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.

I signed his petition as well. I would also tax the makers of fizzy drinks too.

Can't stand that smarmy bastard. Wish he would fuck off to the far side of fuck and take his slobbery, smug load of wankery with him. His restaurants fuck over the waitstaff. He's prick extraordinnaire.

Mistigri, cigarettes are different because the only use for them is to get people addicted and that will probably kill them. A lot of people can drink fizzy drinks occasionally or have metabolisms and lifestyles that mean that it doesn't cause them a weight issue. It's fine to do it on cigarettes because the amount of people who just use them occasionally or can do it without causing themselves damage is tiny.

Alcohol can also be used responsibly without doing yourself damage. But there are good arguments for discouraging drunkenness because of the fallout of it, like domestic abuse, public disorder, problems with mental health and inability to work etc.

You hear of many people who end up beating their wives after a session on the diet coke or getting sacked from their jobs because they've turned up on a massive sugar rush.

I disagree that healthy food is cheaper as a general rule. It can be if you know what cuts of meat to buy (for example) but you need to know how to cook. Lots and lots of people haven't the first idea and so they buy ready made salt and sugar laden rubbish that's mass produced and very cheap.

well said romcom

He's doing this to peddle his merchandise and show. He's not ahead of his time or some type of crusader.

Agree with you OP. We give our kids a good diet, sugary stuff, fizzy drinks aren't on the list it's too much on top of the household basics.

People need a multi approach, I agree with better labelling but I'm not sure taxation is right. It's about what you've learnt as a child - your parents approach to food and that's not easy to change, it's hard to change your relationship to food.

We went through some lean times when I was a kid and I went out hungry or to sleep hungry and it's left me hoarding food. It's also made me keenly aware of what I'm spending, what we are eating and what's in everything so my kids don't experience that.

We always have frozen milk, lentils, tinned tomatoes, frozen veg, mixed seeds, porridge, rice and coconut milk in the house in large quantities I buy them when they're reduced or on offer.

He is patronising and too full of himself. I wish he was a bit more approachable as some of his input could be useful, I find he talks down to you in his recipes too.

Tap water is free. It really is cheaper than soft drinks, even for poor people.

I used to like him. I still like a lot of his recipes - I'm just not buying any more of his books, he's rich enough.

Sadly, according to the stats, poor people as a group are massively fat compared to the rich, and SOMETHING needs to be done. If taxing sugar means people eat less of it then bloody brilliant. It's worked for cigarettes.

When the huge tidal wave of obese currently 50 year olds hits old age, the NHS will collapse under the strain.

Yes of course healthy food is more expensive than fat laden, cheap salty crap. However, there are loads of overweight people regularly buying and consuming sweet fizzy drinks. I'd like to see this stuff taxed so it becomes too expensive for poor families to be buying litres of it every week.

booyaka just as there are good social reasons for discouraging excessice consumption of alcohol, there are good reasons for discouraging people from eating too much sugar (especially "invisible" sugars).

I cant be bothered to google the economic impact of obesity and diabetes versus the economic impact of alcoholism, liver disease and related anti social behaviour - but I would bet they are of the same order of magnitude.

And sugar has a significant impact on children's health, which alcohol doesn't (or not directly).

@ Booyaka

I got deleted for calling him a fat-tongued cunt once and it wasn't even on the web-chat.

Better not do it again.

I did go through a stage of hiding his books in bookshops and on one occasion moved an entire stand of them behind something else in Tesco.

I live abroad, visit the UK intermittently and honestly it's horrifying how HUGE people are in some places. We went on holiday to northern Ireland this summer and even my kids noticed :-/ m

I don't know if a sugar tax is the answer but putting your fingers in your ears and going lalala certainly isn't going to work. I suppose the question is - does the UK want the health gap to widen and the NHS deficit to grow?

*I got deleted for calling him a fat-tongued cunt once and it wasn't even on the web-chat.

Better not do it again.*

Best not Charity

Mistigri, they are not social reasons, they are economic reasons.

If sugar has a similar impact to alcoholism that's probably because more people eat it, not because it is as damaging as alcohol. Alcohol abuse has pretty catastrophic fallout for families, friends and societies socially and not economically.

So you don't get kids who say that their childhood was destroyed because their Dad was always on the donuts or they were neglected because their Mum was always at the diet coke.

And anyway, if it's so dangerous, surely the correct thing to do would be to price it according to the income of the people buying it. Because if it's that dangerous, surely we are being extremely cruel to everybody on an above average income who will still be able to buy destroy their life by Twix? Or do we just come back to the same old argument that poor people can't be trusted and have to be coerced by the paternalistic 'I know what's best' likes of Jamie?

Besides, if somebody would rather live until they were 60 and eat well than live to 90 on lettuce then that's their decision, rich or poor, not Jamie fucking Olivers. And the fact their is so much education around and people are ignoring it makes it seem like a lot of people have made exactly that decision.

Why are people like Keith Floyd or Michael Winner 'bon vivants' who like the good life? But if you're poor and you like a Big Mac you're the scourge of society?

And also, Jamie has been a right porker at times himself. Why is his porkiness morally superior to anyone else's?

Uncertain I bow to your superior knowledge, you're quite right!

Booyyaka
You hear of many people who end up beating their wives after a session on the diet coke or getting sacked from their jobs because they've turned up on a massive sugar rush.

I've literally never heard that

Ah yes the great webchat with him back in the summer of 2013

Hes not tackling the companies hes dictating again. There are causal links between poverty and obesity.

I lost ten stone while working a night job 13 years ago. Slowly gained 4 stone back when i became a carer for DH in 2006 and surviving on £40 a week.

I have lost that 4 stone regain over the past two years In fact i started the SW plan again around the time of "that" webchat. Not because of it though. I just felt mentally and emotionally ready.
Although i do the SW plan ive tweaked it because a lot of so called low syn stuff is high in sugar. I find if i keep my sugar intake as low as possible it works for me.

I was on that Webchat under a different username. Lots of people were criticising him for this, and also for the fact his 'save with Jamie' book was fucking expensive. He was just ignoring anything awkward and answering really anodyne questions like 'what's your favourite cheese' and 'do you like beans on toast'. So I asked him if he could twerk to take the piss. And he answered it. It got reported in the press the next day.

Healthy food is cheaper??? God, I'm so tired of hearing this one! To set my credentials: My knowledge of nutrition is encyclopaedic; I'm capable of sophisticated food preparation; I have been very well-off, in which period I probably consumed junk food about three times a year. Now I have neither energy or money. My diet's changed a lot.

I was in Aldi this afternoon, with 80p spare for an extra. The options I considered were:
an avocado
two fresh veg
a kilo of bananas
a slab of cake
two packets of biscuits
two scotch eggs
multi-pack of crisps.
I didn't look at the sweets as I don't eat them, but could have bought a pack of Snickers clones or a dip bag of mixed sweets.

Since you're bound to be fascinated by my personal choices (!) I got a packet of biscuits and some potatoes.

If I had a few kids deserving a treat after school, my realistic options would've been: bananas, cake, crisps, biscuits, sweets. Given that most parents include bananas in their DCs' regular diet, they aren't a treat. I would have gone for the Snickers or the crisps.

Fascinated to know what healthy 'extras' you would share between children for a total of 80p.

Taxing carbs is a ridiculous, pretentious, controlling mission of the over-privileged and under-thinking.

that'sdisappointing I would like to pretend that was sarcasm but it was a typo and was meant to say 'you don't hear'.

Booyaka Mon 19-Oct-15 23:39:20
I was on that Webchat under a different username

Me too