Costing the low retail price of sugar

THE “soda tax” suggested by Member of Parliament Tony Pua to encourage a healthier lifestyle while generating revenue is indeed very timely. We have to send the right message to consumers that refined foods which include sugar are detrimental to health. Sugar and soda should be subjected to the same tax regime as cigarettes and alcohol.

However, this soda tax proposal seems to contradict the government’s move to review and reduce the retail price of sugar. While it is true that no one likes taxes or costlier products, we must bear in mind that the benefits of increasing the price of sugar vastly outweigh the cost.

Lowering the price of sugar may only encourage higher consump tion of the product. It is time the government and consumer groups become bolder and pass the right message to the public that sugar and soda are bad for their health.

The National Health and Morbidity Study 2015 showed that Malaysia recorded increasing trends of diabetes and obesity. This is part of what we call the metabolic syndrome or lifestyle diseases. The term simply means a group of risk factors caused by our lifestyle that raises our risks for heart diseases and other health issues including diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, gout, stroke and obesity. In fact, a recent survey has shown that metabolic diseases have overtaken smoking as the number one killer in the world. As a result, the cost of healthcare has also risen.

Therefore, educating the public about the dangers of these diseases and making them understand that it is just not the medical cost but also the effects like poor health that leads to absenteeism, which in turn affects productivity, is paramount.

More importantly, these health risks can be avoided. As the saying goes, the best treatment is prevention and I call this lifestyle medicine. Though genes can also play a role in our health, we now understand from epigenetics that “bad” genes can be “switched off ”’, and hence our lifestyle will have a larger impact on our health.

DR RAJBANS SINGH President Malaysian Wellness Society