As Jamie writes for the Mail blasting food lobby’s influence on ministers . . .
WHEN you’re on telly as much as I have been over the years, you expect your fair share of criticism. But even I was surprised at the comments made about me by a senior figure in the food industry this week.
Ian Wright, head of the Food and Drink Federation, was talking about my campaign to introduce a tax on sugary drinks when he compared me to the Mitchell brothers in EastEnders, widely known as a pair of shavenheaded hard nuts who often tried to bully their way to what they wanted.
According to him, my ‘shtick’ comes across as ‘ a bit overblown’. ‘He really overplays his role,’ he said.
What kind of comment is that to make when we’re supposed to be having a serious debate about an issue that affects the nation’s health, and particularly that of our children?
Maybe what Mr Wright really means when he compares me to the Mitchell brothers is that I’m not afraid to say what I think.
Name-calling
That’s certainly true, and I’m expecting to get even more of a kicking in the coming months as I step up my campaign for a sugary drinks tax.
Rather than name-calling, I prefer to deal in facts. And evidence that those who oppose such a tax are running out of logical objections came with yesterday’s headlines about a new report on this issue.
It has been drawn up by Public Health England (PHE), the watchdog responsible for improving the nation’s health and wellbeing, and concludes that imposing a tax on sugar would help to curb our obesity crisis. It remains unpublished.
Worse still, there were reports emerging from Westminster last night that David Cameron has ruled out the idea of introducing such a tax — without even reading the report!
If this is true I’d be hugely surprised and disappointed because, in my meetings with him on the subject, I’ve outlined my own experiences of seeing just how devastating too much sugar can be.
The food and drinks lobby might try to present me as a TV chef who has got too big for his boots. But I’m basing my arguments on the evidence of numerous doctors and scientists.
Last month I presented a Channel 4 documentary called Sugar Rush, showing how many teenagers and children, including those of nursery age, are consuming more sugar than is recommended by the World Health Organisation.
And, of course, the single largest source is sugary, sweetened drinks.
On a visit to St George’s Hospital in South London we filmed a six-year-old boy called Mario, who was in good health and cleaned his teeth regularly, but had a weakness for sugary drinks. As a result, he’d suffered such bad tooth decay that six of his teeth had to be yanked out under general anaesthetic.
Looking at the bloody stumps left as the teeth were removed with what was basically a pair of pliers was really upsetting, but there was nothing unusual about what I was seeing.
Mario was just one of six children suffering the procedure that morning, and every year 26,000 primary schoolchildren have to visit hospital because of their rotten teeth.
In making that documentary, I also learned that each year surgeons perform 7,000 amputations because of type 2 diabetes. The NHS spends £9 billion annually carrying out such procedures ( not to mention £30 million on yanking teeth out).
As Mario’s story demonstrates, sugary soft drinks are a major part of the problem.
They are the single largest source of sugar consumption for school-age children and teenagers — and sometimes, alarmingly, even younger children. Just one serving of these drinks may contain more than half of their recommended daily sugar intake.
To tackle this problem, I want to see the introduction of a 20p per litre levy on every soft drink containing added sugar — this equates to 7p per 330ml can.
Studies show that this could have a significant impact on health in the UK, reducing sugary drink consumption by possibly 15 per cent.
What’s more, I could only support this tax if any money raised — and it could be as much as £1 billion a year — was used to support doctors and preventative strategies in the NHS and to support teachers in the country’s primary schools.
As this unpublished report reveals, the effectiveness of such sugar-reduction policies has been shown in many countries.
These include Mexico, where a sugary drinks tax at a relatively low 4p per litre was introduced two years ago, resulting in a 6 per cent fall in consumption. Much closer to home, soft drinks sales in France fell by 3 per cent when a similar tax was introduced in 2012.
Why would the Government ignore such evidence? For the answer we have only to look at the pressures exerted by the powerful food and drinks lobby, which has been reluctant to accept even the simplest solutions to the sugar epidemic, such as clearer labelling.
Popular
One idea is to label each soft drink with a symbol showing how many teaspoons of sugar it contains: I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t love it.
Of course the industry doesn’t like this idea, preferring you to be confused and unclear so you will buy more of their products. Yet clearer labelling is exactly what the British public wants.
This was demonstrated only this week when I mocked up photographs of two popular soft drinks, with labels showing that a 500ml bottle contained 13 teaspoons of sugar, while the other weighed in at 14 teaspoons.
I put these photographs on my Instagram account online and within a few hours had received 3,000 comments — a huge number for such a post.
I’d estimate that 99 per cent of those commenting expressed surprise, bordering on shock, at what the labels revealed. And they fully support the clarity of my teaspoon label.
The big manufacturers clearly don’t want to highlight such facts, any more than they want to play fair when it comes to advertising sugary products on television.
In 2007, the UK regulator Ofcom introduced regulations banning the advertising of foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar on children’s television channels. The ban also applied to non- children’s channels before, during and after programmes aimed at children.
That was a welcome measure. But what about high-rating TV shows watched by children?
They frequently attract child audiences of more than a million, but they can contain up to 11 unhealthy food adverts per hour, as I found when I sat down earlier this year to watch Britain’s Got Talent with my family.
Infuriated
I was infuriated by the amount of unhealthy advertising in the commercial breaks. Is it any wonder that Britain’s children are some of the unhealthiest in Europe, and that one child in every three leaves primary school overweight or obese?
Rather than trying to write me off as a mouthy buffoon, the big food and drink manufacturers should remember that I know their industry well.
I was born and grew up in my parents’ pub in Essex, and I’m practising what I preach in all my restaurants across the UK, where seven weeks ago I put a 10p levy on all non-alcoholic drinks with added sugar.
The early signs are that this has caused sales of those drinks to fall by 7 per cent, with customers switching to naturally low- sugar or zerosugar drinks.
This shows the British public make good choices when they are given good, clear information, and the bottom line is we can’t let big business shape our children’s health.
If we truly care about prosperity and our little island remaining economically relevant in the world over the next 30 years or so, we need bright and healthy British kids.
That’s something that I’m prepared to campaign long and hard for and, just like the Mitchell brothers, I’m ready for a fight.