To get fed up with people with people like Jamie Oliver trying to coerce poor people via taxation.

[Booyaka]

I absolutely loathe Jamie Oliver anyway, but this crusade of his over sugar is driving me mad. I think something possibly needs to be done about sugar, but I don't think this is the way to do it. He did make a suggestion about prominently labelling total number of teaspoons of sugar in a product, which seemed quite sensible. But mainly he was pushing the tax angle.

Jamie Oliver's entire schtick seems to be that poor people can't be trusted to make the right decisions so they should instead be priced out to force them to make the decisions that he and his ilk believe that they should be making.

It bloody annoys me that they seem to think if you are wealthy and can afford them anyway you can be trusted to make the right decision anyway, but if you're poor you need to be coerced, and that coercion, of something as basic as what you eat and drink, is fine as long as you are poor. He did very much concentrate on handwringing about 'the deprived' too and how this tax would seemingly save them from themselves.

Apparently 1/3 of the products he sell in his restaurants are high sugar anyway, but he probably doesn't mind that, because he prices his tat so highly only middle class people can afford it and they're sensible enough to be trusted with sugar unlike the proles.

He probably doesn't realise, but a lot of people can't afford to take their kids to Tuscany or the Caribbean, Cornwall or even Skeg-bloody-ness. They can't buy their kids a lot of toys or give them days out. Is it really fair to give these people a financial kicking for giving their kids one of the few treats they can afford? Especially when many of them do so sensibly and in moderation.

Well in a restaurant, a third of the items could easily be puddings or drinks which are high sugar. I don't think that is particularly noteworthy. But JO is not talking about going to a restaurant occaisionally and having a coke and a slice of cake, which even the slimmest of us do. The problem with sugar is when people make it such a massive part of their everyday diet.

And it is a huge part of people's everyday diet. We're considered strange for not sending our kids to school with crisps and chocolate every day and not serving pudding after dinner every night of the week

Until recently wasn't he a high income fatty himself (if memory serves me well he got very stroppy when that was pointed out) I pretty sure that didn't endear him on his crusade.

You are totally missing my point though, I'm not suggesting that there isn't a problem, not that Jamie Oliver is wrong on his 'crusade'. His delivery is wrong though, taxation will not work.

Making sugar (and sweeteners) the price of gold or banning it probably would help however.

The government need to look at health strategies that work. The anti smoking campaign has been largely successful. That was a combination of high taxation, scary adverts and making it inconvenient for people to indulge their vice. Plus smoking is now largely seen as a bit stupid and dirty, as opposed to cool and glamorous as it was in the past.

"What utter rubbish that this is targeting the poor!"

Indirect tax will effect the lower income more. That's a fact. Therefore a tax on sugary good will be 'targeted' towards 'the poor'.

Whether it should or not is a different matter, but indirect tax does hit the lower incomes more.

Indirect tax will effect the lower income more. That's a fact. Therefore a tax on sugary good will be 'targeted' towards 'the poor'.

yes. it will. Hopefully, the outcome will be less sugar consumed, but the same amount of money in poor people's pocket.

True that indirect tax hits the poor - which is why it isn't on food, kids clothes, rent and in my view shouldn't be on energy.

If we abolish all indirect taxes though we make it hard to collect the tax we need to pay for services and we discourage work as direct tax needs to increase.

So we use a mix and we tax things that are a choice - holidays, flights, sugar, booze, fags, consumer goods and we make it proportional to price so you pay less tax on a £10 basic jumper than a £300 designer cashmere jumper. No-one has to buy the latter - and they pay more tax for the privilege.

Not perfect but could be worse.

in fact, we could mitigate the economic effect by increasing tax credits by a similar amount.

So why doesn't he make a push for more education along with promotion of healthier alternatives? A push for more healthy lifestyle choices, such as more funding for sports activity programmes at schools (after school) that are available to everyone of all income levels to increase children's activity levels? Or even before school sports activities, as so many schools have breakfast clubs anyway, maybe an extension of this? Push for schools to include one extra PE lesson per week perhaps? Push for more actual cooking lessons in schools even from an early age, all the way through, so children leave school at 18 being able to cook a solid variety of food from scratch, as well as knowing the nutritional value?

I'd like to see my dc's school stop giving sweets out as rewards. They bang on about healthy eating then daily hand over sweets (often either chewy or boiled sweets) to each child as rewards for various things. It's not necessary. I've brought it up before and been told "Oh, but it's motivating for the children." I know our school isn't the only school that does this. How about a push for schools to end this practice? Very annoying that we're careful with the dcs about their teeth, only to have the teacher give the child a chewy sweet at 10am or 2pm, that sits on their teeth for 2-3 hours before a meal.

And yes, I know the school options cost money, but if it increases children's activity levels and helps keep children from becoming obese, it's a good investment IMO.

But giving children sweets as rewards is as old as the hills, they were doing this 40 years ago. This is not at the heart of the matter.

It's the encroachment of sugar into mealtimes and creation of new snacking routines that is the problem.

So why doesn't he make a push for more education along with promotion of healthier alternatives? A push for more healthy lifestyle choices, such as more funding for sports activity programmes at schools (after school) that are available to everyone of all income levels to increase children's activity levels?

I think he's been doing this for about 10 years.

But giving children sweets as rewards is as old as the hills, they were doing this 40 years ago. This is not at the heart of the matter.

Of course it is!! It normalises sugary items as rewards. It gives the kids a conflicting message. They tell them it's important to eat healthy, but then hand them sweets every day. Just because it's as old as the hills, that doesn't make it okay. I can be super careful about my dc's eating and brushing habits, but if they are giving him a chewy sweet or two every day, and that sugar is sitting on his teeth for a few hours afterwards, of course it's going to have an effect.

I hate sweets as rewards in school too.

If he's been doing this for 10 years, then he needs to go back to the drawing board and think outside the box.

I wouldn't even mind a tax on all high sugar products if they ringfenced some of the money gained from it to pay in funding to schools to provide more physical activity/sports based programmes especially for primary and secondary to get children into the habit of physical activity more.

My kids are teens now so it doesn't apply but I hated sweets in schools too.
Agree about the creation of ridiculous snacking routines and kids who are constantly eating. Kids used to come over for playdates and ask for snacks - and I really didn't know what they meant because it wasn't something we did.

Lots of good ideas about dealing with the obesity problem but whilst it is considered not to be a question of personal responsibility and yet a matter of personal choice we will achieve nothing.

If he's been doing this for 10 years, then he needs to go back to the drawing board and think outside the box.

Why? Because he hasn't solved the problem? It's a rather difficult problem to solve.

Sweets as rewards is ingrained into people's thinking; I fought some big battles with the grandparents over it. The fact that FiL had his teeth removed in his twenties seemed totally irrelevant to him.

My kids used to go to a school where everyone was given sweets by their parent as soon as they walked out of the classroom door. I was the weird, mean mum who didn't. At the school where DS is now, parents would be strangling themselves with their judgypants if a parent gave their kids sweets in the yard.

And yes, it is a horrible cliché, but there is a massive socioeconomic difference between the two schools.

My point about it being as old as the hills was not that this makes it OK, but rather that it existed far before the obesity epidemic.

Yes, sweets as rewards is common for many people. I don't fuss over grandparents giving sweets as it's not an every day thing. But the school gives my dc sweets practically every day, 5 days a week. That's now an expectation as far as my child is concerned, and it's annoying. Add to it that he then asks me to buy the sweets that they give at school (and I say no).

I send sliced carrots, peppers, tomatoes to school with him for their mid-morning snack (as they request parents send in a healthy snack) and then they hand him sweets. How is that logical in any sense?

Maybe these are some of the things that need to change? It's a small thing, but it's a step forward. If some dcs are already getting high sugar things at home, surely a daily dose of them at school is not a good idea?

Sarah I understand that, but it still can be a contributing factor. If the schools gave sweets on one day a week, say on Friday, then I wouldn't be so annoyed. Then it's a treat. Sweets every day doesn't teach them anything about moderation, or keeping high sugar things to once a week, or telling them that just because it's lovely and sweet doesn't mean it's good to have every day. Once a week makes it more of an event, rather than an everyday snack IYSWIM.

Years ago, children weren't having as much high sugar food at home, so the sweets at school weren't as big a contributing factor to the issue of obesity. But when high sugar food is given to the child everywhere they turn - at home, at school, at parties, everywhere - then it is part of the problem IMO.

Sweets as a reward most certainly is as old as the hills. Just as cakes/chocolate as a treat is.

What's happened is the frequency people treat and reward themselves and their children has become frequent rather than infrequent.

'A treat' has almost (or has) become a standard expectation as having a dinner.

'Treats' really aren't treats, in the true sense of the word, anymore.

Here is a treat for 80p save up and buy fewer treats,

I think we're probably in agreement. I have no earthly idea why a school would hand out sweets at snacktime. Surely that's counterproductive. My kids' school hands them out far less regularly e.g. last day of term, Halloween, etc.

That said, I think that sweets are self-limiting in a way that soda, biscuits, crisps, etc are not. Maybe that's not true for everyone.

Schools are already doing ever so well teaching our children that a "sweet" follows every meal via their " cheap and bulky puddings healthy school dinners" - then the use their other hand to bash us with incorrect healthy eating pyramids (ones I have seen recently have been a joke) and letters home about overweight children and how WE PARENTS should give them a more healthy diet.

I'd love it if our school had a sweet ban but I would def be seen as the nutty Mum for pushing for it - I do raise the issue any chance I get and they all smile and nod at me and think I'm bonkers. Yes even the very middle class parents.