To think that as big food industry cause a huge chunk of the NHS bill that they need to be taxed an NHS surcharge? Whats more galling is that many large food companies are US owned and the medication is US supplied.

[Noras]

We need radical thinking now.

The population is being physically harmed by uber processed foods. Many companies who produce the food are US owned. The US having poisoned is then sells us the drugs to maintain lofe and not cure any conditions.

Crisps - many US owned companies
Soft drinks - mainly US owned companies
Things like tomato ketchup - mainly US owned companies
Sweetened yoghurt - mainly US owned compnaies
Chocolate - Cadburys - say no more
Oven chips - US owned

The Gov needs to tax the hell out of carb heavy processed junk food and reduced VAT on fruit / veg / legumes etc.

Its glaringly apparent that there is something significantly wrong with the current proportions/ floor space of poor food choices in supermarkets.

Most of the aisles is taken up with selling pretend plastic foods.

Why is the Gov allowing this and not taxing this stuff to the hilt and spending that tax money on the NHS?

It makes me believe that we have a corrupt Gov not prepared to tackle large food consortiums and thus allowing the British public to be poisoned into poor health / diabetes etc where they become customers for large US pharmacy.

The whole thing is crazy. People need to be able to cook better and stop wasting money on processed junk. In that same vein, we need to tax more all take away places especially McDonald’s, Burger King, all coffee shops selling mass produced cakes with palm oil etc.

I would base it first on the % use of palm oils. That’s easy to tax

There is a chunk of the population that is very invested in non UPF's. @Noras vote with your feet and join us.

I had this idea where you could apply some kind of health score to someone’s shop and then you could get some kind of reward / discount / points for a healthier trolly. I just wondered if carrot approach might work better than more and more tax to government being the solution to everything…

Then their parents should give them the satsuma, not offer a mars bar alternative!

We have a choice what to eat, and what to feed our families.

It is a good idea to stop poor people suffering more by then experiencing unbelievable agonies of diabetes, heart issues etc.

I think that to ignore that issue is abhorrent. It’s like ignoring the issue of tooth decay in children with poorer parents.

But you want the poor in the UK to be tortured with organ failure etc?

My family were Italian peasants and they knew how to eat cheaply with little health issues. It’s a skill set that the poor in the UK could do with.

i think that if we could avoid a few leg amputations from diabetes as well as the awful neuropathy etc that alone justifies more tax on food .

No one is forcing junk food and drinks down anyone’s neck. Self control and willpower are the tools that all humans have.

To an extent, I agree.

If I eat something UPF, I know that is what I am doing. I buy virtually no UPF but, as my partner lived on it before we moved in together, there is some in our cupboards and freezer because he likes it (he's also learning and has dropped a stone without trying just because his meals are no longer UPF and UPF is limited to occasional snacks rather than meals).

But he didn't know it was junk. He really couldn't see the difference between eg a homemade lasagne and a ready meal lasagne. Or a homemade raita and the one in a plastic pot from the takeaway. It was 'all the same'.

If we go out for dinner and he sees 'in a creamy sauce' on a menu, he assumes it will be made from cream or at least a roux. I assume it won't be because, in many high street eateries, in won't. And he's not alone in that.

And many people still consider diet coke (for example) to be healthy because it contains no fat and no sugar.

So a lot of the time, people don't realise they are eating junk.

Exactly that. upthraad I read "pizza is not healthy" a massive Dominos pizza dripping in fat and cured meat is not healthy. A traditional Neopolitan sourdough pizza with a few quality ingredients is fine. It's just bread, cheese and tomatoes.

Firstly, as a family, we don't buy or eat crap.

Secondly, if your suggestion is going to work, schools need to introduce health and nutrition as a serious subject because it needs to go back to basics. If people buy less junk and more real food that will be reflected in stocks, so there is an education piece, but also and this is radical, people need to experience the unmedicated/treated consequences to change habits.

Thirdly, I'd rather the government focus resources on defence at the present time. If Russia (or another nation) blows us up it matters not if we are blown up fat, thin, healthy or unhealthy.

And that's notwithstanding the fact that humans should be able to make their own choices and if that's stopped we start living in a totatitarian state.

What else would you like to control op. It's the thin end of the wedge.

Who is going to be the judge of what is 'healthy' though?

What metric would be used?

Because some would consider modified 'low fat' versions of foods to be healthy. I don't.

For years we were told that low fat spreads were healthier than butter. They're not.

And that eggs cause high cholesterol. They don't.

And that eating fat makes you fat. When that's far too simplistic.

I couldn't agree more. Private companies make huge profits, while taxpayers pick up the bill.

Obesity and diabetes have the potential to bankrupt the NHS, and that's not hyperbole, but the conclusion of serious reports and research by academics and thinktanks.

It isn't cheaper to eat crap food, but it's quicker and easier for people who can't cook and have grown up eating crap, so that's what's normal for them.

Nobody is ‘forced’ but they are being manipulated heavily into buying and eating the shit ‘food’. It’s cheaper, it’s heavily marketed and for me the thing that makes me most angry, is that all the stores are displaying row after row of processed food and only an increasingly tiny few shelves of actual food. No surprise people think it’s the main food group! Really noticed a massive difference in other countries.

I was in hospital for a week last year and couldn't believe the utter shite they were serving as food.
I was moved from ward to ward as they were waiting to see if I needed surgery and even on the cardiac ward they were served the same UP crap.

Five courses including cans of coke and chocolate biscuits, cake, crisps and the cooked food I wouldn't serve to my dog.
There was an onsite Costa and staff were all walking around sipping huge sugar-laden drinks.

The city I live by is known for it's high levels of obesity although I remember being surprised by reading that as we never go into the city.

Everyone including the staff were absolutely huge - everyone - it was a massive shock to see. And it's the cheap shitty processed muck we are sold and served in the UK.

I read that in the 70s the tobacco companies in the US decided they weren't making enough money so they bought up the food companies, hospitals and the medicine companies so they now make us sick with the food they sell and then (as in the US) sell you the medication that doesn't even make you better. Oh and if you smoke even better.

We have diseases and illnesses that didn't really exist before then and people are all stretched out of shape with obesity.

I live near sugar beat fields owned by Tate and Lyle and they are constantly sprayed with glyphosphate that stays in the soil for 40 years. Glyphosphate is a trigger for all sorts of cancers and alzheimers. And sugar is literally in everything! It's just addictive poison.

I remember thinking that it would cost the NHS far less if they actually cooked food like shepherds pie or whatever from scratch in their kitchens rather than all the white bread processed sugar laden shit they serve.

ok- so is this environmental legislation or public health legislation? Because if the latter, is there a basis for limiting the palm fat content in foods over other fats? If the former, is there consistency between treatment of palm fats and other environmentally dubious foods? This is the problem- you need to create a consistent framework. You can't just tax/ban things in isolation - you need a clear reason to do so and that reason needs to be (reasonably) consistently applied across all products that share that characteristic.

You can eat healthy and have huge heath issues. It's not that simple.

Educate people. Even the rich could benefit.

Yes but there is a massive massive correlation between chronic and premature health issues and obesity. Obesity is absolutely a huge public health issue and is caused by overeating, which is correlated with increasingly easy availability of high calorie, poor nutrition foods (ultra UPFs) everywhere. If no-one was fat, there would be a huge reduction of pressure on the NHS. I 100% agree with the OP on that. The question is how to solve it, and where I disagree with the OP is that legislation to increase the cost of certain foods would be effective.

Education- I mean everyone knows the basics. No-one thinks a pack of wotsits is a nutritious food choice. No-one thinks a can of Monster is a healthy drink. People eat and drink them because they are "small pleasures" in what can be a shitty world.

True but it's not only having Italian ancestors who could live healthily on no money and were forever healthy.
If only life were that easy!

My son often relies on UPF's due to his limited diet. I'd be irritated to have to pay more, it is already expensive as it is having a disabled child.

I know they are unhealthy but it's also unhealthy for my son not to eat.

And there are some of us who could cook with lentils and beans and simply don't want to.

Education is more important than becoming a “nanny state” where the government chooses what you can and can’t eat.

There are also medical conditions to consider like AFRID where you could find children starving if their parents can no long afford to buy their only “safe” foods.

Even if companies are US owned, they still have to comply with UK laws around nutrition etc. if they are a HFSS line they’ll be subject to higher tax. Many companies have a UK specific company that operates independently as its own business and will often have different recipes made in different factories to the US products.

The UPF’s are generally popular because they taste good, they’re affordable and they are quick/easy/convenient. We live in a world now where there are more single parent households, where there are significantly less SAHP’s than there were a few decades ago - without someone at home all day, it’s a lot harder to find the time and energy to produce a fully home cooked meal every day. So people rely on products to help them.

To solve the problem of things like UPF’s, you need to understand why people are using them to start with. If you can find solutions to those problems, you can reduce the reliance of them.

And as someone else mentioned, there is no VAT on fruit and veg, so no tax to remove. Only “luxury” foods have VAT on them (hence the whole are Jaffa Cakes a cake or biscuit - I believe biscuits have VAT but cake doesn’t so makes a difference to pricing). The vast majority of every day staples are zero VAT rated.

They should reclassify ufp foods as non food substances, and tax them separately to food.
You could decide this based on the addition and proportions of humectants, palm oil, sweeteners, and other non-food chemicals.

Use the tax to create incentives for food industries to produce healthy food, by changing their techniques.

I think banning foods, even bad ones, will make people unhappy because they will feel coerced, but honestly labelling them as the chemical cocktail they are and taxing them to make them expensive still gives people the choice.

Stop it.
It's this thinking that has ruined most of the drinks I would have as an occasional treat.
I'm not stupid, I can police my own diet.

There are also medical conditions to consider like AFRID where you could find children starving if their parents can no long afford to buy their only “safe” foods.

Yep. If I'm priced out of these foods, my son would end up in hospital with a feeding tube.

Unless medical exceptions are made, it's a no from me because I want to be able to afford for my son to eat.

I would say kids with arfid should have prescription access to ufp's in the same way you used to be able to get help with gluten free foods for coeliac disease, because it is a medical need.

Im very sorry your son has arfid, a friend's son has this also and its so difficult to get help and so worrying.

Do the manufacturers of weight loss drugs, also make the additives that make upf food so desirable? You pay us to make you fat, then you can pay us to be thin again.