Gear Head

iTrader: (2)

How about they stop the NHS offering free breast enhancements for women who just can't 'accept' their bodies.

Should all men have to put up with the size of their *****? I am just so large that my wife cries whenever we get frisky!

But seriously, if they stopped offering the stomach stapling for free and enrolled them on a psycho therapy course (because it is all in mind) then may be we could start spending money on things that really matter and are not self induced.

What we are doing now is basically covering everyone's bad life style choices under the umbrella of the NHS. Its disgusting and needs to change.

CrisPDuk

What they should do is put soap operas & 'reality' shows on pay-per-view, that's more likely to hit the right target.

David Lock

I confess to not reading the whole thing but the article seems all about tax. If there was a big red label on a bottle of juice with say, the number 9 on it then I would know that is was very high in sugar content on a 1 - 10 scale. And I wouldn't buy it.

Until I investigated I thought most breakfast cereals were reasonably healthy and sugar free but get to the small print....

dl

Martin2005

The problem here is that YOU ARE GOING TO PAY MORE TAX FOR THIS, whether it is funded by the cause (those that consumer high quantities of unhealthy food), or through taxing the 'responsible' through general taxation. The cost to the NHS of obesity is going to increase, and that has to be funded through taxation.

For me it is fair and logical to tax the user rather than everyone. We do that with alcohol and ****, so why not with Sugar / Fat?

Anyway there's no way this going to happen before the general election

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

And I'll just bet you paper over the cracks when you decorate too....

Sugar tax is not the answer here!!!!

Gear Head

iTrader: (2)

There will never be enough money for the NHS. It is a black hole and is always used a voting tool. Clear responsibilities and guild lines need to be outlined for what the NHS is there for. As well as the education department!

Martin2005

You may well be right. I'm certainly not trying to say that any tax on sugar is going to result in a significant change in lifestyle. It will contribute to the increasing cost that behaviour though

Gear Head

iTrader: (2)

Which is not the answer.

A bit like having an advert shoved down my throat where you see an African girl giving birth to a very blue looking baby. 'By donating £5 a month, you can help train midwives and therefore, more babies will live passed the first day.'

Really? I'd rather drop ship millions of condoms!

jonc

It's not as simple as putting a tax on one ingredient. People's diet is made up plenty of other ingredients that can lead to bloaters. The biggest cause of fat deposited in the body is FAT, sugar does not turn into fat. It is all about calories consumed and fat on it's own is the most calorific of all. It really is as simple as this: if you consume more calories than you burn, then you are going to get fat, regardless of whether sugar is consumed or not, that is how the body works. Not sure why sugar should be singled out, unless there is some other alterior motive; most of the worlds sugar comes from Brazil, is that a factor, I don't know, just throwing that fact out there.

john banks

You sure?

Ellie*

The clue is in the taste- if it tastes SWEET its got some kind of sugar in it, even if it is a 'fruit' and therefore that means 'healthy' to most people.

I'll agree though, it is actually really hard to eliminate all sugar, even milk and dairy products, root veg etc all contain some form of sugars.

I don't agree with nannying people, everyone needs to take responsibility for themselves.

I'll admit to being a total sugar addict, I'm absolutely awful. I can easily do almost 500g of sugar in a weekend.

Martin2005

Sugar is being linked with all kinds of nasties (including obesity). That is afterall why the Chief Medical Officer started this debate

Martin2005

A million condoms for £5, now that's value for money

jonc

Fat is even worse in that respect and is a factor in many more conditions and diseases than sugar!

john banks

Can you expand on this?

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

I could be wrong, but I was pretty sure that the most recent and thorough studies into this had shown that lab animals fed a diet of either just fat or just sugar in any quantity they wanted stayed at roughly the same weight, whereas those fed a diet of fat and sugar in any quantity they wanted put on masses of it, and also rapidly lost all interest in virtually anything other than food. Cheesecake was apparently the perfect medium to achieve the latter result.

dpb

Sugar gives a bigger hit though, and is more easily disguised

If you don't burn it off you'll put on weight

DYK

And when they have got the sugar tax going,it will be something else,carbohydrate tax
Can keep going on and on with this stuff.
A yorkie bar costs 70p in the vending machine at work,the price don't stop me buying it,if i want a yorkie i'll pay the 70p.
But i don't eat five or six chocolate bars a day,plus crisps etc,my parents never brought me up on a diet of junk food.
Self responsibility.This is just another excuse to slap a tax on something..

Gear Head

iTrader: (2)

Endless supply actually. They are free on the NHS.

Turbohot

That's because if you create a human, that human would potentially consume more than the manufacturing and retailing cost of the condoms you will consume in your life time.

Also, if you don't get sexually transmitted diseases, you won't need treatment for them. That will also save NHS money and effort.

Mind you, I can foresee the day when they will want you to recycle your condoms. Or, they will make condoms out of recycled winter tyres for you. Rubber is rubber, at the end of the day.

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

They used to make fun of the fat kid at school now it's the skinny kid.

Food & drinks industry is to blame because they use sugar as a bulking agent because it's the cheapest one, then they use salt to counter act the sweetness, so people who consume more calories than they burn become fat and have a plethora of associated illnesses.

Anyone that has tried to lose even a set of love handles will know it's not easy so what chance does someone who is borderline morbidly obese have when one of the consequences of becoming fat is lethargy, mostly due to the sheer effort of moving their bulk, add to that the strain placed on joints and it's no wonder they can't stand in the kitchen for an hour or more preparing and cooking a healthy meal and opt for more of the cause of their problem processed food.

Because most of what they consume is full of sugar and salt which has very little nutritional value they snack and drink things like coke then receive their sugar rush and feel happy, flip side being a bit of a downer when it wears off so wee hee lets have something else sweet and the cycle continues. Poor nutrition also leads your body into fat storing mode because it thinks your starving and beefs up it's reserves of fat hence the difficulty in shifting it.

Modern living is all too easy, people allow themselves to become hooked on sugar through convenience, it's a lot easier to pick up a processed lasagne or a Pizza at the supermarket to stick a in the microwave than it is to cook one.

When they've done with sugar it will be whatever food producers use to replace it next.

jonc

I've always been lead to believe that certain fats like trans fats and hydrogenated fats are extremely bad for you and a high fat diet, especially high in saturated fats increases cholesterol and hardens arteries increasing the risks to heart attacks, strokes and coronary diseases and cancers such colon, prostate, breast and ovarian leading to many mortalities. Theses are the fats commonly found in junk food and ready meals.

Not saying sugar not bad for you, but any excessive intake of certain macronutrients is bad for you and fat is over two times more calorific than sugar. In terms of actual quantity, we consume fat and sugars in similar amounts per day on average.*

* based on googling various sources, but unable to find a difinitive comparison from the same data sets.

hodgy0_2

Decent quality food is getting pretty expensive, that's for sure

dpb

Once you've had your heart attack though, you'll probably change your eating habits

If you didn't cark it ( saving the rest of us expenditure )

john banks

I don't think anyone would recommend a high fat or high sugar/carb diet, and trans fats are certainly awful, but sugar despite its lower energy density than fat is extremely easy to consume in large calorific quantities whilst putting very little brake on satiety. Its ability to be converted to fat, along with carbohydrates being required to lay down fat (but not vice versa) plus its role in insulin resistance/metabolic syndrome make it the evil of the day. Weight gain is greater on high carb than high fat diets perhaps surprisingly. Additionally, there is not a good body of evidence that saturated fats are anywhere near as bad as is popularised.

Hopefully interesting link here: http://www.dietdoctor.com/science

jonc

Either way, I can't see how a tax on sugar will do anything to address the obesity issue, sure it'll increase the cost of sugary foods, but all it will do is make those people consuming sugar excessively to spend less on other foods compounding the problem. Alcoholics and smokers still drink and smoke despite the high taxes and cut back on spending on other necessities to maintain their consumption.

Lisawrx

iTrader: (1)

Sorry to revisit this, but a quick google, and assuming the information is correct, it would appear keeping people on a derisory state pension isn't so cheap.

You have found that the cost to the NHS for obesity related treatments is around £4-8 billion/year, pension costs are apparently around £80 billion/year, also set to increase with our ageing population.

Maybe it would be better in the long run to just let some people 'live fast, die young' so to speak.

john banks

I think it can be genuinely difficult to keep weight under control for many or even most in a modern society. If you go for high protein diet, people say it causes cancer. High fat people say it causes heart disease and the lack of carbs can make you lethargic. High carbs make you fat, give you diabetes and many other problems. To just say eat less calories doesn't work as appetites are set high in some and nothing turns it off without some downside. Otherwise, there would be far less of an obesity problem. With scarcity of food and requirement to hunt for it, the brakes would be kept on weight.

warrenm2

There was a sugar substitute in the 70s that was going to revolutionise the industry but it got suppressed under suspicious circumstances http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synsepalum_dulcificum and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7367548.stm

Devildog

John

What do you think it is about modern society that makes it difficult? Is the fact that some have high appetites a relatively new phenomenon?

I have to say i'm sceptical that for the vast majority of obese people its not just down to their being lazy b@stards with bad eating habits, or having lazy b@stard obese parents that overfeed their kids. (accepted that being a lazy b@stard can be as a result of psychological issues which need addressed) I just dont buy the high appetite point as a reason on its own.