Eleni Courea

The fat man of Europe is getting fatter. His teeth are rotting from the sugar in his coke and chocolates. He feeds his children bread and pasta instead of quinoa and couscous. It is time to tax the fat man – he must learn to stop eating sugar. And today, George Osborne has acted. In his Budget, he noted with disgust that some boys eat their own body weight in sugar. He has introduced a tax on sugary drinks - to the applause of the Labour Party, Liberal Democrats and (doubtless) Jamie Oliver who pioneered this snobbish idea in his restaurants. This can be expected to be the first of many. The path was laid out by Public Health England, which proposed a tax of up to 20 per cent on soft drinks and similarly sugary products - just like that proposed by the BMA.

The fat man of Europe is getting fatter. His teeth are rotting from the sugar in his coke and chocolates. He feeds his children bread and pasta instead of quinoa and couscous. It is time to tax the fat man – he must learn to stop eating sugar. And in a long-awaited report, Public Health England has proposed a tax of up to 20 per cent on soft drinks and similarly sugary products - just like that proposed by the BMA. It finds that:- "A recently introduced 10 per cent tax on sugary drinks in Mexico has seen an average 6 per cent decline in purchases in the first few months”. Jamie Oliver – a chef whose own waistline has expanded as fast as his ego - has got there first and recently took the matter into his own hands.