The UK’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty has called on the Government to bring in a tax on junk food to curb the country’s childhood obesity rate.
Using his annual report, he said British kids are being “set up to live a shorter and unhealthier life through obesity and the diseases it causes” and added that there were “healthy food deserts” in some urban areas of the country.
One of the central recommendations of Professor Sir Chris’ report, written in collaboration with the think tank Impact on Urban Health, is that the state brings in a “levy on unhealthy food products”.
The reports call for greater “incentivisation” to eat healthily “addressed through a levy on unhealthy food products and by encouraging innovation in the food industry”.
It calls for an “industry-wide levy on salt and sugar”, plus a “category-based tax like Soft Drinks Industry Levy” for things like sweets, or “an excess profits levy to retailers or producers of products with high sugar and salt content”.
Professor Sir Chris’ reports don’t force the Government to act, however he has had influence on the state before.
In 2018, one of his reports led to the introduction of a sugar tax on soft drinks.
Last year, the now-Health Secretary Wes Streeting called the tax “without a doubt one of the most effective public policy interventions on public health under the Conservatives”.
But critics said it’s just a proxy for taxing the poor.
Head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs Chris Snowdon told The Telegraph: “Public sector fat cats like Chris Whitty are obsessed with taxing the poor. They have no answers to the structural problems affecting the horrendously inefficient NHS. Chris Whitty is yesterday’s man preaching yesterday’s solutions that have been shown to fail.”
This report comes after a study by the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil found that 61 percent of two to five-year-olds’ diets in Britain were made up of ultra-processed food, leading UK children to be dubbeed the most unhealthy in the world.
The percentage was higher than that seen in the US, where 58 percent was recorded.
What do you think? Should a similar tax be introduced? Vote in the poll above. If you can’t see it, click here.