Editorial: Sugary sins are deadly

Should their be a tax on sugary drinks? Photo/Thinkstock

"Sugar is the new tobacco, the health scourge of our times. It is cheap, addictive and widely available."

So goes the blurb for a new book by Sarah Wilson I Quit Sugar For Life, a sequel to her bestselling book I Quit Sugar.

Just like everyone ditched carbs in the 90s, sugar is now the declared new evil of the food groups. Recently there have been calls for sugar to be regulated given its link to obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Sugary drinks have been in the spotlight this month since a New Zealand study found that imposing a 20 per cent tax on Coke and other fizzy soft drinks could save 67 lives a year.

The study follows one published in the UK last year which estimated a 20 per cent tax on sugary drinks would reduce the number of obese adults in the country by 1.3 per cent.

More than half of Tauranga residents say they consume too many soft drinks, with a fifth drinking fizzy more than five times a week, Amy McGillivray reports today.

My daily Coke fix is a must, although not as bad as our production editor who has built a tower of empty Coke cans on her desk. We both drink Coke Zero and while not committing the sugar sin, I am sure it is unhealthy in other ways.

Yet we still drink it knowing this, and have the free choice to, which is the government's reasoning for not imposing a tax on sugary drinks. No doubt drinks manufacturers would also oppose such a tax.

When it comes to children, fizzy drinks are constantly available, in cinemas and check out aisles. While the simplest answer is not to buy them, it is not always that simple, with the result that many young people have a regular diet of fizzy as the Southern Cross survey shows.

Children do so without possibly knowing or understanding the health consequences. While a tax on soft drinks may seem too radical, in my view there should at least be some more curbs or controls in the amount of sugar in drinks marketed at children, coupled with more emphasis on teaching young children about healthy diet and living.

This has been successful with children with smoking - most primary school children I know think smoking is "yuk" and "disgusting". It will be hard to convince them that the fizz they love is similarly appalling, but if we start young, it can be done.