This almost always results in a stream of blunt denials that the government in question could ever do anything wrong accompanied by lots of accusations that anyone who actually dares to criticise dreadful crimes must be anti-Russia or anti-semitic instead of being pro human rights for all. You also very quickly get wrongly accused of ignoring the equally horrible actions of others on the weird principle that it must be OK to commit murder if someone else somewhere else has also been guilty of the same crime. This kind of logic comes from people who have remained silently complicit over the shooting of 100 unarmed Palestinians or turned a blind eye to the disappearance and murder of over 100 Russian journalists.
I had, however, not realised that narrow minded nationalists may not be the worst people to wind up. The sugar lobby is every bit as quick to round on any critic and just as good at spreading confusion and misinformation.
It all started at a recent council meeting when I asked why the council was selling sugary drinks in its Leisure Centres and whether that was a settled policy choice or something they might consider changing. I felt that it was wrong for council tax payers and customers of a Leisure Centre to put a lot of money into funding healthy lifestyles only to have the very place that people went to get fit selling high sugar drinks.
The second the local paper reported my efforts to “ban” sugary drinks the abusive twitter feed began and it has barely stopped since.
In my mind the facts are really simple. Put more sugar into a diet and there is a greater chance that you will end up putting on weight. Take unnecessary sugar out and you are likely to lose weight. The weight of children and adults in the UK and the US is rising remorselessly and we are in the middle of an obesity crisis. One in twenty UK children are now grossly obese. Health problems such as increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes have been clearly correlated with putting on weight. Therefore we should be trying to cut down on the amount of sugar in our diets and reducing the consumption of high sugar drinks is an easy and obvious place to start.
Some of the criticism I have had for taking this stance is deeply cynical. The first argument put to me is that I am denying freedom of choice. The exact opposite is the case. If someone wants to take a high sugar drink to a Leisure Centre that is their business. I think the Leisure Centre should have the freedom to choose not to sell products that harm the health of our children. To insist that they must sell these harmful products is denial of freedom of choice for those providing a public service.
Then I was told that I was targeting the wrong thing. The café at the Leisure Centre in question sells cakes and fried breakfasts as well as a range of healthy foods and drinks. Why wasn’t I attacking cake instead of sugary drinks?
I have never bought the argument that because you can’t do everything then you should do nothing. It might indeed be better for health and welfare of both the individual and the planet if all Leisure Centres in the country restricted themselves to selling a vegan diet of low sugar, salt and fat content. I very much doubt that we would move more people in the direction of any ideal diet any more quickly than we are doing by banning alternative food choices. I do happen to think that we can improve our national diet significantly if we can stigmatise high sugar drinks and that for the vast majority of people cutting down on the consumption of these drinks would be the single easiest and quickest way to improve their diet.
A typical 20 ounce sugary drink contains upward of 15 teaspoons of sugar. They are cheap to produce and sell for a hefty price much of which goes on advertising the product to encourage us to consume more of it. Consumption of a cake that contained this much sugar is highly likely to leave you feeling relatively full up. Consumption of the drinks doesn’t fill you up the same way and is often followed by consumption of more food. Put simply that means someone is making a large profit out of encouraging us to do things that provide us with temporary pleasure but put our health at long term risk. In those circumstances I think it is legitimate for national and local government to use every tool at their disposal to redress the balance and discourage the consumption of these drinks.
The final argument I was presented with was that there were children and adults who had health risks that required sudden topping up of sugar intake if it fell to a dangerously low level. That much is of course true. Of a small number of individuals. It would, however, be strange to put the health of the vast majority of children at risk in order to make sure that sugar was available in a medical emergency when it is genuinely needed. There aren’t many places in the UK where it is simply not possible to obtain sugar to help a person who hasn’t remembered to bring any with them. There are a lot of places where there is so much on offer and easily available that it is threatening the health of our children.
Back in the days of the Second World War when the UK was struggling to feed its population and sugar was in really short supply the nation proved to be remarkably healthy. Years of improvements to medical techniques have improved life expectancy since but those improvements are now being put at risk by an increase in obesity. The relentless increase in sugar intake in diets since the Second World War has been echoed by a similarly relentless increase in people being overweight.
Faced with the bizarre contrast between a nation suffering from food shortages being more healthily fed than one that has the most luxuriously stocked shops in human history it is not unreasonable for government to take action. There is nothing wrong with government trying to influence people to make better choices in their diets either by taxation or by making better choices about what is sold in publicly owned shops, cafes and workplaces. Indeed, the reverse. It would be irresponsible for government to fail to act.
I therefore intend to continue to campaign for local and national government to try to fight back against those who have a financial interest in persuading our children to eat and drink badly. Just as I also intend to continue calling out the crimes of Putin’s Russia and the Israeli state every bit as strongly as I criticise Trump or religious bigotry from Muslim extremists.
I suppose I’d better just get used to taking and responding to plenty of criticism!