After the sugar tax, are we now set for a calorie tax?

MINISTERS are being urged to consider putting a ‘calorie tax’ on cakes, biscuits and other processed food.

Health campaigners say a mandatory levy on sugary and fatty food is needed to tackle the obesity crisis.

It follows the success of the sugar tax, which came into force last year and means fizzy drink manufacturers are taxed at up to 24p a litre.

Campaign groups Action On Sugar and Action On Salt are urging the Government to extend the levy to all high-calorie processed foods including ice cream, biscuits, cakes and chocolate bars.

They say this will hold manufacturers to account and lead to products with ‘excessive’ calories being reformulated with less fat and sugar to make them healthier. Under the proposals, food firms would pay the levy and then decide whether to pass on the cost to consumers.

The tax would be based on the ‘traffic light’ nutritional labelling system that shows foods high in sugar, salt or fat.

So, for example, a cake that is extremely high in calories could be taxed at around 24p per kg (just over 10p per lb).

Campaigners are demanding that funds raised through the levy are ring-fenced and put towards tackling childhood obesity.

They said fat is a bigger contributor to calories in the diet than sugar and it is therefore essential that manufacturers are encouraged to reduce both. Two-thirds of UK adults and one in five children aged 11 are obese.

Katharine Jenner, campaign director of Action On Sugar and Action On Salt, said: ‘If you want people to make healthier choices, you have to hit them in the pocket where it hurts. Unhealthy food taxes are proven to be successful. It means you can still buy a massive cake covered in cream and chocolate, but it’s just going to cost a bit more.

‘Cakes and biscuits are really sugary foods and they’re currently under a sugar reduction programme from Public Health England. But it doesn’t make sense to just incentivise manufacturers to reduce sugar when most of the calories come from saturated fat.’

Campaigners said that the huge variation in fat levels within cakes and biscuits indicates that making the products healthier is easily achievable. In Rich Tea biscuits, saturated fat ranges from 1.2g to 7.2g per 100g, while the fat content of Victoria sponges varies from 8.5g to 24.7g per 100g, a study found.

Graham MacGregor, chairman of Action On Sugar and Action On Salt, said the success of the sugar tax had been ‘ remarkable’ in making brands such as Irn-Bru and Lucozade cut sugar content.

The lobby group will submit its proposal for a calorie tax to the Department of Health this autumn. The sugar tax on soft drinks was introduced in April last year and is said to have taken 90million kg – 90,000 tons – of sugar out of the nation’s diet so far.

However Prime Minister Boris Johnson has previously decried ‘sin taxes’ on sugary and fatty foods, warning they hit the poor hardest. During the Tory leadership campaign he vowed to freeze such levies. The Department of Health said it has no plans to introduce a calorie tax.