Dr Frank Houghton

speaker

99 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 15 Sep

Dr Frank Houghton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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Today with David McCullagh · Sugar tax: could your biscuits and chocolate bars soon face a new tax? · 15 Sep 2026 podcast

I'm concerned about

sort of, you know, habits and lifestyles that people get into.

I know my own youngest is 14 years of age, and he comes back and, you know, delights in telling me, you know, that when he goes to the local Aldi in the village I live at, you know, custard creams are only... I think when we did this study, they were 55 cents a packet.

I think they might have gone up a little bit now.

But, I mean, essentially for...

For a little more than one euro, you can get two packs of these, which are probably delivering 3,000 calories.

In our study, we just took – I mean it was hard to know what figure to pick, but we decided why don't we look at an hour of minimum wage.

An hour of minimum wage when we did the study a few months ago.

It could actually, if you bought custard creams, possibly being one of the best examples or worst examples, whatever way you want to word it, but it could deliver over 39,000 calories.

So that's enough calories for most of us for almost 20 days.

No, that's the thing.

I mean, that's another point of argument is that these are what, you know, dietitians and nutritionists would describe as empty calories.

yeah, they're giving you the calories, they're giving you the sugar boost, but they're really not giving you much else.

It is to a degree, but I mean, you know, a conversation, as I say, I have with my youngest, I'm there like, you know, don't buy the whole packet of biscuits, buy something with just a few biscuits and buy something smaller.

And his response is quite logical response is, but they're just so good value.

You get so much for them.

for such a limited amount of money.

And I think what we're setting up here are what are often termed obesogenic environments.

So kind of environments, particularly retail environments around us, which almost encourage obesity.

And I think that's something that needs to be tackled.

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