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I’d be interested to know how much of that is from reduced sales, how much is from products reducing the overall sweetness, and how much is the products being full of (controversially potentially worse) artificial sweeteners and other crap to replace the sugar.
Where are you getting that they’re potentially worse? They may have some adverse effects but they seem minor compared to sugar. For aspartame there seems to be some studies possibly linking it with cancer, but those are very limited and even after those studies came out the WHO reaffirmed it’s safety at normal levels. Meanwhile actual sugar has been proven to cause diabetes, heart disease, obesity etc. Sucralose doesn’t seem to show any adverse effects at normal doses.
A lot of the controversy on artificial sweeteners comes from the sugar lobby combined with moral panics and conspiracies on using “chemicals” in foods.
The WHO advises not to use them https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-use-non-sugar-sweeteners-for-weight-control-in-newly-released-guideline
Personally I don’t agree with their reasoning, but given the controversy I don’t feel comfortable forcing them on people.
They advise not to use them for weight control. That’s a bit different than what you’re implying.
I did say “controversially” and “potentially” :)
I think it was the WHO who mentioned it last year, but it keeps cropping up each year from various university studies - of course I’ll have only ever read the news reports of those studies.
I absolutely agree though, I’d be highly suspicious of sugar company (or high-fructose-syrup) lobbying.
Personally my preference is for “things to just be less sweet” (like why does some bread or soup have sugar in now?!?), though I suspect it’s a bit of a minority opinion :)
I refuse to have anything with Stevia in it as it gives me the shits. And Aspartame tastes weird.
I do have less sugar as a result, though!
Also almost 100 percent of soft drinks went from nice to absolutely disgusting at least in my opinion.
Drink water simple
Its weird, I prefer the taste of coke zero to coke classic and the same with Pepsi. But the diet version of both is vile.
Because most soft drinks replaced the sugar with artificial sweeteners… No real sugar allowed for the proles.
I try hard to get the real sugar drinks nowadays.
I maybe drink 1L a month, so not a huge expense thankfully.
What other candy do you seek out?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The tax, which came into force in April 2018, has been so successful in improving people’s diets that experts have said an expansion to cover other high sugar food and drink products is now a “no-brainer”.
But despite this reduction, the amount of sugar consumed by adults and children still remains above the recommended guidelines and is contributing to high levels of tooth decay, obesity, diabetes and other illnesses.
According to the World Health Organization and the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, the consumption of free sugar should be below 5% of a person’s total calorie intake.
These results are consistent with previous research which show a reduction in household purchasing of sugar from soft drinks one year after adoption of the levy.”
“With a new government now in place, policymakers are urged to consider applying a similar levy to other discretionary products that are key contributors to sugar intake, such as chocolate confectionery, to shift diets towards a healthier direction.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “This government will take action to prevent ill-health and tackle the obesity crisis head on, easing the strain on the NHS and helping people to live well for longer.
The original article contains 724 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
They didn’t mention how it affected overweight/obesity rates, which is what they aimed to tackle. Every research I found had problems in its modelling or just straight up speculative.
Plus they are not actually using the extra income for related programmes instead they include it in the general budget, which is not nice…making it just a tax.
Although from a dental perspective there is no way it’s not working.
Why are other countries are not struggling with obesity rates is what I would like to know even without a sugar tax.
I just hope they are not planning to introduce a salt tax, food is already bland as is.
Relevant Parks and Rec https://youtu.be/lYkwcRdFnbM?feature=shared
Of course the amount of sugar they consume from soft drinks will decrease if they’ve changed all the soft drinks to contain aspartame instead of sugar.
The question is does this actually improve people’s health?
There are lots of suggestions that artificial sweeteners are harmful to health in their own ways
And the evidence they reduce weight compared to sugar is not clear cut.
This seems like a study designed to make the sugar tax seem like a good thing, but it misses the crucial point, which is whether this improves health.
They’ve failed to mention that the decrease in sugar consumption will correspond with an increase in aspartame consumption
Yes, that tends to happen when you remove half the sugar… who’d have thunk it?
the guardian has messed up their headline a bit here. The paper they’re citing attributes a 9.7% decrease in children’s total sugar consumption to the sugar tax.
The “sugar consumption halved!” is more accurately: “free sugar from soft drinks only” dropped from 22g per day (pre-tax) to 12g per day (post-tax).
Considering “Children aged 7 to 10 should have no more than 24g of free sugars a day” is the recommended amount - a reduction from 22g to 12g from changes to soft drinks alone is still a big win
Great, now all the undernourished kids with poor parents are going to drink water instead and lose weight to dangerously unhealthy levels.
According to The Guardian (same source as this article), the number of children in food poverty in the UK is 4 million. 15% of UK households went hungry in January. Now, soda isn’t the smartest source of calories in a kid’s diet. It’s expensive and low in other nutrients. But kids aren’t always smart. A poor kid thinks “I’m hungry, I have a few pounds, there’s a vending machine, problem solved”. If the soda is too expensive, that doesn’t mean the kid is going to go to Aldi, buy some potatoes, and roast them for a cheap and nutritious meal. They’re a kid! It means they’ll pay more or go without. Which means you’re making the poverty and malnutrition problem worse.
Can I just clarify: Your point of view is that a tax to disincentivise sugar in fizzy drinks is going to cause malnutrition in underprivileged kids?
Would you have also argued this when we removed fizzy drink vending machines from schools a decade ago?
