Renewed push for sugar tax and curbs on junk food advertising

Obesity

By Mardi Chapman

19 Apr 2018

Support for a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) in Australia is still high – as part of a comprehensive approach to decreasing overweight and obesity in the community, and health sequelae such as type 2 diabetes.

The so-called ‘sugar tax’ has been mooted for years and is a reality in an increasing number of countries around the world.

A sugar tax went live in the UK this month and has already achieved some early success as manufacturers reduced the sugar content in many of their products to avoid the tax.

A sugar tax remains one of the AMA’s key nutrition recommendations in 2018.

“There is strong agreement among health bodies that prohibiting food advertising to children, and a tax on sugar sweetened beverages, are the required next steps.”

“Ideally, the food industry should be part of the process of refining and implementing these interventions, but progress should not be slowed by their unwillingness,” the AMA statement said.

And Diabetes Australia still stands by their 2017 position to target consumption of energy-dense but nutrient-poor, sugar-sweetened beverages.

“Beverages are the largest source of free sugars in the Australian diet.”

“Young people, low-income consumers and those most at risk of obesity are most responsive to food and beverage price changes, and are likely to gain the largest health benefit from a levy on sugary drinks due to reduced consumption.”

The Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) is also supportive of a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

“Dietitians have been calling for measures to improve the nutritional health of the Australian population for many years – and reducing the amount of discretionary or ‘junk’ foods in the Australian diet is a key part of this,” they told the limbic.

However a sugar tax was not enough on its own.

“Australia needs a multi-faceted, long-term approach to reducing obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases. Any funding arising from a sugar tax should be invested in public health strategies to improve nutrition and reduce obesity, rather than consolidated revenue,” the DAA said.

New Australian data has shown that other strategies such as limiting junk food advertising to children were also urgently needed.

The study logged 30,000 hours of free-to-air television including more than 500 hours of advertising during which some 800 food ads were shown 97,837 times.

It found discretionary or unhealthy foods, including fast foods, confectionary, sugar-sweetened beverages and snack foods, were advertised more than twice as often as healthy foods including during children’s viewing times.

“Using national data on the average time that children spend watching television (80 min/day) and applying the overall estimate of food advertising, we calculated that 5–8-year-olds are exposed to 827 advertisements and 4 h of discretionary food advertising, every year,” the research said.

“The fact that children are considered vulnerable to the persuasive content of advertising, coupled with high exposure to television advertising, it is not surprising that discretionary foods have become an everyday component of Australian children diets.”

However, federal Minister for Health Greg Hunt has repeatedly ruled out Coalition support for a sugar tax, saying that nutritional labelling and educational measures were sufficient to curb unhealthy dietary habits contributing to obesity.

“We don’t believe increasing the family grocery bill at the supermarket is the answer to this challenge,” a spokesman for the minister said in January 2018.

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