Talking sugar tax...

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Health Report 28 min 2 speakers 4 chapters transcribed 4 days ago

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What is the obesity epidemic and why is will‑power not enough?

Norman Swan 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Health Report with me, Norman Swan. Sixty percent of Australians are either obese or overweight. We bang on about the obesity epidemic. Many people think that it's just a matter of willpower. People just can't stop eating and it's weak will and poor character that causes the obesity epidemic. Whereas there's a solid body of evidence to suggest that actually what's happening here is an industry selling us low-value calories that are cheap and that make people put on weight. One source of these calories is sugar, and another is fat. And people have been suggesting that you should put a Tax on sugar in some foods and particularly in soft drinks. And other people are talking about a fat tax as well.

Norman Swan 0:42

In this episode of the Health Report, one of the highlights of the past year, we convened a group of public health experts to discuss some of the issues around a sugar tax. I was joined by Jane Martin, who's executive manager of the Obesity Policy Coalition, which is a coalition of Cancer Council Victoria, Diabetes Victoria. And Deakin University, Nick Talley, who's editor-in-chief of the Medical Journal of Australia, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Global Research at the University of Newcastle. Alexandra Jones, who's a public health lawyer and researcher at the George Institute for Global Health at the University of New South Wales. And Rob Moody, who's Professor of Public Health at the University of Malawi and the University of Melbourne.

Norman Swan 1:21

And the discussion began with Allie Jones outlining the international evidence for a sugar tax.

Alexandra Jones 1:28

I think what we know and we know this well from tobacco is that price influences consumption. At the international level we have a lot of recommendations now from the World Health Organization and a growing consensus that we could use these sorts of price measures effectively on food as well. And I think they're going after the nutrients that we consume the most of first and where we think we could have the biggest impact.

Norman Swan 1:50

So we'll come to that in a moment. Now, Rob Moody, price did work with tobacco. I mean price was one important mechanism for actually controlling tobacco use.

Rob Moody 1:58

Did work and does work. Uh probably the key factor. I mean you need a combined group of strategies, advertising bans, you need smoke-free regulations, but price has been the key driver of reducing uh tobacco. And we've seen that now in not only in Australia, in many high income countries, but uh we're now starting to introduce that in places like Lao, Vietnam, Thailand, uh and the Philippines. And it's starting to work. So how much do you have to put up the dial on price to get what sort of reduction in use? I can't actually don't have that. Jane might remember, but I mean certainly you you need to do it enough. And in other words, in Australia we've put up the I think in WHO you have to have at least seventy percent of the uh the price is is tax, um and in Australia it's more, much, much more.

Rob Moody 2:43

But we've introduced in two thousand ten the price by twenty five percent. Then In uh in uh two thousand I think fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, twelve and a half percent each year. So we know plain packaging's been a very important part of reducing our smoking prevalence in Australia, but price has been the I think the key determinant.

Norman Swan 3:04

In all groups of the population or just the people who are most price sensitive, in other words, the poor?

Jane Martin 3:09

We know that adolescents and low income are more sensitive to price and that's across the board, just not with tobacco taxes. But they're the groups who are have the highest smoking prevalence and they have the most to gain.

Rob Moody 3:19

Yeah, and that's often why people will argue against the tax. They say, Well, it's retrogressive, it'll hurt the poor most. Well the point is, as we've seen with tobacco, if you can get those that have least income actually to give up, they can use that that money for much healthier alternatives.

Norman Swan 3:34

So Jane, one of the arguments with tobacco and alcohol and all other drugs is that if you're not using drugs irresponsibly or badly or you know in an unhealthy way by the age of about twenty you're unlikely to, therefore you do target adolescents.