Why a sugar tax could turn sour

Jamie Oliver’s proposal to impose age restrictions and a sugar tax on purchasing energy drinks, made to the Health select Committee last week, would probably go some way towards reducing children’s consumption of such beverages and may contribute to denting this country’s ballooning childhood obesity epidemic.

Oliver is an impressive campaigner: his efforts in recent years to achieve healthier school dinners, which independent academic studies confirm have resulted in improved scholastic performance among children who consumed school food in the way he recommended, rightly deserve great praise and highlight the importance of a healthy diet to children’s overall development.

Going ‘medieval’ on energy drinks (as Oliver recommended) and other products which are tasty, but ruinous to young people’s health, would shield children in the short term, but what has been the effect of such a heavy-handed policy on young people’s attitudes towards other attractive, yet destructive, substances?

since time immemorial, purely commanding ‘thou shalt not’ to young people has made them want to do the prohibited act or consume contraband even more.

Better than simply banning bad food for children outright, controlled exposure to it should be accompanied by rigorous education aimed at changing social attitudes and ensuring that children grow up able to make responsible choices when ‘Nanny’ Jamie is no longer around to guide them.

TOBY FARMILOE, London SW6.

Jamie’s unjust desserts

Jamie Oliver asks the Government to be ‘brave’ and impose a sugar tax.

He’s obviously well intentioned, though adding a mere 10p to sugary drinks sold in his restaurants is of no consequence, apart from increasing his profit. refusing to sell them in his restaurants . . . now that would be brave. as would removing the sugar-laden desserts from his menu.

Of the main six desserts offered, mouthwatering though they sound, only one is below 600 calories. The epic Brownie has a massive 746. eat the lowest-calorie dessert and you’d absorb your recommended daily intake of the devilish white stuff in one hit. indulge in any of the others and it’s two or three times the daily limit.

in all likelihood, one of these would be in addition to a main meal and/or starter, overloaded with sugar’s partner in crime, fat. The two of them are, hand in hand, creating the obesity time bomb, with ever-increasing health issues draining the NHs.

This isn’t all Jamie Oliver’s doing. Far from it. every restaurant and supermarket in the world is at it.

indeed anybody who followed Jamie’s school dinners campaign will know he has, for ages, been banging his head against a brick wall, because you cannot influence what children eat without first educating their parents.

and if more than 50 per cent of them are overweight or obese, what chances have their kids got of not following suit? CHRIS DUNFORD, Brighton, E. Sussex.

‘Big sugar’ has form

very little changes in politics. remember ‘ mr Cube’ back in the Fifties?

if Tate & lyle said ‘Jump!’ the Tories asked ‘ How high?’, which is how we got section 7 of the import Duties act 1958 so Tate could get the tax back on sugar bags.

One of the powers Hm Customs & excise had under that act was the ability to investigate the sort of transfer pricing used by associ- ated companies to minimise import duties.

it probably covered the sort of practices made notorious recently by various multinationals. i’d be surprised if Hm revenue & Customs didn’t have similar powers: why hasn’t it been using them?

as for Jamie Oliver’s latest crusade, remember the cyclamate scandal. Cyclamates were an artificial sweetener which had started to make big inroads into the soft drinks market until the sugar industry got them banned on the grounds that it might cause cancer.

it was alleged at the time that if you applied the same tests to sugar, it didn’t cause cancer, it killed you. ANDREW AIREY,

Worksop, Notts.

Educate us

i’ve never been a great fan of Jamie Oliver, but find it interest- ing that he seems to have taken on a personal crusade and is at war with both the manufacturers and the Government because he believes the only way to tackle obesity in the UK is to introduce a tax on sugar in soft drinks.

He’s so committed to this cause that he’s introduced a 10p levy on all sugary soft drinks sold in his establishments. Great idea, which has reduced sales by a whopping 7 per cent.

Pardon my cynicism, but if he were really committed to reducing people’s sugar intake he’d withdraw these products from all his restaurants. as it is, the extra 10p revenue has probably offset the 7 per cent sales loss.

Why doesn’t he look at historical implications of imposing taxation on consumer products which become health issues?

Perhaps he’s too young to remember when cigarettes and tobacco were not considered a health risk and provided, through taxation, a high level of government revenue.

When subsequently identified as damaging to health (initially in the sixties), government increases in taxation did little to reduce tobacco consumption.

it wasn’t until massive and costly educational and advertising campaigns convinced people of the health risks posed by tobacco that a reduction in consumption began.

This is what’s needed in the case of sugar. Not taxes and cynical levies on products, but education of the consumers to understand the risks to their health that high sugar content food and drink products pose. ROYCE KNIGHT,

Nottingham.

Go low-cal

as a Type 1 diabetic for 47 years, the debate over a possible sugar tax is irrelevant to me, but, unless the Government imposes price controls on retailers, i can’t see how a ‘sugar tax’ would work.

Why is there so little mention of ‘sugar-free’ or reduced- sugar drinks? These beverages are generally the same price as the sugared ones and subject to the same promotions in stores.

Could there not be at least an attempt to persuade people — young and old — to switch to these?

it’s many years since i tasted the full sugar content drinks but i can’t believe there’s a vast difference and, with the obvious benefits, drinkers would surely become used to the flavours. DAVID C. ROBERTSON,

W. Lancing, Sussex.

Industry has done much

Jamie Oliver can dish it out, but can he take it?

Having made a series of outra- geous allegations about the UK’s food and drinks industry he apparently bridles at having his tactics compared to those of eastender’s Phil mitchell.

But there’s genuine anger in the food and drink industry at attempts to railroad ministers into imposing a sugar tax; a tax that even many health campaigners admit is unlikely to make a difference to the problem of childhood obesity, but will certainly hit the poorest hardest and cost jobs in the industry.

The UK food and drink industry, which employs 400,000 people and contributes £22 billion a year to the economy, is sick of being characterised as some kind of ‘Bond villain’. most of the diet and nutritional progress we’ve made in recent years has been voluntarily led by the industry itself.

smaller portion sizes; substantial reductions in salt; product reformulation; reductions in calories (including sugar) and clearer labelling — all delivered by the industry, yet never acknowledged. Jamie can be a force for good in tackling childhood obesity, but the answer to that problem lies in evidencebased interventions across governments, schools, parents and of course the industry; not in demonising one nutrient in one set of products.

IAN WRIGHT, Food & Drink Federation,

London WC2.

Alcohol is worse

WHO elected Jamie Oliver as our adviser on all that is healthy and what is not? He’s only a cook, albeit with loads of cash.

He’s responsible for some children going without school lunch because they do not like salads and the things he thinks they should have — which means their education suffers because they’re hungry all afternoon. Now he wants a ‘sugar tax’ which will put up the cost of living further.

alcohol is one of today’s greatest problems and will get worse as liver damage increases; why don’t the authorities concentrate on dealing with that (is it because they all like a drink?)

Personally, i prefer to walk down a road full of smokers than a road full of drunks any day or night. smokers don’t attack you, drunks often do.

VAL BEST, Colchester, Essex.