Sugar Tax could be extended to milkshakes and lattes

The government has proposed extending the so-called sugar tax in a further attempt to improve the nation’s health.

Transcript

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 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 sort of

02:11more 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