FOOD CITY Oliver Hartwich agrees that “excessive sugar consumption is not conducive to better health”; he agrees that we are consuming excessive sugar and he agrees that sugar is correctly “linked to a number of health problems ranging from tooth decay to diabetes and obesity.” What he doesn’t agree on is how we stop this excessive sugar consumption. In fact, he doesn’t have an answer, except to remind readers that consumption in moderation might be the most effective means of stopping the harm the over consumption of sugar is creating. Government is there to protect its citizens, and sometimes they have to be protected against themselves. That is why we have traffic lights and stop signs. Can you imagine a city without these means of controlling traffic? Can you imagine if it was left to citizens to decide the rules of the road every day? In ‘Food City’, citizens do decide their own rules of the road. They over consume sugar faster than they can go through red lights. Somehow they have to be stopped, not just for their own 46 JUNE 2016 health, but also for the health of the country. The harm being done in terms of tooth decay and obesity are having a real impact on the health budget. It continues to increase as a percentage of the total budget. ‘Food City’ is incentivised to cause more crashes on our roads every year – they add sugar to everything from bread to tomato sauce. New Zealanders are coaxed into sugar-laden products from an early age, and they love the taste of sugar. Their bodies don’t, and by time they realise the harm being done, they are addicted to the substance. Some have the self-control to reduce their sugar consumption, but the fact is that people living especially in low socio economic areas, do not have that same self-control. This is where Government has to take action. Some years ago they told car manufacturers to put seat belts in cars, and made it law that all passengers should wear them. Many deaths have been saved as a result of the introduction of compulsory seat belts. The same will happen when sugar consumption is reduced as a result of Government intervention. The critics see Government intervention as promotion of the ‘Nanny State’ – but it is a nanny state where citizens are forced to pay higher taxes because the health budget has risen disproportionately…because Government has done nothing to control it. I promoted the ‘Sugar Reduction Incentive’ in the most recent issue of Food Technology. This put forward the premise that no product needs to have more than 10% added sugar in it, and if it did, it would be taxed at 30%. Under this proposal, over a six-year period, manufacturers are incentivised to reduce sugar to a maximum of four per cent, or be taxed at the 30 per cent rate. This gives time for the consumer to wean off their sugar habit (addiction), and manufacturers time to adjust their manufacturing process. This is a simple measure to administer, as manufacturers cannot hide the amount of sugar they are purchasing. For 50 years the tobacco industry fought Governments against legislating taxation of cigarettes. They had the same arguments that ‘Food City’ put forward for now not legislating against sugar. Nobody would argue that tobacco taxes have worked; the consumption of cigarettes has fallen dramatically, but it needed Government intervention for that to happen. Let that same Government intervention play its hand in reducing sugar consumption, reducing tooth decay, obesity and Type 2 diabetes, and reducing the increasing health budget as a proportion of the total budget. MYSAY INCENTIVISED TO ADD SUGAR Last month Tony Falkenstein, the chief executive of Just Water International Ltd, wrote a letter to NZ Food Technology offering a solution to the health effects of the over-consumption of sugar, which included a progressive tax on all added sugar. In the same edition Oliver Hartwich, the executive director of The New Zealand Initiative, wrote an article on why sugar taxes wouldn’t work. Here, Tony Falkenstein expands his view on why a sugar tax is imperative.
1-48 FT June16
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