It found consumers spend £81.5bn a year on unhealthy products, from which the Treasury makes £28.8bn through VAT receipts.
The research was undertaken by the Obesity Health Alliance (OHA), Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA) and Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) in conjunction with Landman Economics. For example, they calculated that 28.8% of all food bought by UK households is unhealthy because it breaches government dietary guidelines for fat, salt or sugar (HFSS). Those sales together earn the food industry £34.2bn.
Landman Economics has carved out quite a little niche here in producing entirely absurd, insane, no good, terrible, paid for pieces of “economic research”.
Landman Economics is Howard Reed. Did you know that Reed is a mate of Richard J Murphy?
Within actual economics we call this technological diffusion. Once a grift has been discovered then more people will start to do it….
Saw this in the dear old Grauniad this morning – all the usual suspects as the so-called ‘health experts’, I see. A plague on all their houses.
Looking at the list of groups who fund this gush makes me never want to donate to charity again. Obesity Health Alliance is funded by its members, a motley crew of government bodies, statutory bodies, trade unions, and large charities. I can’t see how this report relates to the stated objectives of e.g. the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation.
It found consumers spend £81.5bn a year on unhealthy products, from which the Treasury makes £28.8bn through VAT receipts.
The treasury doesn’t make anything, it just collects the money.
Firstly, government health guidelines are for the amount of sugar, salt etc consumed by an individual in a day, not for the sugar, salt etc. contents of different foodstuffs. So the Grauniad and Landman Economics clearly do not know what they are talking about.
Secondly, government guidelines are just that and do not take into account individual circumstances and any marathon runner will divert wildly from them, and other sportspeople will divert to a lesser extent, in order to pursue his/her healthy sport. I am fairly sure that Gatorade and Lucozade Sport will breach any guidelines that the “Obesity Health Alliance” may have invented for itself on sugar or salt content so will be classified by them as “unhealthy food” despite sport and other exercise being the best preventative from obesity.
Do they want to ban the sales of butter?
I expect they do want to, on the grounds that someone, somewhere, might enjoy it.
Reed is certainly right up there in the pantheon of evildoers alongside Murphy. Private Sector Bad, Public Sector Good. More regulation needed at every stage. Frankly let’s hope Hamas get hold of the pair of them! Or perhaps Mossad can add them to the list of targets alongside Naz Shah and Hamza Yousuf.
someone, somewhere, might enjoy it
Like Marlon Brando.
The first paragraph implies an average VAT rate of 54%. Remarkable, given that most food is zero-rated.
“…consumers spend £81.5bn a year on unhealthy products…”
On whose definition of “unhealthy”?
Ah, the people pushing this nonsense. Well, there’s a surprise.
Where’s a flamethrower when you need one?
“For example, they calculated that 28.8% of all food bought by UK households is unhealthy because it breaches government dietary guidelines for fat, salt or sugar (HFSS).”
That is an interesting starting assumption – that it’s unhealthy *because the government says it is*, divorced from any evidence that the government is qualified to make that sort of judgement.
“Andrew M
November 18, 2023 at 12:36 pm
Looking at the list of groups who fund this gush makes me never want to donate to charity again.”
Good news Andrew – you don’t have to make that choice.
“Obesity Health Alliance is funded by its members, a motley crew of government bodies, statutory bodies, trade unions, and large charities. ”
The government’s decided for you.
@John77
Healthy & sport should never be put in juxtaposition. There is no evidence sport is healthy. Quite the opposite. (note the size of the sport injury industry)
Agree with BiS most of my serious interactions with the medical profession have been as a result of sports or activity issues
Related note to comment about despairing of charities these days on of my few I support is the local mountain rescue guys, they made a documentary about them recently
https://youtu.be/NH_FNlPNEJA?si=Z7H7QqsGVWtxR99Z
‘Where’s a flamethrower when you need one?’
Thank you Peter!!!
If I spend £84 including VAT, £14 of that is VAT at 20%. I’m struggling to work out how the government’s percentage goes up to about 40% just because we’re spending £billions.
@ BiS
There exists vast amounts of evidence that sport is healthy, also that lack of exercise is a major contributor to Type 2 Diabetes, obesity (these two overlap but some people have one and not the other), heart disease, and respiratory problems.
I have just tried to look up “sports injuries” and the (admittedly American) site that lists “sports injuries” by sector shows that the majority of “sports injuries” in the USA are not from sports at all! The largest single category is “exercise equipment”, followed by “bicycles and accessories”, before we get to the first actual sport: basketball. Fifth and sixth are “ATVs and mopeds” and “skateboards, scooters, hoverboards”. The injuries from the assorted vehicles listed are generally more serious, sometimes far more serious, than injuries from participating in sport, so the size of the “sports injuries” industry is a multiple of the size of cost of injuries in actual sports.
England Athletics justify their levy because they provide insurance for all registered races in the country but the cost thereof is too small to be separately disclosed in their accounts so it cannot be as much as £2 per athlete per year including public liability. Sports injuries are tiny in proportion to the benefits of exercise.