New demand for a sugar tax to tackle the UK's poor diet
The British Medical Association is suggesting that a 20% tax on sugary drinks should be implemented to combat poor dietary health.
Poor diets cause approximately 70,000 premature deaths every year in the UK, according to the British Medical Association (BMA). "The traditional public health challenges of undernutrition and unsafe food and water have been largely replaced by the risks of poor diet," it said.
The BMA has now said in a new report that it wants to see a 20% tax on sugary drinks introduced.
Previous groups to support the taxation of sugary drinks include charity Sustain, which issued a report in 2013 suggesting that diet-related illness cost the NHS around £6 billion a year.
Arguably, a 20% sugar tax would recoup some of this cost, but instead of considering this cashflow as a way of balancing the NHS’ books, the BMA report suggests that the new revenue should be used to subsidise the cost of fruit and vegetables. It also wants further restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy food and drink to children and young people.
These measures, in its view, should help to develop an environment in which healthy choices are an affordable norm, while junk food and sugary snacks are sidelined.
The food industry and sugar
From the report, it is obvious that it has been of some concern to the BMA that the food industry has been able to promote unhealthy food and drink and that it has also made it easy and cheap to acquire.
In particular, the way it has become accepted as normal to regularly consume processed and fast food, coupled with a general ignorance of the food chain, comes under fire.
In her foreword to the report, Professor Sheila the Baroness Hollins says that “many of [the measures suggested in the report] will not sit comfortably with the Government’s approach to partnership working with industry.” Currently, Government policy is to ‘encourage’ the industry to reduce calories and sugar content in its foods voluntarily through recipe reformulation.
Ian Wright, director-general of industry body the Food and Drink Federation has said that the food industry shared the BMA’s concerns, but many foods, including confectionery, were already taxed at 20% through VAT. He commented to the BBC that additional taxes have not been proven effective at “driving long-term, lasting change to diets.”
Despite his comments, Mexico has seen success with a 10% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages introduced on the 1st January 2014. A recent study on the effects of this tax has revealed a 6% average reduction of purchases during the year. By December 2014 this reduction had reached 12%, demonstrating a continuous reduction that has become more apparent over time.
Also in stark contrast to Mr Wright’s statement, the BMA report suggests that sugar taxes, which it says need to be relatively high, “in the region of 20% to achieve positive health outcomes,” have consistently been found to have the potential to improve health.
Scientific advice
The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition is due to publish final advice later this week on the amount of sugar we should be eating. Its draft report which was released during June 2014 suggested a halving of the current recommended limit of manufacturer-added sugars to 5% of energy intake.
However, the Government has now blocked the publication of a recommendations on sugar reduction from Public Health England, which had been due to be published this Friday. Malcolm Clark, co-ordinator of the Children’s Food Campaign, commented that the scrapping of the publication displayed “deplorable complacency in the face of a health epidemic.”
The Government, he said, had “refused to listen to the mass of evidence supporting a sugary drinks duty… and it is ignoring repeated calls by doctors, dentists and other public health experts to close loopholes in the rules that currently allow the marketing of unhealthy food to children.”
Public Health England is currently running its Change4Life campaign in which it urges families to make ‘sugar swaps’, changing unhealthy drinks and snacks for water, no-added-sugar products and vegetables, among other examples.
Its report was due to make more recommendations on interventions to reduce sugar consumption, and it was investigating the evidence for making recommendations on such matters as the banning of confectionery from supermarket checkouts and reducing portion sizes.
It was also due to report on its own findings from an assessment of the effectiveness of taxation to support sugar reduction and dietary health. PHE has stated in the press that it is in the process of finalising its portfolio of evidence and will send it to the Government ‘shortly’, with a view to publish it later in the summer.
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