United Kingdom

4014 readers

155 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in [email protected] or [email protected]
More serious politics should go in [email protected].

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Extend success of UK sugar tax to cakes, biscuits and chocolate, experts urge (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The sugar tax has been so successful in improving people’s diets that it should be extended to cakes, biscuits and chocolate, health experts say.

The World Health Organization wants the next UK government to expand coverage of the levy to help tackle tooth decay, obesity, diabetes and other illnesses.

The plea is published in the WHO’s bulletin, which urges governments worldwide to use the reformulation of food to address the growing crisis of excess weight.

Experts from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have analysed the outcomes of two flagship government policies intended to make food healthier – the sugar tax and sugar reduction programme, which were introduced in 2018 and 2015 respectively.

The levy on the soft-drinks industry led to a 34.3% fall in total sugar sales from such products between 2015 and 2020 and many fizzy drinks containing much less.

But the sugar reduction programme only yielded a 3.5% drop over the same period in the amount of sugar used in the manufacture of the everyday foodstuffs it covered, the experts write in their analysis for the WHO.

Dr Kawther Hashem, a co-author and lecturer in public health nutrition at QMUL, said ministers should trial a sugar tax-style levy on treat foods that still have almost as much sugar as they did as 2015 despite firms being asked to cut sugar by 20% before 2020.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (9 children)

I and a good number of other type one diabetics ended up in ER due to the sugar tax.

Honestly I am not against the tax. Just feel the companies should have rebounded a little.

Many T1ds were so used to buying coke etc when they are going low. We got hit hard by how quickly the companies adapted and started only selling the lower sugar versions.

To the extent that the NHS will now RX small buttles of high glucose drinks. (Lemon or Berry flavoured but non fizzy) just to ensure T1ds have an easy source of sugar to prevent unsafe low blood sugar comas.

As I say its something easy to fix now. We all just grab fruit juice. But the change and companies reactions to it. Left many of us waking up in an ambulance on the way to ER.

If they start applying it to all products. And the companies all act the same way. Just reducing sugars without any clear branding.

It will leave us with zero easy high sugar option that can be grabbed easily from any small village shop etc.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What is EAST?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Lol. Auto corrected typo.

ER. Thanks for pointing it out.

load more comments (7 replies)