UNHEALTHY foods should be taxed to encourage better eating and halt the growing obesity epidemic, a leading academic has said.

Dr Mike Rayner, of Oxford University Department of Public Health, said ministers should increase VAT on fizzy drinks, chocolate and even pasties.

About one in four British adults is either overweight or obese, and weight-related problems cost the NHS more than £5billion a year, he said.

He told the BBC: “We are in the grip of an obesity epidemic. We, as a nation, are eating too many calories.

“We use taxes to discourage drinking and smoking. It raises lots of money for the Treasury and prevents people from dying too early. There is now lots of evidence that manipulating food prices could promote healthy eating.”

The Government last month announced that VAT would be applied to hot takeaway food, but Dr Rayner said the system of taxing food was still “very muddled”.

The levy also raises the cost of some healthy foods such as fruit and vegetable smoothies, but not certain junk food items such as doughnuts and cold sausage rolls, he said.

Some countries such as Denmark have introduced a “fat tax” on items that are high in saturated fat, but the system would be too crude for Britain because many of our low-fat foods are very high in salt, Dr Rayner said.

Instead we need a system where all unhealthy foods are taxed, he added, starting with a levy on fizzy drinks, which The amount of tax on a can of fizzy drink recommended by an Oxford University heath expert would add 12p to the price of a can of cola. The measure would be significantly stricter than a similar law in France which adds just two cents to a can. He said it would have the potential to reduce obesity cases by 400,000 a year and save 2,000 lives annually.

Dr Rayner added: “I don’t care whether it is hot or cold, whether we get it from a shop or takeaway, what I want is a tax on all unhealthy food from butter to biscuits.”