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

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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.

It's a simplistic solution to a complex problem and I don't think it will make a difference.

Better education must be part of the approach but that must also mean looking again at what we're told is a healthy diet.

No they don't in practice in theory they do but you have to find one with with space and some will only take on children if a fee paying adult joins the practice at the same time

Portion sizes is another issue contributing to obesity surely? We get gousto boxes and what you get from them is what a normal portion size should be, yet a lot of others who get them complain the portion sizes are too small, still hungry etc whereas we are always full after our dinner.

to me it’s a combination of factors and not just sugar or whatever else they want to tax

WE NEED DENTISTS
Not taxes

And food does need to be regulated the shear amount of shit that goes into food is ridiculous everything is sweeter even bread it never used to be this sweet I have gluten free bread its FULL of suger I can't make a savory sandwich it tastes vile far too sweet sweetners taste sweeter than suger so when they replace suger it just becomes inedible

I disagree for several reasons.

Mainly because any attempt to reduce access to things via tax affects poorer people more, its just not fair.

Plus, it is ineffective, just look at alcohol and tobacco. My mum was a smoker for sixty years. It was her biggest weekly expense in the end. She eventually gave up reluctantly when she broke her hip and physically couldn't get outside to smoke for several weeks. Yes, she could have tried harder etc, but she enjoyed smoking and was very addicted.

My child suffers with severe ADHD and sweeteners upset his stomach, which makes his ability to regulate significantly worse than consuming sugar. We don't buy pop, juice or cordial, but it is not easy to avoid at social occasions, as things with sweetener are much more widely available.

Sweeteners upset my stomach. I primarily drink unsweetened tea, but again the move to some places selling only no added sugar or diet drinks, social occasions can now leave me without a good option, especially if im driving and would benefit from a bit of caffiene.

People with diabetes need sugar at times.

It's actually relatively easy to avoid obviously sweet stuff, such as sweets and pop, but it is harder when it is hidden in savoury foods eg pizza, tomatoey foods etc. I don't want sweeteners in my food.

I don't agree with sugar tax. It's a simple solution to a complex problem. We should be pushing companies to make healthier versions of the foods and make healthier options cheaper and more accessible. That us without shrinking the size of the product or using artificial sweeteners. Companies profit well from foods full of crap, because the crap is cheap, and I'm sure they could do better.

Yes this. People are stressed, work hard and have little time and money.
It's not easy to go and source cheap ingredients and prepare a wholesome cheap nutritious meal if you're absolutely run ragged trying to work and feed a family in a half an hour slot after you all get home.

Junk food is designed around how it makes you feel without a care about nutrition. So it mostly makes you feel good while you eat it because so many processes have designed the food to taste good on your tongue, then you get the dopamine hit.
You feel great for a while but it's not nutritious so it leads to more stress, and so on until it becomes a vicious cycle

Thats just an excuse for higher prices.

Tesco have said this morning they will soon announce bumper profits, they are clearly overcharging on food and fuel, as they and others have been doing ever since Ukraine.

Why is UK inflation so high and for longer than for many other countries?

We need to set the levels of sugars and fats in foods, as we do with alcoholic drinks but ultimately, if we want better dental hygiene, we need far far more NHS dentists.

Children and adults are not getting any sort of dental care, thats the real issue Labour need to address.

I would make it a legal requirement that children get free dental care as a condition to practice in the UK for starters, then up the money paid to dentists to do NHS work.

If children’s teeth are decaying - the more logical explanation is lack of dentists and awareness. Send dentists back into nurseries, preschools and schools if you actually care.

Also free milk for all up to end of KS1, daily apples and carrots, at school. Teach the kids what is good for them by giving it to them.

A bar of chocolate is now an obscene amount of money, Just put the price up/ ban on those ‘share bags’ that kids seem to think are ok to eat as a single treat!!!

The sugar tax money should be going to fund proper NHS dental care, especially for kids.

My oldest nephew is seven and has seen a dentist once when he was a toddler - the practice was taken over by a private company and stopped offering NHS services. My youngest nephew is five and has never seen a dentist - they're both on multiple waiting lists but so far no spots have opened up! And there's no way we can afford private dental care for them unfortunately 😬🙁

When I was the same age, we had dentists coming into the school to check our teeth and offer advice! All stopped now, just like the nit nurse which is partly why nits are so rampant again!

I didn't know this, I assumed dentists had to take on children. My dentist dropped me from their NHS register because we didn't go during covid but kept the children on, so I had assumed different rules applied. I can appreciate lack of capacity to take on patients (either NHS or private) is an issue but only taking children if an adult is private is really shocking.

Agree with all of this. I eat a mainly WFPB diet but I do have occasional treats and sometimes I literally need sugar to treat hypos as I'm a T1 diabetic. So I would have to pay more to treat a health condition because other people can't make sensible choices.

I would say though access to NHS dentistry isn't really a substitute for basic education around toothbrushing - or at least my current experience of NHS dentistry for children is that there's just a quick in-and-out check of teeth. Maybe it'd be different if their teeth weren't in good shape or I said they were eating a tonne of sugar? I remember doing toothbrushing at the dentist as a child (where you practice brushing your teeth then rinse your teeth with something that shows up patches you've missed). Does anything like this happen any more?

Sugar tax is inevitable so why not just crack on with it.

As a mother of a diabetic child, the sugar tax can get lost.
It's getting harder and harder to find things usually drinks to treat my child's hypos. It used to be lucozade, now there's not enough sugar in those. Then Capri suns & juice boxes are not enough sugar.

Just because some people abuse sugar doesn't mean we all do.

Taxing sugar will not get rid of the obesity issue.

What we need to do is make healthy food more affordable. Subsidised farming if needs be. Fruit is crazy expensive now.

And the sugar tax isn't being used for good, it could be used to fund NHS dentist which we all know needs a massive boost of funding instead it's just making the rich richer. Its mind blowing that people approve of it.

I think there comes a point where we have to take responsibility of our own health and make the right decisions.

If someone is extremely overweight and living off a poor diet I highly doubt a sugar tax is going to suddenly make them want to eat healthy.

Children only have free access to dental treatment if you can find an NHS dentist who is taking patients on. Dental treatment should be like all NHS treatment, free at the point of delivery, poor dental health can lead to things like sepsis if not treated early enough or can affect heart conditions.

The naivety of this post is unreal. Cheap sugar - it’s expensive compared with the chemical crap that is shoved in food as a sweetener alternative. If you did some research you would see how bad they are for the body.
also, tooth decay can be from bad nutrition. Not from eating sugar. Lots of women’s teeth suffer during pregnancy - it’s not because they are eating hoards of sugar cubes!
The whole food industry is appalling and people don’t even realise. Do some research.

There was no mention of a sugar tax until Jamie Oliver started talking about it, he never considered that bringing it in would make some foods more expensive for less well off families. There is no rhyme or reason to it, a bottle of pop with sugar in carries a tax, but buy a pudding that may have many more times as much sugar doesn't attract a sugar tax.

Sorry to correct people here, but the sugar in soft drinks was reduced as part of the soft drinks levy NOT the sugar tax. The money from the levy has gone to funding PE premium in schools.

Childhood obesity is an issue of inequality not just health. These kids are being brought up in poverty and have very little autonomy over what they eat. The health surveillance is on NHS fingertips and is very interesting.

My family member is not money or time poor yet feeds her and her kids utter crap, always eating out or getting take aways and she came from a family who cooked good
meals. She is morbidly obese and her kids are going the same way so where does the fault lie there?

as for dental health that responsibility lies with the parents surely? Dentists is a big problem, the kids used to get a 6 monthly check up now it’s yearly if you get an invite! My parents weren’t great at getting us to clean our teeth as a result my teeth aren’t great. I still brush my kids teeth at 10 and 8, I talk through it let them have a go then I do a thorough brush after, I am not taking any chances and their teeth are to last a lifetime. Dental care could continue on the route it is on, getting more expensive and out of reach for some, so prevention is definitely key