The government has proposed extending the so-called sugar tax in a further attempt to improve the nation’s health.
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00:00People's views on favourite treats of yesterday there and we stay with the
00:04subjects of sweetness as the government has announced plans to extend the sugar
00:08tax to milkshakes and lattes. So has the legislation introduced in 2018 and
00:14designed to improve health been a success? Anything that reduces the sugar
00:19content in the sort of the food and drinks that we consume has got to be a
00:22good thing. We look around and we see a lot of obesity now of course particularly
00:27young people as a concern because of course that will turn into sort of
00:30midlife problems and of course we know that so the NHS is under sort of assault
00:34in all sorts of way. Anything we can do that will make life better for people in
00:38the future has got to be a sort of a good thing. Now there's always the sort of the
00:42view that sort of controlling sort of the maker for foods if you like is the
00:46nanny state but sometimes that's what we've got to do and you know I sort of
00:50define people to look at the things you buy and look at the sugar content because
00:54you know we get enough sugar naturally sort of through fruits so adding into all
00:59sorts of things which you wouldn't even expect such as baked beans and sort of
01:02spicy foods that sort of where you wouldn't expect sugar to appear is not a
01:06good thing. So the fact that sort of the sugar content is decreasing is a good
01:11thing and indeed what I would say is most people probably don't realize
01:15because of course you become sort of a new to this and dare I say most people
01:19don't really care. I mean quite clearly you take something away as long as it
01:22doesn't sort of radically alter the taste of sort of the things that we consume. The
01:26downside of course is that sort of when you introduce additional sort of cost
01:30manufacturers with some degree of sort of justification sort of claim of course
01:35they sort of they can't absorb this they have to make their profits or bit of
01:38course some of the big manufacturers they make pretty substantial profits
01:42anyway but nonetheless of course they use every opportunity to sort of pass it on
01:45to sort of the consumers and undoubtedly we're talking about sort of goods which
01:50are sort of highly processed in most cases and of course they tend to be sort of if
01:55you like at the sort of the bottom end of sort of a budget sort of or people who
01:59sort of buy them are on sort of lower budgets there of course you've got this
02:02sort of problem that sort of people are eating unhealthy stuff and then to sort of
02:06to have less unhealthy stuff or more healthy sort of goods they're paying
02:11sort of more anyways in you know fixed budget so there's a real problem here and of
02:15course as I say we do need to get to a sort of better and more sustainable sort of set of
02:20sort of foods if there's never a perfect solution to these things and of course
02:23the sort of difficulty is that we may not see the sort of the benefits for
02:26another generation in terms of people with healthier lifestyles