Do you think that when a sugar tax will become a real thing in the UK, people will buy less sugary drinks? I personally do not.
But…there is a big BUT.
I believe that the society is responsible for what is happening in the world right now. Parents are allowing their children to consume sugary food, unhealthy food and they are themselves creating them an unbalanced diet which is resulting in obesity and in some cases even the cancer.
When I heard that Jamie Oliver is forcing the government to introduce a sugar tax, as he is aware that far too many children regularly drink sweet drinks, I was actually really happy that someone in this country is thinkng this way.
Every single time I am travelling by bus and I see children going from school, they have the coke, juice, energy drink accompanied by the bag of crisps or some chips with the fried chicken from the nearest takeaway. I simply cannot believe that this is their regular meal. But when I watched programmes like “Eat Well For Less” on BBC, I understood that parents are even cooking this way. And that is the problem.
However, I do not believe that people will end buying coke if it will be 5p more for each bottle. If this is their habbit, we can expect only 2 in 10 people to stop buying these products. Maybe.
The second part of Jamie Oliver´s proposal was to force producers of these extremely sweet drinks not to write how many grams are there in 100ml but to write how many teaspoons of sugar are there in each bottle. And that is what I believe will help consumers to stop buying these products.
When I see how many grams of sugar are in a product, I do not really care because I cannot imagine how much it is (if I am not counting calories). But if there would be an amount of teaspoons, I can definitely imagine that and it will stop me from buying it.
What I want to say is that the sugar tax is really what the country needs. I would love to believe that it will help parents to stop their children buying it but I think it will not happen. If people have their habits, they will simple continue doing what they did in the past.
Although, I do not believe that something will change, I am highly supporting ths idea.