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 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

there's a few ways this can work.

Partially, they become more expensive, and that's dissuasive.

So, you know, people don't, you know, kids at lunchtime from school don't buy quite so many packs.

So that's sort of one element of it.

But reformulation is definitely, manufacturer reformulation is a key.

And that's one of the big things we saw when the sugar tax was introduced on carbonated drinks, on fizzy drinks.

If you think about the big five soft drinks that often include sort of, you know, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, 7-Up, Fanta and Club Orange.

In the aftermath of the – for some actually in advance.

But if you give manufacturers good enough notice, I think we can fairly certainly say that like the fizzy drinks, a lot of those manufacturers will reformulate.

The current tax level is –

If it has more than five grams of sugar per 100 mils, you pay the lower rate sugar tax.

If it has more than eight grams per 100 mils, you pay the higher tax rate.

And what happened was Pepsi, 7-Up, Fanta and Club, they all reformulated.

The next time you look at a can or a bottle, have a look.

A lot of them are kind of kicking in at 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 grams per 100 mils.

Now, before the sugar tax, they were all higher.

But what happened was four of those big five decided to reformulate.

And that's something that I think we could anticipate in this sector as well.

Coca-Cola didn't, and they are the biggest seller.

But, I mean, their diet versions are also big sellers as well.

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