Why We Need a Sugar Tax
A lack of regulation enables food producers to make billions while society picks up the pieces.
Obesity is not an illness of the individual but a sickness of society. An affliction caused by a cataclysmic shift in our culture. The consumer has been exploited by the profit-driven producer who has enjoyed an extraordinary level of freedom to impact our food supply in weird and wondrous ways. Government intervention is urgently required to try and reverse the damage done.
“In the UK in 2014 there were an estimated 16 million days of sickness absence reported due to obesity.”
There is an argument that obesity stems from personal choice and therefore governments shouldn’t intervene. Obesity is undoubtedly complicated but is much more a consequence of circumstance than choice.In the first instance, our ability to make healthy, rational choices about the food we eat has been progressively marginalised by huge cultural changes, extraordinary technological advances and a whirlwind of misinformation.
Our growing obsession with convenience spawned supermarkets which now house an ever-expanding variety of energy-dense, nutritionally-void foodstuffs.
““Once we hated to waste food, now we hate to waste time. Time is the scarce commodity.””
A succession of ill-informed governments, themselves addicted to the products, money, power and votes tied up in industrial food production have failed to regulate it.
The advent of television and now smartphones has left us exposed to an unparalleled barrage of advertising with food producers convincing us of how our lives would be better if we only consumed more of their empty calories.
The lack of regulation together with general confusion around nutritional guidelines has enabled producers to hoodwink us with expressions like “heart healthy” and “one of your five a day”.We can’t believe our luck when a product is labelled “healthy” and tastes so damn good we want to eat the entire packet. And why not? Presumably, the more we eat the healthier we get. Right?
The flood of misinformation has encouraged us to rapidly eschew one of life’s most basic skills — optimising our nutrition with the available resources. We are no longer able to cook and are now utterly reliant on vast food processing companies for our continued malnourishment.
The personal choice argument looks particularly frail when we consider the plight of our children who are introduced to these harmful foods at a very young age when the health implications cannot realistically be understood, when immediate gratification is always prioritised over the long-term negative consequences and when a bag of doughnuts costs less than a couple of apples.
Food producers deliberately seek the perfect combination of sugar, fat, salt and “mouth feel” to make their products highly addictive. They then invest heavily in advertising campaigns aimed directly at our children who can now be accessed through multiple media channels. Obesity and other diet-related conditions are robbing our children of their ability to choose a healthy, active life.
Externalities occur as the result of market failure and governments need to intervene. Obesity is an externality of modern food production — decisive government intervention is urgently required.
What is the Solution?
Last Saturday was supposed to see the introduction of the next phase of the UK government’s fight against obesity — restricting the placement, promotion and marketing of products high in fat, sugar and salt.
Unfortunately, in the wake of the cost of living crisis, Boris Johnson caved in to pressure from the free market politicians in his party and postponed the introduction of these measures for 12 months. This was a hugely frustrating development as there is strong evidence that these measures would reduce the spending on and consumption of “unhealthy” foods and little evidence that they would affect the cost of living. We now wait, with trepidation, on a review from Liz Truss.
In reality, there are few weapons in the government’s armoury to deal with obesity. The delayed measures would certainly be a step in the right direction but unless you believe obesity is the result of individual choice then there is no reason not to go straight for the big guns and introduce a sugar tax.
Addressing Concerns About a Sugar Tax
You need to quantify the problem to establish the level of tax.
In 2018 the UK government introduced the Soft Drinks Industry Levy. This levy, effectively a banded tax on drinks with 5g of sugar or more per litre, has been extremely successful with an estimated 6,500 calorie reduction per UK resident per year. (www.lse.ac.uk)
The introduction of this tax was a concession from the industry that sugar is harmful — a big hurdle already overcome. We must now use our best endeavours to quantify the problem in the admittedly more complicated area of food and structure a suitable tax. It is difficult but not insurmountable.
It doesn’t affect fatty foods.
While sugar is certainly not the only consideration or possibly even the main one, there is little debate about its harmful effects and it does not constitute an essential component of any diet. Conversely, there is much debate about the role of fat plays in our diet and as an essential nutrient, it would be far more difficult to tax too.
Many foods high in sugar are also high in fat so would hopefully be caught by any tax.
It would be a regressive tax having a disproportionate effect on poorer people with less income.
A tax may be regressive in the short term but not in the long term where poorer people would reap the benefits of better health. Poorer segments of society would also benefit more from the proceeds of the tax through education, benefits or subsidies.
If junk food plus tax is still cheaper than healthy food then you will only succeed in reducing household budgets for other goods.
The purpose of the tax is not to shift the entire population onto a diet of fresh, organic whole foods but to stop producers from abusing public health with their overuse of a harmful product and help consumers to make healthier choices.
Sugar is too cheap and as a result, is used as a preservative and a stabiliser as well as for its effect on flavour profiles and “bliss” points. Producers are free to do this unchecked despite its addictive qualities and its detrimental effects on physical and mental health.
“A Mars Bar contains 60% Sugar but the cost of that sugar as a percentage of its retail price is 2.4%.”
The addictive nature of sugar gives it a very steep demand curve making it relatively unresponsive to price rises. A tax may provide revenue to the government but may not reduce consumption or profit for the producer.
The demand curve for sugar may be inelastic but not perfectly so and any impact on profit will cause producers to adjust. 80% of the reduction in calories consumed as a result of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy came as a result of product reformulation (www.lse.ac.uk)
Many producers are keen to reformulate food products too but require the level playing field that a tax creates to achieve this. A tax could give the food industry the wake-up call it needs and hopefully create enough momentum from producers to enact real change.
Reformulation doesn’t help tax revenue but the purpose of the tax is not short-term financial benefit to public finances but longer-term improvements in public health where greater savings and other benefits can be reaped.
We should be using Education not Legislation
In the long term, there needs to be a real push to prioritise education on food in schools. But this will require restructuring the school syllabus, improving school facilities and recruiting and training teachers.
Public Information Campaigns have to compete against the billions of pounds the food industry spends on promoting their products. Engaging with these campaigns and acting on the information also requires a high degree of agency from the individual which tends to favour the better educated who have more time and money.
In reality, even with the provision of information, short-term reward (pleasure and price) usually wins over any long-term health consequences and while it would be nice to think that we can do with junk food what we did with tobacco the issue is way more complicated.
Impacting obesity through education in the short term is very challenging.
With so few options at our disposal, a sugar tax seems like a total no-brainer. It is not going to solve obesity but it could very well change its trajectory.
