To think there's never a bad time for a sugar tax

[Time2Rise]

I just heard a(nother) politician on the radio say now is not the right time for a sugar tax, due to the cost of living crisis. At the same time, he was expressing outrage at the high rates of tooth decay in children and pledging tooth-brushing lessons in primary schools. Surely a cost of living crisis is a perfectly reasonable time for a sugar tax? When families are struggling financially, it's irresponsible to appease them with cheap sugary treats that damage their children's health.

Taxing people doesn’t counteract lack of knowledge of nutrition. They just keep buying it.

Things should also be available for people who want to enjoy them in moderation, why do they have to be penalised due to the lack of control/understanding in others?

Yep let’s patronise and punish everyone because some fuckwits buy their children too many sweets. Adding 20/30p onto sugary food won’t deter people. What about fat salt sweeteners additives etc?

@Befop I said Baby Belling, not Babybel 😀

Anyway Babybels are just individual portions of cheese that are £12.50 a kg and a proportion of that is wax. Stupid expensive.

Buy a larger lump of mild cheddar at £7 a kg and cut it up.

Half the thread are saying 30p extra won’t deter people, the other half saying 30p extra would make it impossible for them to buy sugar to treat their health conditions.

The fact is, the evidence shows time and again that consumption of something goes down when it is taxed - sugary drinks, alcohol, cigarettes. I am sure there are several reasons for that - people not wanting to spend the extra money, of course, but also the signalling that this is unhealthy.

And for those saying ‘why should I pay for others’ poor choices?’. You already are, as their ill health is costing us all through the NHS and sick pay/sickness benefits etc. Surely a tax is economically fairer, as it forces the manufacturer to share the pain and produces revenues that can be used to tackle the social harm caused.

I think what is needed is more subsidies for the production of whole foods (fresh fruit and veg) funded by more taxation of ultra processed food (including those with added sugar and artificial sweeteners). It will never happen though, the large scale food manufacturers lobby is much more powerful than that of smaller farmers and independent producers. We will all ultimately pay though for this through the increase in preventative illnesses and healthcare costs.

I'm dyslexic 😂😂

But it's still a valid example

You could apply the same argument to smoking and alcohol (both of which are heavily taxed). Poor diet is actually linked to more deaths and a higher economic cost than smoking
https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/new-study-finds-poor-diet-kills-more-people-globally-tobacco-and#:~:text=Poor%20diet%20is%20responsible%20for,in%20every%20five%20deaths%20globally.

Isn't this their choice then? By imposing a tax, you are forcing the (typically, poorer) members of society to give it up, not the richer. That forces sugar into becoming a luxury item, rationing it.

Don't get me wrong, I think it was useful, and extremely effective with cigarettes, but sugar isn't the same. Sugar can be managed.

Imagine if 'recreational WiFi' was taxed... You could use it strictly at work for sending emails etc, but you'd have to pay a pound more per hour for WhatsApp, Facebook, David Attenborough documentaries on YouTube (whatever takes your fancy). People are addicted these days, but regulation should be self-imposed.

@Bubbles254 and taxing these hasn’t resolved their problems either; precisely my point.

A better way to help prevent dental
Issues is to make sure NHS Dental treatment is actually accessible to people.

It's an expensive thing that's often first to be ditched as you don't see the benefits. We waited until unbearable toothache set in before we walked into a dentist when we have no money and no NHS provision. Then we panicked, crossed our fingers and hoped we could access emergency NHS dental care somewhere as we couldn't afford private.

These days my teeth are still awful because of it and I'm missing several.

I appreciate this is an issue for adults (I can't get an NHS dentist for love nor money) but children have free access to NHS dentistry.

Decriminalise all of them. legalise some of them! Things like weed, certain party drugs and psychedelics like mushrooms there's no good reason to have these as banned compounds all it does is create a criminal drug trade for substances which aren't overly harmful.

As a grown adult I'm getting rather pissed off with them pushing what I can & can't eat on me. If I want to eat a kg of sugar I will. Making things higher in price won't stop people buying them it just means it will stretch their budget & given a choice over a pack of biscuits that will get eaten vs a pack of apples that have a day out to school every day and come sit back in rhe fruit bowl I know what most people would pick

I agree with you in principle OP but the trouble is that manufacturers of ultra processed foods then just switch to sweeteners. It solves the teeth issue but doesn’t solve the UPF issue.

Massive taxes on food producers of anything that is classed as UPF might help. At the moment UPF is manufacturers use edible substances that aren’t actually ‘food’ because they are cheaper. Maximum profit for them, cheap edible substances for us, very cleverly marketed to us with little to no nutritional benefit to us, leaving us craving more food, overeating and gaining weight and increasing our risk of cancer.

If we make UPF more expensive to produce, less people will produce it. We could also subsidise fresh fruit and veg with the taxes made from the UPF manufacturers.

More information available to people about the health issues associated with a UPF heavy diet and the need for more fresh fruit, veg and fibre.

I’ve just noticed we said pretty much the same thing. Sorry. I didn’t read your thread but good to know I’m not the only one thinking this.

I would be in favour of a sugar tax if the revenues went to sorting out our dental crisis.

The whole approach to the ills of modern life is so stupid.

Preach individual responsibility all you like but the fact is that almost everything we do / rely on to live has a cumulatively negative effect on our health both physical and mental, the environment etc etc.

Because of greed and capitalism and the reliance on consumers to keep buying all the stuff we are simultaneously told we shouldn't because it's bad in every way, we live in a time of complete cognitive dissonance.

The answer is always to bilk more money out of the consumer rather than address the sources and reasons for their "poor choices" and frame it as concern fir health and well- being.

Consumers buy what is offered to them, and the competitive market spends billions on figuring out how to get them / us addicted to products, services and leisure pursuits in order to maximise profits.

Capitalusm runs on creating innovative solutions to problems - and then when a market is saturated actually inventing problems to convince us we need the newly minted solutions.

Will a sugar tax really improve children's dental health, or is it a cynical ploy to extract extra profit for the government and the corporations who work in lockstep behind the scenes to make sure every penny that can be is extracted from the consumer?

This approach is akin to offering a child an ice cream and then slapping them upside the head on the tenth time and telling them off for enjoying it. It's abusive on an insidious level.

"Here is a complex challenging world full of lovely things and technology and things which are difficult to exist without - now we are going to simultaneously blame you for being a good consumer and make you pay, pay, pay."

It's in every facet of our lives because money. It always boils down to money.

A proper dental programme would be a better answer that could encourage education but it wouldn't be as profitable as a sugar tax. They don't care about our health, safety or welk- being - they care about profit.

You are assuming that we can all become registered with an NHS Dentist. When we first moved here absolutely no dentists in the area were taking on NHS patients of any age.

We managed it eventually but currently, the same issue is happening again. Several dentists in our area will no longer take on ANY patients under NHS. Mine does but he has a constant waiting list and every time you go the waiting room is packed.

I know I'm far from the only person who has had issues finding a dentist for them or their kids.

Anyone remember the fruit and veg vouchers given out during Labours government?

Those were such a blessing. I have fond memories of them arriving in the post and getting the kids dressed to go fill up a basket with whatever fruit they wanted. They called them 'fwoot tickets' 😂

Well said.

Adorable. 😊

I don’t agree with this mainly because those of us who do make good choices are being taxed because of the ones that don’t and then there are those that have no choice. When I was growing up it was everything in moderation, we could have coke but one glass, we could have sweets and crisps etc but in moderation and I’ve carried this on through my adult life and on to my kids, we are all within healthy weight ranges (I have put weight on but mine is actually due to the contraception I am on). I hate Diet Coke or Coke Zero and anything with that horrid artificial taste

When families are struggling financially, it's irresponsible to appease them with sweet sugary treats which damage their children's health.
Would you ever fuck off.

Crisps are one of the worst things for teeth. Also raisins that people feed their toddlers thinking it's a better option.

I thought we already had a sugar tax? The removal of sugar and replacing it with sweeteners has not been a good thing.