Nanny state.

[Chippy_Tea]

They have hit fizzy pop now its food -

"I want the basket of food parents buy not to cost any more," she said"

Good luck with that.



England's chief medical officer says she is considering taxing unhealthy food to persuade parents to buy more fresh fruit and vegetables.

Prof Dame Sally Davies has been asked to urgently review what more can be done to meet the government's target of halving childhood obesity by 2030.

Ideas include a tax on added sugar in baby food and on high-calorie food such as pizzas and cakes.

Chief medical officer considering tax on unhealthy food

"I want parents to be incentivised to buy healthy food," she said

"We need to make sure that fresh fruit and vegetables are cheap.

"Maybe we have to subsidise them by charging more, by taxing unhealthy food.

"Parents are then nudged to buy the healthy version because it's cheaper."

But she said any plans still had to be worked out.

"I want the basket of food parents buy not to cost any more," she said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-48461028

 

[marshbrewer]

Since when did England's Chief Medical Officer have tax raising powers? Me thinks nanny is getting too big for her boots...

 

[MmmBeer]

What next, the veganazi's demanding that all meat products are extortionately taxed or the teetotallers insisting that tax on beer is massively raised?

I propose a huge tax rise on wheatgrass juice, kale, lentils and avocados. Let's see if the BBC would publish that.

 

[Clint]

Hmm...fresh fruit and veg to be cheap...it is cheap...the thing that makes it expensive are the monopoly from the supermarkets that want it as cheap as to sell as dear as they can...does this mean a maximum price will be set for fresh produce? Thus telling Mr Asda etc they have to sell cheap...in a cheap industry! Rubbish ....farmers should dictate the prices not be forced to sell as rock bottom and chuck loads away...

 

[GerritT]

Food companies worked together in the Netherlands resulting in lowering added sugars and salt in food. You Brits are at least as clever as we here so.. get it done. Get the companies to talk to eachother.

 

[Leon103]

Over the past few years the Nhs have blamed obesity on:

Too much Carbs
Too much calories
Too much sugar
Too much fatty foods.

The problem is portion size. People just bloody eat too much

 

[marshbrewer]

What people eat is no business of the state, for goodness sake. It's food. It feeds people. It's available at a price that the vast majority can afford, and at a quality and in varieties they enjoy. In any other society, this would be celebrated. One of the fundamentals of life is all but sorted. But, no, not in neo-puritan Britain.

What a horrible, horrible, mean spirited, holier than thou, disgusting, hypocritical bunch of authoritarian tossers we have become, that we now have a class of people that have such a bigoted view of the 'stupidity' of us common folk that means that they believe they should use state force to 'nudge' (let me translate that for you - by 'nudge' they mean 'enact laws that are effectively compulsory for the poor but that the rich, more enlightened folk can ignore') people to eat what they believe is good for them.

What a disgrace.

 

[simon12]

I agree with all the points mentioned so far, and would add its just another demonstration of government both local and national employ to many people to think up stupid ideas. They spend all there money employing people to come up with things to make the lives of every one harder and wonder why they have no money or public support.

 

[Gunge]

"Another sign of the great progress we are making.

Worse food, less free time, lower relative wages, higher food & house prices

Degeneration of our culture, sexualisation of the youth, lowering of IQ's in the west. Family values being destroyed, labelled sexist or whatver "ist" the progressive brigade can smear them with.

One could be forgiven for wanting to go back to a simpler time".

Not mine but a great comment from someone on that article.

 

[An Ankoù]

Isn't there an imminent threat to assured year-round supply of fresh and healthy foods?

 

[Chippy_Tea]

If a more hethh diet cost the same as what they call an unhealthy ome I imagine most of us would eat a little more healthily but this is never going to happen.

 

[Cwrw666]

So they want to tax cakes - mostly made of wheat, sugar and eggs, all grown locally in the UK - in order to subsidise fresh fruit and veg. Check out the origins on those in your supermarket - virtually all imported huge distances.
Pure idiocy. And anyway, didn't I hear a report on radio 4 (so it must be true!) that childhood obesity levels were currently falling?

 

[Cwrw666]

If a more hethh diet cost the same as what they call an unhealthy ome I imagine most of us would eat a little more healthily

Yeah, because if you fancy a cream cake you're going to buy an apple instead because it's 10p cheaper.

 

[MyQul]

When I clicked on this I thought this was a thread about the BD beer. I noticed yesterday in the supermarket BD now produce a second non/low alcohol beer called Punk AF

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2019/05/brewdog-launches-low-alcohol-punk-ipa/

 

[Richie_asg1]

Can I have cheaper fruit and veg now paid for by the minimum alcohol pricing so my basket doesn't cost any more?

 

[MyQul]

My opinion is that sugar is the problem. I've drastically cut my sugar intake last spring and the weight has dropped off (I've never been particularly fat but I'm like a whippet now )
In my effort to cut sugar I started reading labels an I was absolutely astounded to discover the things that have sugar in, things that you wouldn't think have sugar, do. I was making Sunday lunch for one of my clients an just happened to read the label on the frozen chicken breast, to see that it contained sugar!
I also started doing some reading about the effect sugar has on the body. Sugar causes the body to release insulin which which it uses to store in the liver. Which it then realeases in the body any time it neds energy. Any extra gets turned into fat.
The problem with sugar is that it's several more times addictive than cocaine. Food manufactures know this and put it into everything so you repeatedly buy their products. But they then make people fat and unhealthy

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Yeah, because if you fancy a cream cake you're going to buy an apple instead because it's 10p cheaper.

I think this is more about skint parents feeding their kids crap because they cannot afford to buy things that would be better for them than someone wanting a cake and being given a piece of fruit instead.

 

[Clint]

Partly...another factor is education...loads of people haven't a clue about food and nutrition and loads can't even cook...or are too lazy to. Plus there's the old chestnut .."I don't like that.."having never even tried it to start.

 

[An Ankoù]

Here's a couple of starting points for anybody wanting to follow up a scam which is equally, if not more, insidious than the tobacco industry:
https://www.sweetdefeat.com/blog/the-low-fat-lie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Association

Sugar exists for one purpose and one purpose only, in my book. For fermenting into alcohol.

 

[chthon]

What people eat is no business of the state, for goodness sake. It's food. It feeds people. It's available at a price that the vast majority can afford, and at a quality and in varieties they enjoy. In any other society, this would be celebrated. One of the fundamentals of life is all but sorted. But, no, not in neo-puritan Britain.

What a horrible, horrible, mean spirited, holier than thou, disgusting, hypocritical bunch of authoritarian tossers we have become, that we now have a class of people that have such a bigoted view of the 'stupidity' of us common folk that means that they believe they should use state force to 'nudge' (let me translate that for you - by 'nudge' they mean 'enact laws that are effectively compulsory for the poor but that the rich, more enlightened folk can ignore') people to eat what they believe is good for them.

What a disgrace.

Isn't this something cultural? Ronald Pattinson has a whole lot of blog posts with newspaper articles about the weird things that teetotallers tried to pull with legislation, everywhere in Britain. I suppose that somehow the people who are now running this institution have the same history and want their fingers in more than a say about alcohol consumption.

But here on the continent I have never heard of people trying to enact laws about pubs, and bars and cafés with the intention of trying to prohibit beer and alcohol. The only laws that I know of here in Belgium were enacted between the wars, and was done with the intention of making it more difficult to sell spirits, so that dad wouldn't waste all his payday money, and laws against being drunk and disorderly. The first law led to the creation of Westmalle Tripel.

So, what I meant to say was that the things the chief(s) medical officers of the UK have proposed the last years, do seem to me of the same order as the teetotallers tried to do in the past 150 years in the UK.