A bitter pill to swallow?
In a week when the British Medical Association has called for a sugar tax of 20 per cent to be introduced to help combat the nation’s obesity epidemic, Dr Gail Rees, Associate Professor in Human Nutrition at Plymouth University School of Biomedical and Healthcare Sciences, argues that this is a sensible suggestion because obesity – directly and indirectly – is a concern for us all.
The British Medical Association has called for a 20 per cent tax on sugar because, according to its figures, poor diets are causing around 70,000 premature deaths each year.
The BMA suggests that the extra revenue – which would amount to 13p on each can and 37p on each two litre bottle of fizzy drink sold – should be used to make fruit and vegetables cheaper.
According to some figures, the average Briton consumes an astounding 238 teaspoons of sugar a week – that’s more than one kilo. But if you asked the majority of the population how much sugar they ate the estimates would be much lower; this is because so much of our western, processed diet contains hidden levels of the stuff.
And it’s not just in the obvious culprits, such as fizzy drinks and confectionery. Sugar is lurking in any number of seemingly innocuous everyday foodstuffs such as canned tomatoes, salad dressings, peanut butter, breakfast cereals, bread, pasta – the list goes on.
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