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Sugar tax 'may be necessary', England's chief medical officer says | Sugar tax 'may be necessary', England's chief medical officer says |
(about 2 hours later) | |
A sugar tax may have to be introduced to curb obesity rates, the chief medical officer for England has said. | |
Dame Sally Davies told a committee of MPs that unless the government was strong with food and drink manufacturers, it was unlikely they would resize their products. | |
She said she believed "the research will find sugar is addictive", and that "we may need to introduce a sugar tax". | |
The food industry said it was working on reducing sugar in products. | |
Speaking to the health select committee, Dame Sally said: "We have normalised being overweight. I do fear this generation of children will live less than my parents' generation." | |
Earlier this year doctors called for a soft drinks tax to reduce sugar intake. | Earlier this year doctors called for a soft drinks tax to reduce sugar intake. |
'Voluntary pledges' | |
The charity Sustain, which advises the government on the food and farming industry, says the UK consumes more than 5,727 million litres of sugary soft drinks a year. Adding a 20p tax for every litre sold would raise more than £1.1bn. | |
The Department of Health already has a "responsibility deal" - which is a series of voluntary pledges by industry designed to tackle issues such as obesity. | |
Much of the focus of those pledges is on reducing salt and calorie count rather than sugar per se. | |
And ministers are also pushing ahead with front-of-pack labelling, which includes information about sugar, but again, this will be voluntary. | |
Front-and-back labelling will include a combination of colour coding and nutritional information which will be used to show how much fat, salt and sugar and how many calories are in each product. |