Added sugar seems to be in everything.
I was at the supermarket yesterday trying to find a healthy snack for the children and
they wanted something sweet.
So we decided to buy a watermelon (only a small one) and it ended up costing $10.23.
A single watermelon cost more than 10 bucks!
For comparison, chocolate biscuits (150 g) at Aldi imported from the UK cost 75 cents.
Per 100 g, they contain 2092 kJ (499 kcal) of energy and 31 g of sugar.
Per 100 g, the watermelon contains 127 kJ (30 kcal) of energy and 6.2 g of sugar.
Of course, every other sugar or salt laden snack was dirt cheap, too.
Veggies and fruits were almost all expensive.
So what's going on here?
Why are healthy, nutritious foods so expensive, yet unhealthy, refined snacks so cheap?
Most snacks in Australian supermarkets are less than $2.
Many are less than $1!
Most fruits and vegetables cost more than $5 a kilogram, often a lot more.
No wonder we have an obesity and diabetes crisis.
Taxing Sugar
What we need to do to fix this problem is to implement a tax to change people's behaviour.
I'm not a big fan of taxes (nor capitalism for that matter), but if that's what it
takes to make eating healthy easier, then I think we should do it.
If something is cheap, people will buy it more often.
I don't blame any parent for choosing a "fruit bar" over a real piece of fruit
if the fruit bar is a quarter the price.
I'm a parent and I've fallen for it many times.
A big bag of chips often only costs $1.59 at Coles or Woolworths.
The kids like it (as do we) and it makes us feel happy (although fleetingly).
However, we also like eating watermelon, but at $10 a pop, it's an expensive habit.
So how would a tax work?
Many people in the last five or 10 years have spoken of a "sugar tax", but almost every
politician gives in to the big corporations and refuses to implement such a thing.
Nobody likes to rock the boat and the sugar industry certainly doesn't want any policy
that affects their bottom line.
Here's my idea for a tax.
For every gram of added sugar in a product, tax it by 1%.
So the biscuits I mentioned from Aldi with 31 g of sugar would have a tax of 31%.
Now before you get out the pickaxes, 31% of 75 cents is only about 23 cents.
So the new price for the bickies would be 98 cents – still less than a dollar.
Of course, fruit would remain untaxed as it doesn't contain added sugar.
What do we do with all this newfound tax revenue?
Well, we use all of it to subsidise fresh fruit and veg.
Now, I don't know how much revenue we could muster this way, but I predict that it would
be a lot.
If every box of sugary snacks and bottles of soft drink cost a little bit extra, and
every piece of fruit and veg cost a little bit less, we would be well on our way to solving
this ridiculous obesity epidemic that we've found ourselves in.
It might turn out that the taxes collected are beyond our expectations.
In this case, use the extra revenue to sponsor children's sport and other outdoor activities.
We just need a political party to have the courage to push such measures through.
We can't let the junk food industry dictate what foods we put in our mouth.
Yes, I know there must be some personal responsibility from consumers, but price plays a big factor.
Cheap foods sell more often than expensive ones.
Come on Australia (and every other obese country in the world)!
Let's stop sucking up to the big "food" companies and make Australia healthy again.
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