Does the UK need a 50% sugary drink tax?

The common proposed 20% sugar tax is not enough according to some, with obesity experts calling for a sugar tax of 50% to be implemented instead, in order to significantly alter the nation’s eating and drinking habits.

Health professionals from the charity National Obesity Forum argue that the 20% being lobbied by Public Health England would simply be an “insufficient” deterrent for buying sugary drinks.
Therefore, if this plan came to fruition, a 330ml bottle of coke would surge from the typical price of 99p to £1.49 – a huge increase.

This recommendation comes after prime minster David Cameron seemed to suggest last week that the Government may consider bringing in a levy on fizzy drinks this year after promising a “fully worked-up programme” for combating an increasingly problematic UK obesity crisis.

Mr Cameron said the consumption of sugary drinks were also responsible for having a negative effect on NHS money through increased cases of cancer and heart disease.

At a press conference on Thursday, Mr Cameron said: “I don’t really want to put new taxes onto anything.

“But we do have to recognise that we face potentially in Britain something of an obesity crisis when we look at the effect of obesity on not just diabetes but the effect on heart disease, potentially on cancer, we look at the costs on the NHS, the life-shortening potential of these problems.

“We do need to have a fully-worked up programme to deal with this problem and address these issues in Britain and we’ll be making announcements later this year.”

Professor David Haslam, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, commented: “Anything less than a 50 per cent tax on sugary drinks will be insufficient as a disincentive to consumers.

“We don’t currently support taxing food products…but sugary drinks have no place in anyone’s diet.”
If the prime minister decides to go ahead with his own government-ordered report’s plan of introducing a 20% sugar tax, this would be a surprising U-turn by Mr Cameron, who commented only in October that he was not behind the idea of a sugar tax.

At the time, his spokeswoman added there were “more effective ways of tackling this issue than putting a tax on sugar”.

The National Obesity Forum is not the only British organisation calling for a tax on sugary drinks. Last week the Cancer Research UK and the UK Health Forum released a collaborative report urging for new measures for reducing obesity rates, such as the introduction of a tax specifically on the sale of sugar-sweetened beverages.

Larger hospital mortuary fridges needed due to obesity crisis

The worrying UK obesity crisis has been further highlighted by the fact that it has emerged hospitals are being forced to purchase specialist equipment to keep corpses cool in mortuary fridges because the bodies are simply too big.

Due to a burgeoning obesity crisis spreading around the UK with poor diet and inactive lifestyles on the rise, the NHS are spending millions as hospitals are now having to increase the width of corridors, as well as provide lifting equipment and stronger, reinforced beds to cater for the ever-growing number of obese patients.

Figures acquired by The Telegraph show that NHS funds have been depleted of least £5.5 million in the last three years so that hospitals can be adapted to cope with the increasing number of larger patients coming through their doors.

This has led to some health experts warning that the cost of treating overweight and obese patients may soar to at least £10 million annually as waistlines continue to expand.

Around a quarter of adults in Britain are believed to be obese, and predictions state this could spiral to more than half the population within the next three decades.

A Freedom of Information request describes how hospitals are being forced to buy specialist beds, wheelchairs, commodes and crutches for larger patients.

For instance, a Yeovil District Hospital NHS Trust had to spend £15,000 on a bariatric body cooling system, a storage facility for the bodies of obese patients when they are unable to fit into regular sized mortuary fridges.

Last year Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kings Lynn, also had to spend more on a bariatric body store fridge for obese patients, forking out £30,000 for the fridge and an extra £20,000 just to strengthen an operating theatre floor.

Meanwhile, Doncaster and Bassetlaw NHS Trust had to widen their corridors so obese patients could fit through them, at a cost of £80,000, whilst Milton Keynes Hospital were paying £65 each day to hire a bed fit to hold the weight of a patient weighing nearly half a ton (400kg).

The National Obesity Forum’s Tam Fry said that NHS costs for obesity are only going to rise.
He said: “We are not seeing the end of the obesity problem and people are getting fatter. It has got to such a point that so much now has to be widened and strengthened. That runs to beds, hoists, wheelchairs and operating tables. And it also includes ambulances, morgues and crematoriums.”

Mr Fry added: “I think these costs will continue to increase. The problem is what we saw as “big” 20 years ago is now normal.”

Dr Aseem Malhotra, a director of Action on Sugar, said: “Inaction is not an option. I think diets should be made part of health policy. We need to tackle the root cause, the food environment – otherwise we will be crippled by the cost.”

Taxpayers foot the bill for breast reduction surgery in teenage girls

More shocking news regarding the obesity crisis in Britain has come to light this week, which could force the government’s hand in devising more effective ways to tackle the rising epidemic. According to Department of Health (DOH) figures, obese young girls are receiving breast reduction surgeries through the National Health Service (NHS), all paid for by the taxpayer of course.

Stats show that the youngest person to be given one of these operations was aged just 11 years old incredibly. Also, in the previous five years there has been more than 100 girls aged 16 who have undergone the procedures, some of which can cost the taxpayer a hefty £5,000 an operation. The most common age group for women to undergo breast reduction surgery is between 35 to 55 according to the figures, with the oldest being 90, and in the last five years there have been 21,328 women (of all ages) to have the surgery.

Health officials say that the need for these types of operations could be down to the fact that children are generally a lot heavier than previous times, and this extra weight is causing massive strain on their backs.

Critics have hit out at the news though, arguing that the young girls should not be permitted to have breast reduction surgeries in their teenage years at a time when their bodies are still in the development stages. Not only this, but many have blasted that the NHS should be not drained of £5,000 an operation at a time when their budgets are already being stretched thin due to a seemingly never-ending recession. Moreover, there are a high number of patients with more life-threatening health conditions who are not receiving adequate treatment and medication due to spiralling waiting lists, so this news will no doubt cause outrage.

The Department of Health have reacted to the fury, and spoke to try and defend the numbers, stating that the operations were allocated purely for clinical reasons, and not for aesthetic purposes. The clinical reasons they put forth include hyperplastic abnormalities (excessive increase of breast tissue), juvenile gigantomastia (excessive increase of breast tissue during adolescence), or giant fibroadeoma (a non-cancerous lump).

In addition, Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, said: “Obesity will enlarge the breast size so it is perhaps natural that women concerned about their appearance would want to reduce the size of their breasts. Obesity on top of large breast size would make the back pain worse. It all goes in unison, and the solution is not to get fat. It can be hard to know when assessing young girls whether it is actual fatness or their breasts, so I wouldn’t consider breast reduction in children.”

The alarming figures to be released by the DOH may now prompt the government into serious action. More work needs to be done to promote healthy eating and regular exercise. We are a nation of fast-food and computer game addicts, and it seems the rot is starting at a very early age. Parents would be advised to get their children involved in active past-times such as football, netball, rounders, swimming, etc. and make sure they themselves eat their nutritious ‘5-a-day’. There is a better chance that children will eat more fruit and vegetables if their parents are doing the same thing!

Obesity costs the NHS millions of pounds each year

More news has emerged this week that demonstrates just how bad the obesity epidemic is within the UK. Statistics show that there are approximately over 110,000 people in England alone, who have a Body Mass Index of over 50. To put this into context, a person who has a BMI score that falls between 25 and 29.9 is classed as ‘obese’. There are an ever-growing number of overweight people with sky-high BMIs that are over 50 and these people are apparently costing the NHS over £450million each year.

The figures emerge less than a month after Medical Specialists Pharmacy reported how Welsh teenager Gemma Davis had to be removed from her house and hospitalised due to complications arising from her obesity. Gemma’s weight was last noted as 63stone, with a staggering BMI of 142.3 Claims also arose last month that suggested there are at least 200 morbidly obese people in the UK who are draining the NHS of £16million annually because they are too big to leave their home. In addition, it is believed there are 11million people in England alone with a BMI of at least 30. The epidemic clearly needs rectifying by the government as soon as possible.

Even worse, it is expected that by the year 2025, nearly half of men and over a third of women will be obese. This has been calculated using The Foresight report, a scientific model that is used to aid government policies. According to figures published back in 2009, nearly a quarter of adults (22% of men and 24% of women) in England were in the ‘obese’ category.

The problems sometimes start at an early age. This is shown in new research from experts at Newcastle University, who electronically monitored 508 schoolchildren who were all aged between 8 and 10 years of age. The children were tracked on just how active they were during the time they were actually awake and on average across both sexes, only 4% of their time (about 20 minutes) was actually because of physical activity. However, the boys in the study were shown to be more active than the girls. One main reason for the shocking inactivity in the children has been identified as the growing number of children these days that prefer to sit indoors and play computer games instead of playing out with their friends.

Dr Mark Pearce was lead researcher and he spoke out on their findings, “Given the importance of physical activity in maintaining good health, we know we need to get our kids more active. What we hadn’t known until now is how young we need to be catching them.” According to the Department of Health, children who are aged between 5 and 19 years of age should ideally participate in at least an hour of moderate to vigorous activity every day. Within all this, they also should engage in sports and exercise than strengthens their core muscles and bones, including gymnastics, skipping and dancing.

Obesity experts have warned that factors such as increasing demands for junk food from children are not helping matters. Also many older fathers may have more responsibility at work and working longer hours, which then leads to less time for their children and simple things like playing football with them, etc. Tam Fry, a member of the National Obesity Forum, gave his opinion on the crisis, “Exercise alone won’t bring down obesity levels but it is desperately important to the health of the child and it will make them concentrate better in the classroom and improve their behaviour.”