sweeteners and the rise in metabolic disease that seems to be strongly correlated with obesity.

And there's a link just been published in a peer-reviewed med paper suggesting a link between sucralose and Leaky Gut Disease.

This is why I buy full sugar items if I can find them, milk delivered to the door with cream on top, we have a block of butter and vintage cheese ( I am convinced something changed in extra mature).

Why should he credit them? They did that for the Scottish kids, not English ones. What a bizarre attitude to have. If you're doing something good should you check who else has done that to make sure you give them credit? Insane.

I find this upset about sweeteners so weird. I don't find it hard in the slightest to avoid them as I don't buy total crap.

Do you honestly think all this was done with no reference to health experts, nutrition experts, manufacturing experts, food experts? Just JO saying 'we need to stop our kids eating so much crap' and the govt saying 'righty ho, here's some legislation '?

But they're even in yoghurts, as a pp said. Though I suppose we should be checking labels if we're uncertain and concerned.

To be fair, he copied what the French and Mexican governments amongst others were already doing and did credit them afaik.

This is why non-experts should stay out of policy.

Self appointed Gnostic celebs looking for control of others or good PR is the problem.

Yesterday Sam Smith was advocating social media should be censored to suit his thinking, other's apparently are not allowed their own thoughts or words.

Who the heck do these people think they are?

People can only work on the evidence available at the time really. If sweeteners are/ were considered safe then they can be put into food. If that evidence has changed then that will need to be legislated for.

About time it was recognized that chemical sweeteners are evil.