CHEAP SUGAR HEALTH ALERT
EU imports will fuel obesity crisis
BRITAIN’S plans to fight obesity and improve children’s health will be blown apart by “a tsunami of cheap sugar” from the EU, experts warned last night.
From October 1, Brussels is abolishing quotas which control how much sugar can be produced across Europe and scrapping the system which keeps prices high.
An extra two million tons of cheap sugar a year are predicted to be produced.
In Whitehall there is tension between the Department of Health, which is spending millions advising people to eat less sugar, and the agriculture ministry Defra, which sees the lifting of controls as a valuable opportunity for British farmers to export more.
But experts have told the Daily Express that the flood of cheap sugar will make a nonsense of public health policy.
Professor Jack Winkler, of London Metropolitan University, said: “You could not design a more unhealthy sugar policy if you tried. This regime will produce more sugar at a cheaper
price in the midst of an obesity epidemic when health authorities everywhere are urging us to eat less of it.
“What we should be doing is making less sugar available at a higher price. I said that to the head of the EU sugar regime and he looked at me as if I’d come from Mars. If there were less sugar and it cost more then food manufacturers would use less of it.
“Brexit creates the opportunity to design a new agricultural policy for the UK, one that promotes health rather than undermining it.”
Tam Fry, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: “We are looking at a tsunami of sugar coming into Europe just when we don’t want it. Nobody can stop it.
“This is really going to make a nonsense of everything we’re trying to do to cut down on the public’s sugar consumption. The irony is that in two years’ time, now we’ve triggered Article 50, we might be able to reverse the change in sugar quotas. But it could be too late by then.
“Defra are very gung-ho for this change because they see opportunities for British business and why not, that’s their job. But I don’t think it’s a very sensible move. This must be the last thing Public Health England wanted.”
Professor Winkler warned that it will take years to notice the obesity effects but tooth decay will be much more quickly measured, with children most at risk.
“By the time we find out that obesity has been affected it will be too late to do anything about it,” he said.
The EU produces half the world’s beet sugar. Across Europe farmers and sugar producers have been ramping up for the October free-for-all. In France planting of sugar beet is up by an estimated 20 per cent.
Mr Fry added: “Already we’re finding sugar in a huge number of things like bread and soup and in savoury things which don’t need sugar at all.”
A Department of Health spokesman said: “We know many people consume too much sugar and we are committed to tackling obesity. Public Health England has begun an extensive reformulation plan to cut 20 per cent of sugar from the food we eat by 2020, potentially cutting 200,000 tons of sugar from UK diets.”