the tax on snacks – breaking latest news is coming

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
LONDON – The first tax in the world on snacks is arriving in Great Britain: a tax on sugar and salt contained in foods that aims to discourage the consumption of snacks that are harmful to health. It is the main recommendation contained in the National Food Strategy which is published today, a report drawn up by a commission appointed by the government of Boris Johnson and led by Henry Dimbleby, the founder of Leon, the sustainable and healthy fast food chain.

The snack tax would impose £ 3 per kilo on sugar and £ 6 per kilo on salt used for food preparation, for a total of € 4 billion per year.: money that should be used to enable general practitioners to prescribe fruit and vegetables as well as cooking classes for their patients. The aim is to counter the decline in the health of the British population: according to the report, junk food contributes to the deaths of 64,000 people a year and imposes an increase in costs for the national health service of 74 billion pounds. There are 13 million obese adults in Britain, a figure that has doubled over the past twenty years; almost one in four children who arrive in kindergarten is overweight and at the end of primary school one in three children is overweight. A “fat epidemic” which also explains the high mortality rate due to Covid, where excess weight was found to be an aggravating factor.

In practice, the snack tax would raise the price of a Mars bar from 60 to 69 cents and a package of Frosties cereal from £ 3 to 3.87: the authors of the report explain that it is an incentive for the industry to reformulate recipes and reduce the sugar and salt content in snacks, a bit like what happened with fizzy drinks after the introduction of the sugar tax in 2018. .

The proposals were welcomed by health and environmental activists, but trade associations, such as the Food and Beverage Federation, have pointed out that the tax on snacks will affect the poorest families, who are already in difficulty and resort to cheaper food in the absence of alternatives: packaged snacks are in fact much more affordable than fresh food. “Once again – they also commented from the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank – the rich want to beat ordinary people with hidden taxes”. And it is no coincidence that theSun, the tabloid read by the popular classes, has lashed out against the idea of ​​hitting “our favorite snacks.”

However, Boris Johnson seems intent on continuing his crusade against obesity, which he had already launched last year: also a personal goal, since he himself went on a diet, encouraged by his wife, and started jogging. But he will have to challenge the instincts of his conservative party, where many are against the idea of ​​a “nanny state”, a nanny state that prescribes to citizens how to behave also on the level of personal health: a debate that has become even more acute in sequel to the pandemic.