Sugar Tax

cells

Generali wrote: »

So what's the cheapest 8g/100ml soda on the market in the UK? Who is going to killed by this tax?

why stop at this sugar tax, the idea of a food tax is interesting.

1p per gram of carbs (which includes sugar)
1p per gram of protein
2p per gram of fat

With a loaf of bread going from £1 towards £6 It would be like going back 50 years when food was a lot more expensive. £120 billion a year in food tax.....

cells

Generali wrote: »

So what's the cheapest 8g/100ml soda on the market in the UK? Who is going to killed by this tax?

Is the tax 24p/litre?

I think its typically £1 per 2 litre bottle when they are on offer. Thats the non coke brand bottles. Coke tends to be a little more, or they sell for the same price but sell in 1.75 liter bottles.

So a typical £1 (2 litre) bottle will go up in price to £1.50

It might actually be more if there is VAT on the duty too, like with fuel, in which case it might be closer to £1.60 from £1.

Generali

cells wrote: »

why stop at this sugar tax, the idea of a food tax is interesting.

1p per gram of carbs (which includes sugar)
1p per gram of protein
2p per gram of fat

With a loaf of bread going from £1 towards £6 It would be like going back 50 years when food was a lot more expensive. £120 billion a year in food tax.....

The UK has gone from paying c. 33% of their incomes on food to spending c. 10%.

The tax on sugar is going to be widened in scope, I have no doubt about that. WRT sugar we are in the same place we were WRT tobacco in 1958 and Big Soda is reacting in exactly the same way Big Tobacco did in the 1960s.

cells

HornetSaver wrote: »

Well, beer and wine predate all of the drinks we are talking about...

... but I resent and rejcect the implication that I was doing anything of the kind.

The truth is, we can not claim to know the health implications of any ingredient which is less than a lifetime or so old. We haven't got a clue if some of the additives in these drinks and other products mentioned above are carcinogenic, will cause impotence, or indeed contain the cure to ageing and boost fertility. We only know that they do what they are designed to do - be that taste sweet without containing sugar, or improving muscle to fat ratio.

trying to be a little more serious,

the idea that scientists or food regulators have no idea of the long term impact of additives is quite stupid. They have a very good idea of the short medium and long term impacts. Most additives have been around longer than our species. Even if a brand new chemical was invested it could and would be tested before being approved for human consumption. Also the idea that something should be totally risk free for it to be approved is a silly notion we allow cigs and alcohol and they definitely are not risk free they are risk acceptable which is the criteria for any risk assessment be it food or financial products.




Also most additives are natural. The E numbering system was put in place to make it easier to write down a coding system than to write down the chemical name of the substances which in some cases can be very long. Anyway what do you think about E948 should it be banned for a few hundred years until we know what its long term impact is? E948 is oxygen.....


here is a good link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/food/2010/08/are-e-numbers-really-bad-for-y.shtml

The man also did a BBC video on it very good one but not availible on iplayer anymore due to being older than a month

cells

Generali wrote: »

The UK has gone from paying c. 33% of their incomes on food to spending c. 10%.

The tax on sugar is going to be widened in scope, I have no doubt about that. WRT sugar we are in the same place we were WRT tobacco in 1958 and Big Soda is reacting in exactly the same way Big Tobacco did in the 1960s.

personally I dont think a sugar tax would be wise or be implementable. For a start to actually have an impact your probably looking at a penny a gram but that takes a 1kg bag of sugar in the supermarket from 60p to £10.60 it also creates a very large problem of smuggling.

If it was a problem it might simply be wiser to regulate the supermarkets into selling only a portion of their food with added sugar. So for insrance if currently the population is consuming 20% of its diet as added sugar and added sugar was a real rather than imaginary health problem then you could regulate the supermarket to sell no more than 5% of all the calories out of the door as added sugar. The supermarkets would then simply take certain items off the shelves so that the food leaving their store overall has no more than 5% added sugar. One way they may achieve this is by for instance just not selling added sugar soda and just having zero sugar versions for sale. They may stop selling other high sugar content foods eg they might have 100 types of cake and they might get rid of the ones heavy on sugar. That would lower the added sugar they sell. They would also push their supplier to change recipes to have less added sugar.

So if it was decided the nation should be eating less added sugar I think that would be the way to go. Limit the supermarkets to selling x percent of the calories sold over a month as added sugar rather than a sugar tax

robin58

Big question, where was everybody when the industry started to pile all this sugar not only in 'fizzy drinks' but all the other products it is now in.

antrobus

cells wrote: »

Is the tax 24p/litre?....

The rate has not been set.

The OBR has calculated that, on the basis of the announcement that the SDIL would raise £500m, that this implies a rate of 18p a litre for drinks over 5g sugar per 100ml, and 24p a litre, if over 8g per sugar.

http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/budgets/budget2016/budget2016_ks.pdf

cells wrote: »

...It might actually be more if there is VAT on the duty too, like with fuel, in which case it might be closer to £1.60 from £1.

Of course there will be VAT on the SDIL.:)

antrobus

cells wrote: »

personally I dont think a sugar tax would be wise or be implementable. For a start to actually have an impact your probably looking at a penny a gram but that takes a 1kg bag of sugar in the supermarket from 60p to £10.60...

Norway already has a refined sugar tax. So it would appear to be perfectly "implementable". You should already know this.

antrobus wrote: »

Norway; 7.05 kroner per kg.

I think that's about 80p per kg, or 0.08p per gram. A gram isn't a lot you know. A teaspoon of sugar weighs about 4 grams.

Besides, it's not as if we don't have experience in this country of similar taxes.

cells wrote: »

... it also creates a very large problem of smuggling.....

It always does. See tobacco, alcohol, heroin, etc and so forth.

cells wrote: »

..If it was a problem it might simply be wiser to regulate the supermarkets into selling only a portion of their food with added sugar. So for insrance if currently the population is consuming 20% of its diet as added sugar and added sugar was a real rather than imaginary health problem then you could regulate the supermarket to sell no more than 5% of all the calories out of the door as added sugar. The supermarkets would then simply take certain items off the shelves so that the food leaving their store overall has no more than 5% added sugar. One way they may achieve this is by for instance just not selling added sugar soda and just having zero sugar versions for sale. They may stop selling other high sugar content foods eg they might have 100 types of cake and they might get rid of the ones heavy on sugar. That would lower the added sugar they sell. They would also push their supplier to change recipes to have less added sugar.......

How in God's name can you ensure that supermarkets "sell no more than 5% of all the calories out of the door as added sugar". They have no control over what people buy. The only way you could do that is to issue each and every UK resident (temporary or permanent) with an electronic ration card that measured the calorie content of everything they purchased.

Technically possible no doubt. But a simple per gram sugar tax which would be so much easier (and cheaper) to implement by some factor approaching infinity.:)

P.S. It's not 'added sugar' that's the target, it's 'free sugar'.

cells wrote: »

..
So if it was decided the nation should be eating less added sugar I think that would be the way to go. Limit the supermarkets to selling x percent of the calories sold over a month as added sugar rather than a sugar tax

What's to stop me ordering stuff online from France? Single market.

antrobus

robin58 wrote: »

Big question, where was everybody when the industry started to pile all this sugar not only in 'fizzy drinks' but all the other products it is now in.

UK consumption of 'non-milk extrinsic sugars' has been falling over the past decade. There doesn't seem much evidence of anything being 'piled in'.

kinger101

cells wrote: »

trying to be a little more serious,

the idea that scientists or food regulators have no idea of the long term impact of additives is quite stupid. They have a very good idea of the short medium and long term impacts. Most additives have been around longer than our species. Even if a brand new chemical was invested it could and would be tested before being approved for human consumption. Also the idea that something should be totally risk free for it to be approved is a silly notion we allow cigs and alcohol and they definitely are not risk free they are risk acceptable which is the criteria for any risk assessment be it food or financial products.




Also most additives are natural. The E numbering system was put in place to make it easier to write down a coding system than to write down the chemical name of the substances which in some cases can be very long. Anyway what do you think about E948 should it be banned for a few hundred years until we know what its long term impact is? E948 is oxygen.....


here is a good link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/food/2010/08/are-e-numbers-really-bad-for-y.shtml

The man also did a BBC video on it very good one but not availible on iplayer anymore due to being older than a month

But nobody is doing anything about the dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) in our food.

http://www.dhmo.org/

DHMO is known to cause thousands of death every year.