Sugar taxes reduce sugar intake which reduces healthcare costs

[Zelensky2]

Superb post Zel. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with 100 percent of everything and I’m not anal enough to be critical of those that have the occasional sugary drink or just stick to white rice. I’d add salt to that list by the way.

I will add that there is a place for sugary drinks too. Personally, I make my own sports drink from dextrose, 1 whole juiced grapefruit, pinch of salt and 1.5L of water). It's delicious, super high GI (the 'best' sugar you can get) cheap and doesn't involve buying more plastic bottles for landfill.

But importantly I ONLY drink it during specific forms of exercise (High intensity outdoor sport entailing significant amounts of aerobic/anaerobic stress). Never in the gym and of course never when sedentary.

[Zelensky2]

There is still much to learn about nutrition and studies are incredibly inconsistent due to many factors so right away anyone that thinks they have all the answers is someone to be wary of. That being said, there is growing evidence that diets that are too high in carbohydrates are detrimental to health and unfortunately, there are large swathes of the population that obtain a disproportionate amount of their calories from carbs. I have no issues with sin taxes, they do have some effect and unfortunately, too often junk food is cheaper than healthier alternatives. Nothing wrong with tilting the scale the other way.

I like a balanced approach such as the one suggested by Don Lehman. Start your diet plan by making sure that you have enough protein which should be somewhere around 1g per kg of body weight and then tack on a balance of fat and carbs making sure there's also plenty of fibers. I don't believe in extremism with diets that are low this or low that. I will never be swayed by a diet that claims it's preferable to have a tub of sour cream over a banana because you know carbs are evil...

You should be more careful about your generalisations - The difference between too many carbs and the right amount of carbs is almost entirely attributable to whether those carbs are refined or not.

Diets too high in refined (and/or further processed) carbs are undoubtedly detrimental to health, and within both the refined (and non-refined) carbs sub-categories there are both 'better' carbs and worse.

Free sugar is targeted by sugar taxes for that exact reason.

[East_coast]

It's not carbs per se that are the problem (In reality it's not anything specific that's the problem), it's a combination of factors, but there are undoubtedly some problems that are bigger contributors than others.

Free sugar in drinkable form is probably the biggest - well, if you exclude many people's general attitude to diet and exercise.

So first things first: "You can't train your way out of a bad diet" - Well actually, maybe you can: What is blatantly obvious is that working out hard requires dedication and effort and that effort generally leads to better lifestyle choices, primarily diet.

So if you want a better diet, started dedicating yourself to exercise and it will come, partly because the effort involved dictates that the relative 'dietary sacrifices' (they cease to be sacrifices eventually and become choices) are less personally significant, partly because your body starts to seek out the kind of nutrition that promotes better exercise (Better exercise is a direct way of saying 'better health') and partly because you just 'feel better' eating more healthily and you become more in tune with yourself physically - It's a VERY positive feedback loop - But it comes at a cost - effort, super rewarding effort, but real genuine hard graft.

But that graft is the difference between people that are healthy and have great quality of life and those that..... don't.

I'm lucky, I grew up being super active, I love it. It's what I've always done, but I learned long ago that pushing yourself is the key. Everyone can learn to push themselves... pushing yourself is relative to your ability and thus it's not easy for anyone, but it's true that if you love it, it's always going to easier - You can learn to love it - it's addictive, embrace it!

Now back to sugar: @East_coast lumping of fruit and fruit juices into the same check-box, demonstrates to me how little many people still understand about this.

@Elegiaque is right, Robert Lustig is one of the best voices on the subject. And his central ethos is bang on:

Calories are a bullshit way to measure diet.
Free sugar (sugar separated from fibre) is the number one dietary problem in the developed world
Whole fruit (NOT 'whole fruit juice') is a great addition to your diet - As soon as you turn that fructose into a drinkable form you create problems...

And as an extension to that, carbs are not 'the enemy' - If you've adopted most of what I've written (are frequently pushing yourself in exercise) then carbs will be an essential pert of your diet - Even if you haven't, carbs are an important source of glycogen. The key again is fibre.

There is no problem with 'rice' or 'bread' in a diet (quantity dependant), there is more of a problem with refined rice (the white rice so ubiqtuous here) - Substitute that baa-fan for brown rice, red rice, black rice (not that bullshit healthy mix rice which is just white rice with a fairly small percentage of the latter mixed in) and you will make immediate gains in your blood sugar/insulin ratio's, amount that you eat and thus general health. It's the same story with bread - However bread is more difficult to know what you're getting in terms of fibre relative to the quality of carbs..

Ultimately sugar is added to food because: we evolved to seek it out and thus love it, but ultimately because companies profit by doing so - thus most people need protecting from profit driven corporates who are exploiting our evolutionary preferences for their own gain and have the deck stacked in their favour. Thus taxes do work...

So what should be taxed? - A processing tax:
1) Added sugars in drinkable form taxed most heavily: coke or flavoured water or yogurt drinks etc.
2) Added sugar in foods that effectively are eaten: yogurt or chocolate or pasta sauce
3) natural sugars in drinkable form: so fruit juice less so than coke.
4) De-fibred carbs: white rice, doughnuts (for the flour, the sugar would be taxed under regime 2) etc

Enough for now...

They were lumped in as they do contain high sugar levels compared to water.

[Zelensky2]

They were lumped in as they do contain high sugar levels compared to water.

Ok, understood, but that's bad science - They (Fruit compared with fruit juices ) are processed very differently in your body; and importantly how they are consumed is different.

One can think about the example of crack cocaine vs regular coke - The delivery method - smoking, is what makes crack so addictive - The chemical composition is largely irrelevant. But more than just the chemistry of the delivery method, the bigger volume of sugars that become available via the drinking method (and the speed with which they are available) as opposed to eating is very different.

In general, many people would benefit from eating more fruit, not less, but again the specific type of fruit has some bearing too....

[ByeByeEngland]

I think it can be summed up with ‘everything in moderation’ My sin is offal (and smoking). My offset is a balanced diet and steps (now I’m working again down to 15,000 minimum from 20K but I don’t miss a day and currently averaging 18K
I do start the day with something like toasted egg and bacon with maybe black pudding or haggis

it was easier for my generation. I would be sent to the greengrocer for fresh veg and the bakery for fresh bread. We never went without, often had home made cakes, trifles etc and often sweets (candy). Did we have processed food? Yep sure from time to time. Milk was sterilised or pasturised and that was it. None of this semi or 0 fat stuff. I don’t remember when Coke Zero or equivalents came in but certainly not when I was a kid and I was never denied a Coke on a family visit to a pub

Todays parents definitely have it much tougher than mine when it comes to kids and food. But as I said much earlier in the thread back in my day an overweight kid at school was a rarity.

the other point is someone on here mentioned calories and diets. I agree. Utter hogwash, guess what happens when the calorie intake goes up again.

I have been highly overweight before. Less intake, more outtake and don’t deprive yourself unnecessarily and don’t worry if you have a blow out day and don’t weigh yourselves every day.

A study a few years back which I wished I’d kept more or less mentioned the above and said 10K a day with sensible (not deprived) eating sees about 1KG weight loss a week. Of all the reports I read it was the most accurate and the least pontificating.

[Ebi the shrimp]

I will add that there is a place for sugary drinks too. Personally, I make my own sports drink from dextrose, 1 whole juiced grapefruit, pinch of salt and 1.5L of water).

Dextrose is a refined carbohydrate.

It's delicious, super high GI (the 'best' sugar you can get) cheap and doesn't involve buying more plastic bottles for landfill.

White rice and bread fall lower on the GI scale that dextrose.
?????????

[Skyhook]

Maybe instead of glycemic index is wrong, it should be based on the % carbohydrates. Food like rice and cerals should be taxed to hell even on an exponential curve.

Everything you said and I'd add, the processed food and fast food industry. Needs to be greatly reigned in, in my opinion.

[DonDiego]

You should be more careful about your generalisations - The difference between too many carbs and the right amount of carbs is almost entirely attributable to whether those carbs are refined or not.

Diets too high in refined (and/or further processed) carbs are undoubtedly detrimental to health, and within both the refined (and non-refined) carbs sub-categories there are both 'better' carbs and worse.

Free sugar is targeted by sugar taxes for that exact reason.

While I don't disagree with much of your diatribe, you embody the perfect example of people claiming to have answers when such answers are yet to be proven. You state as facts things that are currently being studied but then again that is your style... You remind me very much of Trump when he speaks...

[Zelensky2]

Dextrose is a refined carbohydrate.

White rice and bread fall lower on the GI scale that dextrose.
?????????

Correct, literally everything falls lower on the GI scale than dextrose/glucose, they have a rating of 100.

That’s the whole point of taking it during very specific forms of very intense exercise, as described above.

That’s why oversimplifications like the one provided by Don Diego, so often get it wrong, because the rules don’t apply universally,

[Zelensky2]

While I don't disagree with much of your diatribe, you embody the perfect example of people claiming to have answers when such answers are yet to be proven. You state as facts things that are currently being studied but then again that is your style... You remind me very much of Trump when he speaks...

The fact that you are behind the curve on this subject comes as no surprise to anyone.

The research into free sugars is extremely well advanced, and already proven fact, which is why you already have sugar taxes in place.

Even some governments are further ahead on the subject in this regard….and that says a lot.