Professor Sir Chris Whitty has advised the government that a fat tax on junk food should be implemented in order to reduce childhood obesity, Daily Dazzling Dawn understand.The chief medical officer advocated for a new tax on unhealthy food and incentives for the food industry to create healthier options in his annual report. There are "healthy food deserts" in areas where kids are solely exposed to junk food, according to England's top doctor, who also claimed that obesity and the diseases it brings are "setting up children to live a shorter and unhealthier life."The Government is looking at a raft of measures to improve public health. Its plans to tackle the worklessness crisis suggested taxes on unhealthy foods could help reduce obesity and get people back to work.
A range of other so-called “sin taxes” have already been introduced by Labour, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves increasing tax rates on sugary soft drinks, tobacco and vapes, and spirits, wines, and bottled beer, in the autumn Budget.One of the key recommendations in Sir Chris’s report, drawn up in collaboration with experts at the think tank Impact on Urban Health, is that the Government introduces a “levy on unhealthy food products”.
The suggested measures in the report revolve around: “Incentivisation – addressed through a levy on unhealthy food products and by encouraging innovation in the food industry.”It proposes either an “industry-wide levy on salt and sugar”, a “category-based tax like Soft Drinks Industry Levy” to include products such as confectionery, or “an excess profits levy to retailers or producers of products with high sugar and salt content”.
The chief medical officer produces an annual report designed to give the Government independent insight into the public’s health and recommendations on where and how it can be improved.
Although not binding to the Government, previous reports led to the introduction of the sugar tax on soft drinks in 2018.Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, described the tax last year as shadow health secretary as “without a doubt one of the most effective public policy interventions on public health under the Conservatives”.
However, critics believe such levies are just another way to tax the poor.
Chris Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, told The Telegraph: “Public sector fat cats like Chris Whitty are obsessed with taxing the poor. They have no answers to the structural problems affecting the horrendously inefficient NHS. Chris Whitty is yesterday’s man preaching yesterday’s solutions that have been shown to fail.”
For this year’s report, Sir Chris focused on health in UK cities, and in particular, the impact of issues such as junk food, air pollution and lack of green spaces for children.
Sir Chris’s report – published on Thursday – said: “Healthy food deserts combined with junk food advertising set children and adults up to live a shorter and unhealthier life through obesity and the diseases it causes, particularly in the more deprived areas of our cities.”
It found there was “a heavy concentration of fast-food outlets concentrating on a limited range of products high in fat, sugar and salt, a high density of advertising of unhealthy foods and limited shopping opportunities”.
NHS data published last month revealed that about one in 10 children in the first year of school was obese, rising to almost one in four by Year 6 when children are 10 or 11 years old.
It comes as British children have been declared the unhealthiest in the world, overtaking the United States as the country whereby the most ultra-processed food (UPFs) is consumed.
A study by the University of São Paulo found 61 per cent of two to five-year-olds’ diets in Britain were made up of UPFs, compared to 58 per cent in the US. It is two to three times the amount consumed in South American countries, where rules on food labelling are stricter, and countries such as Mexico and Colombia have introduced their own “fat taxes”.
A similar initiative was rolled out in Denmark but overturned within a year.
The report urged the Government and local policymakers to tackle the root causes of unhealthy eating in England’s cities, including that healthy food “is almost twice as expensive as unhealthy food”.It said children and families in inner-city areas are less likely to have access to healthy, affordable food options in local shops, restaurants and takeaways and are “disproportionately exposed to unhealthy food advertising”.
Four out of five outdoor billboards in England and Wales are in poorer areas and “many of these are advertising junk food”, while poorer regions are often “saturated with fast-food outlets physically and online”, the study found.
Previous and current governments “have recognised the importance of reformulating the recipes of food and drink options to reduce the amount of fat, salt and sugar in products”. However, the “failure to mandate this approach” and instead leaving it up to industry has led to a lack of meaningful progress.
Sir Chris said “calorie-dense, processed food … makes up the majority of our modern diets”.
He added: “In fact, we dedicate almost as much land to growing sugar (110,000 hectares) as we do to growing all of the rest of the UK’s vegetables (116,000 hectares).”
Humans are “genetically wired to crave calorie-rich food” so it is “unwise to think we can rely on education and willpower alone to curb our appetites and to prevent the many diet-related diseases that constitute some of the biggest threats to public health”.
Other topics in the report included promoting “active travel” in cities so people can rely less on cars, tackling air pollution, and encouraging health services to be more adaptable to better serve residents.
Sir Chris said: “Cities provide great opportunities for a healthier life but many, especially in areas of deprivation, have poor access to healthy food choices, exercise and are exposed to air pollution. These are soluble problems.”
The Government has already confirmed a suite of health measures, including a ban on junk food adverts online – and before 9pm – and a smoking ban for anyone born from 2009 onwards.
The Government has also pledged to ban smoking and vaping outside of schools, hospitals, and playgrounds, and energy drinks for under-16s.
Its “Get Britain Working” paper to fix the country’s worklessness crisis suggested taxes on unhealthy foods could help reduce obesity and get people back to work.
A Government spokesperson said: “We have no plans for new levies on food.”