Sugar, huh?
It’s a bit of a dirty word nowadays. Books like I Quit Sugar, movies such as That Sugar Film and those YouTube clips of coke being boiled down into nasty, syrupy goo have done a bit to prove to us that refined sugar is, well… Not so sweet.
Earlier this year, the Conservative Government in the UK announced they’re chucking a tax on sugary drinks from 2018 – a move that enraged some, and was endorsed by others (namely fresh-food fetishiser Jamie Oliver).
Jamie’s feels wen u skip the Pepsi n get your daily fruit and veg intake.
And although there’s no official word on whether or not Australia will follow suit and start taxing soft drinks, the University of Queensland has today released research suggesting it could have some pretty positive effects.
The study found that if we popped at 20% tax on sugar-ladden liquids, it could save more than 1,600 lives, raise at least $400 mil per year for health initiatives, and cut cases of health disease and stroke substantially.
Sugary drinks are the biggest contributors to added sugar in Aussie people’s diets – In 2015 alone, we purchased a whopping 1.1 billion litres of it.
Folks of the soft drink industry reckon upping the cost to consumers would do diddly-squat, as they’d only replace sugary bevs with other unhealthy foods… But then of course they do.
Source: ABC.
