Obesity levy needed and not a tax on poor

Addiction Economy Thought for Today - after a short break knackering myself plodding up hills in the Lake District, back to normal today.

Getting to the 'What Works and What Doesn't' aspects of our research into preventing and curtailing the Addiction Economy. It is a tricky job to know where to look, what to think and how to express it.

The Times attempt to explain their recommendations in two articles urging Hunt to put the health of the nation before anything else in the budget. It's based on the Times Health Commission, a very good initiative which tipped me over into being a subscriber. Can't disagree.

"The role of economic policy in combating ­obesity is not to load taxes on to already hard-pressed ­consumers. It should, rather, be to encourage the switch to healthier produce. There has been no consistent approach to that end in British policy, though a levy on soft drinks introduced in 2018 aims to incentivise manufacturers to reduce the amount of sugar in their products. Since its introduction, the equivalent of some 45,000 tonnes of sugar have been removed from soft drinks.

This type of tax is often condemned as regressive and discriminatory but the objection is not persuasive. A levy is not a penalty on people who are overweight but rather a tax on consumption of a particular good. Those who consume sugary drinks (or, by extension, foods high in saturated fats) retain that choice, and if they exercise it then they pay a more accurate reflection of the costs to society.

More widely, public health campaigns and regulation are scarcely draconian policies. They can save lives. The government says that it remains committed to outlawing multibuy promotions like “Buy One Get One Free” on unhealthy food from next year and banning television advertisements for these before the watershed of 9pm."

Liking this from Chef Tomasina Miers, not just about the sale of garbage food pretending to be real food, it's changing public health priorities where government is actually causing the problems it is wanting to alleviate.

“We are a nation blighted by poor diets that make people’s lives a misery in associated sickness and disease; long-term sickness that is destroying our health service and ruining our economy and a government that seems to feel that good food is a luxury. In schools, hospitals and social care we feed people unhealthy rubbish and then wonder why diet-related disease now costs the taxpayer £74 billion a year.”

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