The Taxing of/Calling out of unhealthy food...

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Gildersleeve

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Even without taxing food classed as unhealthy the biggest issue is that food is discussed in such simplistic terms on the media and in the press it misses what the public should be more informed on.

If we were better informed "just maybe" more of us would not need to be protected from ourselves.

Though there will always be some that do.

Is food knowledge something practical that should be covered at school. A life skill. What is taught these days anyway? It is 50 years since I was at school.

I know when I was at school much of what I was taught was mostly general knowledge but that grew after I left and started working and living my adult life.

healthpolicy-watch.news

WHO Issues First-Ever Set Of Guidelines For Taxing Unhealthy Foods - Health Policy Watch

WHO also issued more “conditional” recommendations in favor of the taxation of unhealthy foods and the subsidizing of healthier options, in its new guidelines
healthpolicy-watch.news healthpolicy-watch.news
 
The biggest issue I see is the ongoing debate about exactly what constitutes “healthy”. It’s easy to broadly agree but sometimes the devil is in the detail.

I think most agree now that the highly processed stuff and sugary items definitely aren’t. But beyond that there’s so much debate about carbs in general, fats (be it dairy, natural, saturated, unsaturated), salt, and even the fructose in fruits. That’s before you enter the realms of vegan, plant based etc and the health based claims made there (separate to the religious or morality or global warming arguments on the same subject).

For example under the status quo those of us doing low carb or keto very successfully for a wide range of health improvements would be taxed for eating natural full fat dairy, real butter and non lean meats. The sugar tax has meant almost all drinks now have artificial sweeteners pumped into them whether we like it or not.
 
Yes @HSSS, beware of unintended consequences.

The other huge difficulty is the rule of greed. Lobbying may not be legal in our Parliamentary system yet it exists. The influence of global companies with massive commercial interest in seeing their products flourish, so easily overtakes or overwhelms so many things - certainly legislation that might result in tax on ultraprocessed foods.
 
In my view the key thing is manufacturers need to be prevented from some of this over-processing. How many people actually read the ingredients list in a supermarket?
After I did I stopped buying fresh cooked chicken, and also raw frozen chicken. I now buy fresh meat and fish only and freeze it when I return home.

These are off tesco products, but sainsburys are very similar.

Cooked chicken breast - INGREDIENTS: Chicken Breast (98%), Cornflour, Mineral Sea Salt, Stabilisers (Pentapotassium Triphosphate, Pentasodium Triphosphate), Chicken Extract, Water, Salt.

Frozen raw chicken breast - INGREDIENTS: Chicken (90%), Water, Maltose, Salt.
 
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If they can't be trusted to provide unadulterated chicken breast, how can we trust the ingredients of a multi-ingredient food?
 
We also buy our meat and fish fresh, either from our local butcher or from the fish counters at Morrisons or Waitrose, and freeze what we don't need to use for meals that day or the next. I think cost and convenience play a big role in people's choices, though.
 
Unfortunately carbs and processed foods are cheap. If you start taxing them, you are taxing the poor. You also have a situation where many people have eating disorders and even just very strong eating dislikes which mean that they are reliant on or addicted to these highly processed carbs. We have quite a few people who join this forum who really dislike vegetables and it is very hard for them to find things to eat when they try to cut down on those processed carbs which means they are unlikely to succeed long term because they will be hungry a lot.
I am really thankful that I was brought up to clean my plate and eat all my vegetables when I was little. As a result I like most veg and even those I am not keen on, I will still eat if they are on my plate because that is how I was raised and that I should not waste anything, but many people these days simply don't have that background or discipline.

Imagine if you doubled the tax on McDonalds and Greggs, more than half of the country would be up in arms and there would be riots!!

Sadly very few answers to problems are as simple as we would like.
 
We ate well as a family and food that was simple but good. In reality unknown to me what we ate was probably governed by a household income that was quite low and my parents were struggling. So it's ironic the food we were eating was healthy.

I don't remember takeaways. Or night's down the pub. Everything was homecooked usually from scratch.

I think I have been in McDonald's only twice in my life.

When I hear the radio ads for all the fast food chains keeping it none specific I just think...no. But again it's personal choice.

Further irony that my diet has not changed. Why I guess it's sad that both my parents had poor health later. Terminal illnesses. Dementia etc...and thirty years ago I got a rare kidney issue and now they say pre diabetic. Yet medication is now reduced regarding the original condition.

So some positives there. We can do all the right things and still be dealt a difficult hand.

Onwards and upwards I guess.
 
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Gildersleeve said:
If we were better informed "just maybe" more of us would not need to be protected from ourselves.
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Again in principle I agree. But informed about what? Certainly I think the sugar message is getting there. There’s been significant increase in the messaging about ultra processed foods over the last year or so. The trouble is the rest of it goes back to what should we be informed about.

Also there’s the issue of people struggling to cope with changing messages. Look how many are still scared to eat more than a couple of eggs a week despite that guidance having been removed years ago. So many stick with the first message they hear on an issue and can’t seem to update this as nutritional knowledge expands. (Eatwell and nhs link I’m looking at you too here!)

And the people fed up with changing messages and that give up entirely listening to anything, particularly coming from government sources as they don’t trust what’s being said there on many issues nowadays.
Gildersleeve said:
Is food knowledge something practical that should be covered at school. A life skill. What is taught these days anyway? It is 50 years since I was at school.
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Definitely. So many kids have parents who can’t teach them to shop and cook from scratch with real food ingredients because they themselves don’t know how to. Trouble is schools barely cope with teaching the academic stuff due to all sorts of constraints let alone the practical life skill stuff like food knowledge.

Scouting was a good place for my kids learning some of this stuff as well as at home, and covered physical activity and social responsibility too. Not very cool now though. Perhaps incentives and access provisions to do this sort of thing and DofE would be better than penalising by restricting access to finances and penalties on driving licences for the youth of today
 
The diet I was pushed to eat for decades was always described as a healthy one.
The recent demonizing of sugar is illogical, as there is no difference between sugars and starches in the long term.
My sister is hugely overweight but she regards a large bowl of cereal at supper time as healthy if it has no added sugars other than the half a pint of skimmed milk.
 
Yep...excellent points from HSSS, Drummer and Rebrascora. Complicated isn't it. Or perhaps the campaigns that are presented to the public are too simplistic.

So we do cone back to schools perhaps. OTOH some people manage to explain things more clearly than others. Such as the recent deseased Dr. Mosley.

It's a very good point about carbs and starches.


I remember decades ago people I knew used to say..."I don't understand it. I eat well. And weight won't reduce or I keep putting more on."

But they would sink quite a few pints of beer or larger at the pub. Not giving it a thought that they were full of calories.

If you were not burning off those calories they continued to sit there and were added to by the next binge. Which in turn made it even more difficult to shift the extra weight.

A vicious circle.
 
One man's meat is another man's poison.

Think we are taxed enough in everyday life without adding more, anyway adding pennies on certain foods isn't going to deter anyone from buying what they want, sadly there's no quick fix.


Wish I could say my diet is clean & healthy & devoid of processed food altogether, but it isn't & whilst out earlier this afternoon had a Magnum ice cream with my wife when out & about.
 
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