United Kingdom VII: Taking Pride in Your Success

[Dogg Thang]

Yep. That's 100% true.

[MartyG]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...prove-uks-diet
Incredibly stupid and wouldn't work at all

Except a similar thing did work with fizzy drinks, so they're expecting similar results here.

This is a recommendation by a independent study, not MPs thinking up tax scams.

[Dogg Thang]

Except a similar thing did work with fizzy drinks, so they're expecting similar results here.

Did it work? That link doesn't say that obesity has been reduced. What happened is simply that, in order to avoid sugar tax, drinks companies replaced a certain amount of sugar in their drinks with artificial sweeteners. That's literally all those results show. Let's see the obesity stats.

[MartyG]

It reduced the amount of sugar in drinks - that was the idea. Less sugar is a good thing. Drink 6 cans of lager a day and the sugar content in that will soon make you obese.

This will similarly reduce sugar/salt in foods (which is a good thing). People are still going to buy crap food because of convenience, this is simply a way of reducing bad food content via the backdoor.

You seriously can't be suggesting that it isn't a good idea to reduce sugar/salt content in processed food.

Legistlation of food contents is not a new thing to aid food health, it's why there's vitamin/minerals in white bread via flour fortification for example, so that people consume needed minerals - one thing on its own isn't going to change the world, but lots of little things together just might.

It definitely hasn't helped that the national curriculum completely dropped any mandatory requirement for home economics a long time ago, so I believe I'm right in saying people never learn to cook in a lot of schools (happy to be corrected by an actual teacher on this).

Learning to cook as a child was a joy and an essential skill I use to this day - I scratch cook (yes I make my own sauces, bread, pasta etc) and it does take a bit more effort, it's far easier to chuck a £1 pizza full of salt in the microwave, so I definitely think it's an exceedingly good idea to reduce salt content in this type of food.

[wakka]

It's not a bad thing in and of itself to reduce sugar and salt in processed food, but you're seeing cynicism above because tax hikes on stuff poor people buy is always the Tory panacea.

It'd be nice to have more carrot and less stick. Unfortunately not something the Conservative party specialise in.

[Dogg Thang]

You seriously can't be suggesting that it isn't a good idea to reduce sugar/salt content in processed food..

Marty, you love bringing your own interpretations of what I write. You said it worked and provided a link but the link does not show that obesity has been reduced. I didn't comment on whether it was a good idea or bad idea whatsoever. I simply commented on the reality: that link shows only what happened. That companies reduced sugar. The best the article was able to give beyond that was "This represents a valuable win-win for public health and the food industry - potentially improving people's health with no detrimental effect on the volume of soft drinks that companies are selling". (italics mine) Potentially. Until that potential is realised, personally I'm reluctant to say it worked.

That's even before we get into whether the added artificial sweeteners are actually healthy.

Also, you talk about the joy of learning to cook. What the article is 100% clear on is that this hasn't in any way reduced fizzy drink consumption. So it's a failure so far if we wanted to push people away from junk food.

[MartyG]

It'd be nice to have more carrot and less stick. Unfortunately not something the Conservative party specialise in.

Taxing sugary foods is not something that's bourne out of a Tory manifesto - this is something that health professionals keep saying is a good thing.

[MartyG]

Also, you talk about the joy of learning to cook. What the article is 100% clear on is that this hasn't in any way reduced fizzy drink consumption. So it's a failure so far if we wanted to push people away from junk food.

No, but it has reduced sugar consumption - that's the point.

Marty, you love bringing your own interpretations of what I write. You said it worked and provided a link but the link does not show that obesity has been reduced. I didn't comment on whether it was a good idea or bad idea whatsoever. .

It's called extending the conversation - I didn't accuse you of anything - that's your own interpretation of what I wrote.

[importaku]

To be honest the sugar thing kind of has worked in my case as i now drink the sugar free stuff as full sugar coke tastes weird to me i got a bottle as a treat and it tasted like it had gone bad it had a weird aftertaste. I eat less chocolate than ever before but that's down to the fact that nearly they have changed the recipes in everything so much to save money that it tastes vile now i had a lion bar last month and it tasted like cooking chocolate it was disgusting i had to bin the rest of it.

Now i just import snacks from japan lol, my carbon footprint must be massive but i don't ever go on holidays abroad so it balances out lol.

[Dogg Thang]

No, but it has reduced sugar consumption - that's the point.

Nope. First line of the Guardian article on this subject: "Ministers are being urged to levy a £3bn sugar and salt tax as part of a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to break Britain’s addiction to junk food, cut meat consumption by nearly a third and help tackle climate change."

If these were the goals with fizzy drinks, it was shown not to work. It has not broken Britain's addiction to fizzy drinks or reduced their consumption,

[MartyG]

So it hasn't reduced sugar consumption? You know, despite them now containing LESS sugar.

The study showed that the volume of soft drinks bought remained the same but the amount of sugar in those drinks fell by 29.5g equating to 10% per household per week.

[Dogg Thang]

Marty, you're trying to point off in another direction. The current initiative clearly states the idea is to reduce consumption of the food itself dramatically. Neon Ignition said it wouldn't work. You said it did with fizzy drinks. It didn't. Yes, it has reduced sugar consumption (and any effects of that are yet to be shown) but it did not achieve for fizzy drinks what this current initiative is setting out to achieve.

Edit: You can make the second part as big as you like. The first part is what they are trying to change with this new initiative. In terms of public behaviour, as the text above states, the sugar tax changed nothing. Your big bold part only happened because the drinks companies themselves removed the choice. I think you completely understand my point here so I'll leave it at that.

[MartyG]

No I'm really not - it's called the "Salt and Sugar Reformulation tax" you know - so that manufacturers reformulated their high sugar/salt content food.

Disagree if you like, but it's right there in the report.

A review commissioned by the government says a £3 per kg tax on sugar and a £6 per kg tax on salt sold for use in processed foods or in restaurants and catering businesses would encourage manufacturers to reformulate their recipes or reduce their portion sizes.

The author of the report, was interviewing this morning and following on from that said

He said he was confident many companies would reformulate their recipes to avoid passing on a cost increase to the consumer.

Just as happened with the introduction of the sugar tax on fizzy drinks - which is what I was getting at with my original post.

The report goes beyond this though - it also suggests that the government should be

investing £50m into the development of alternative proteins that can be used as sustainable options in ready meals

and also that the government should

provide between £500m to £700m a year, around a third of the total scheme, to pay farmers to manage the land to actively store carbon and restore nature

The report itself is worth reading, rather than just the snippets that have been pulled out for nice headlines and shock factor, like for recommendation 11, which suggests investing £1 billion in innovations to create a better food system. But "independent report makes a list of sensible recommendations" doesn't get as many clicks as "Government wants to tax poor people's food".

[wheelaa]

[QualityChimp]

Doctors are going to be able to prescribe fruit and veg!

Have you seen the price of fruit and veg these days?

Even with taxes, that frozen pizza will be cheaper, especially when they work out which chemicals they can use to replace the salt, thus complying with the new taxes, but by no means healthier.