Sorry, Boris but fat people are costing the NHS just as much as smokers ever did so why shouldn’t they face the same shame and taxes?
It’s official, eating yourself to an early death is a human right which must be protected.
Boris Johnson – who could be our next Prime Minister, a prospect which fills me with fear and loathing in equal measure- wants to review the levies on sugary food and drink because they ‘hurt the poor’. He calls them ‘sin taxes’.
This is shameless electioneering, stooping to a new low to grovel for votes.
What really hurts the poor is discovering your child needs every tooth filled and there are no dentists for hundreds of miles.
Or your teenager is too fat to play sport and is being bullied at school. Every extra kilo around a child’s waist is another year off their lives.
Giving people on low incomes the freedom of choice to buy unhealthy food is not a policy anyone who cares about humankind should be proud of. It is retrogressive and patronising.
Food laced with sugar and fat SHOULD be taxed, and that money ploughed back into the National Health service.
Sorry, Boris but fat people are costing the NHS just as much as smokers ever did so why shouldn’t they face the same shame and taxes? Asks JANET STREET-PORTER
It’s the duty of responsible parents and schools to promote healthy eating, and the duty of supermarkets to promote real unprocessed food over junk.
Britain has to face reality- we are the fatties of Europe. Freedom of choice in our diet has resulted in obese school children, waddling adults, and a NHS forced to deal with the consequences – at a cost of £6.1 billion a year.
We’re a nation of slothful stuffers slumped on sofas shovelling crap into our mouths while we watch endless reality shows every evening, or sit hunched over a screen playing games until the early hours.
Freedom of choice has resulted in a health catastrophe with 29% of the population classified as porkies who shun exercise. According to experts, obesity has now overtaken smoking as the main cause of four major types of cancer – bowel, liver, kidney and ovarian.
Overall, it’s the second biggest preventable cause of ALL cancers, resulting in 22,800 deaths a year.
To get this message across and shock us into changing our eating habits, the charity Cancer Research UK has released a hard-hitting billboard campaign which shows a cigarette packet with the slogan ‘Obesity is a cause of cancer too….like smoking, obesity puts millions of adults at greater risk of cancer’.
Amazingly, they have been accused of ‘fat-shaming’ with one cretin claiming ‘I object to the advert as it delivers a very negative view of obesity, and, by definition, food and drink’. If that’s not bonkers, I am a custard tart.
Has our society become so politically-correct that it’s a sin to call morbidly obese people fat?
To ignore the link between gorging on chips, doughnuts and massive burgers and an expanding waistline?
To disregard the link between drinking a bottle of wine a day or six pints of beer (both full of sugar) and carrying at least five kilos of flab around your midriff?
To accept as gospel the people who claim they are over-weight for medical reasons, or ‘mental stress’?
Sure, a very small number do have legitimate health reasons why they are carrying extra weight, but thousands of fatties are just blatant liars.
And what about that old chestnut ‘I am big boned’. Another load of codswallop.
Food laced with sugar and fat SHOULD be taxed, and that money ploughed back into the National Health service, writes JANET STREET-PORTER. File image used
The women who say they are copying Kim Kardashian, when in fact they are just carrying around 20 bags of sugar around their lardy rear end and are about as appealing to look at as a load of decaying rubber inner tubes.
Kim K is small boned and perfectly proportioned, and certainly doesn’t carry an ounce of fat.
Women with big bouncy castles where their bums should be are living in cloud cuckoo land,
Sugar is as addictive as alcohol or nicotine, and yet it’s present in most of the food and drink we consume.
Manufacturers and producers routinely add processed sugar into dozens of staples from bread to soup and yoghurt (everyday fare that tastes just as good without the addition of evil sugar) to turn us into junkies who will pick their brands over and over again.
Even salad dressings, houmous and baked beans are infected by the stuff.
In spite of all the well-documented evidence that eating more than a few teaspoons of sugar a day raises blood pressure, leads to diabetes and results in dangerous obesity, food producers are not required to put any health warnings on packaging in the way that the tobacco industry has had to comply with.
When the government finally introduced a tax on fizzy drinks, manufacturers were able to halve the amount of sugar they contained overnight without a dent in sales.
Now there has to be further taxation on unhealthy food – and I guarantee the food industry will be able to rise to the challenge.
Britain is now ranked the sixth fattest country in the world with twice the number of obese citizens as in 1993- how does Boris think we arrived at this badge of shame?
Analysts Mintel have discovered that almost half (47%) of consumers would cut back on eating unhealthy foods if they had a tax imposed on them.
Some drinks manufacturers have reduced sugar content – as in the case of Fanta and Ribena – while others such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi have chosen to pass on the sugar tax to consumers in higher prices
Over half of say we would cut back on eating junk food if there were tighter restrictions on advertising.
So why doesn’t the government ban fast food ads before 9pm – at least to protect children.
This survey indicates that we are willing to be nudged into healthy eating and the imposition of taxes would change our habits.
It has certainly worked for smoking. The introduction of revolting images of the health dangers of smoking on packaging plus huge increases in taxes have reduced the number of people in the UK who smoke by 2 million since 2011, and smokers are now outnumbered two to one by fatties.
Ironically, the toddlers of today could be the first generation who are entirely tobacco-free but – unless they change their eating habits – could end up eating themselves into an earlier grave than their smoke-dried grandparents
