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Sugar Tax Revisited

Sugar Tax Revisited

Following on from my post on a sugar tax in March, the issue has been raised again – check out this article for more info.

The obesity issue isn’t going away, despite the increased awareness and strategies to deal with the problem. Unless some strong action is taken we won’t see any meaningful change. It’s time to start educating the future generations about health. Anything health-related is a bolt-on subject in the UK, used to fill time in the curriculum.

sugar

Food technology as a school subject is a joke – I didn’t learn a thing about cooking, food storage or preparation. I didn’t learn where food comes from, when it’s in season or even how and where it’s grown. As far as I knew there was no such thing as seasons for food – it was just in a shop when you wanted it. This is incredible, when you realise the food we eat is the bedrock of our health – it should be as important and Maths, English and Science.

Prioritising health, food and lifestyle subjects are vital in schools if we want to improve the health of the nation for the long term. If we didn’t waste so much time on subjects such as music, drama, religious studies etc (I’m not saying they should be removed, they could just be voluntary) then teachers would have more opportunity to teach health from a young age.

Education should surely evolve in line with modern life and the requirements that go with it, but it seems children follow a similar curriculum to the one I did 20 years ago. Why?

Obesity isn’t a short-term problem – it takes a long time to reach a state of obesity and a long time to lose the weight. Start with the youth and you are preventing the problem from getting worse.

At least Action on Sugar are trying to make a difference. Whilst I don’t agree with all of their measures and would add extra in, at least they are having a go!

The proposed measures are:

  • Reduce added sugars in food by 40% by 2020
  • Ban all forms of targeted marketing of ultra-processed, unhealthy foods and drinks to children
  • Disassociate physical activity with obesity by banning junk food sports sponsorships
  • Reduce fat by 15% in ultra-processed foods by 2020
  • Limit the availability of ultra-processed foods and sweetened soft drinks as well as reducing portion sizes
  • Introduce a sugar tax to incentivise healthier food

Something has to change. Hopefully these kind of awareness campaigns will see the start of it.

Published by

HoylesFitness

Owner of www.hoylesfitness.com. Personal Trainer, Father and fitness copy writer. Working hard making the world fitter and healthier!

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