Sweeteners
have advantages over her local hospital these days, stocked as it is with a Greggs bakery. “I started nursing 49 years ago,” she says, “and there was no such thing as type 2 diabetes – it was called elderly onset diabetes.”
Sugar crash
Processed foods like Greggs may be ‘the nation’s favourite’, but is it harming our health?
consumption in food in a range of ways. In the UK, Public Health England launched the ‘Sugar Smart’ campaign in 2016, offering educational packs about the dangers of sugar to parents. That’s shadowed by a parallel focus on marketing. Though its implementation has been pushed back to 2025, the government has committed to banning adverts for sugary drinks both on TV and online.
“I started nursing 49 years ago, and there was no such thing as type two diabetes – it was called elderly onset diabetes.”
Jane DeVille-Almond
£53bn 30g
The total annual estimated cost of obesity in the UK.
Frontier Economics
The average reduction of household sugar consumption in a week after the ‘sugar tax’ levy.
NDPH 68
Yet considering the success of compulsory targets when it comes to sugary drinks, is a more robust approach needed? MacGregor, for his part, has no doubt. There’s “no reason” why you shouldn’t regulate sugar in foods, he says. “We have trigger targets in the UK to reduce it – but they’re not doing it.” It’s a reasonable point, though, and even the industry itself has on occasion advocated for clearer guidelines. A typical example comes from Gavin Partington, director general of the British Soft Drinks Association, who noted in 2018 that it’s “no surprise” that the stricter rules for fizzy drinks meant progress was faster there.
But if stricter rules are probably part of the solution,
DeVille-Almond warns that they must be accompanied by a general re-evaluation of how the British relate to food. To explain what she means, she recalls her own early career as a nurse in the 1970s. In those times, her hospital canteen served little more than “meat and veg”, with barely a chip in sight. Though most modern punters would probably dismiss that as drab, DeVille-Almond stresses that this approach does
Of course, changing the food options available to vulnerable patients is one way of cutting their sugar intake. But what about when they leave the care of the state and are left to their own devices at home? For DeVille-Almond, success here requires an even more fundamental culinary revolution, particularly when it comes to people further down the socioeconomic ladder. This is another point supported by the numbers. English adults living in the poorest neighbourhoods are twice as likely to be obese when compared with their richer compatriots, according to a report in Plos Medicine. This is far from a law of nature: though she also grew up poor, DeVille- Almond notes that her family always ate decent meals, while the experiences of countries like Italy and Greece imply that high-sugar habits can be expunged with time and culture. Clearly, prodding a nation of cake lovers towards a Mediterranean-style diet won’t be achieved overnight. DeVille-Almond is unsure of the alternatives, especially as a lack of funding in the NHS may ultimately mean that overweight people are obliged to pay for their own care. It goes without saying that integrating a degree of personal financial responsibility into health is anathema to many, not least DeVille-Almond herself, especially in a country weaned on the Bevanite dream of universal aid. But given the strain the NHS is under already, she suggests that we’ll finally reach that point regardless, even as she concedes that her view represents a worst-case “Armageddon” scenario.
MacGregor also approaches the problem from a financial perspective. With politicians worried about being tarred with the dreaded ‘nanny state’ brush, he’s sceptical that a fizzy drinks-style levy on sugary food can make much headway in the UK – as long as it’s promoted moralistically. As an alternative, MacGregor argues that policymakers should focus on wallets rather than blood-sugar levels, noting that slashing the tax burden could ultimately be an appealing pitch for tougher sugar laws. As MacGregor says, the total cost of obesity is estimated to be upwards of £53bn a year. “That’s a substantial portion of the national health budget.” Maybe so. But for as long as Britons find it more pleasant to eat doughnuts than they do fresh fish, and they see their health as a challenge to be fixed by the state, it’s hard to see sugar consumption go anywhere but up. ●
Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com
Wozzie/
Shutterstock.com
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