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Sugary snacks could soon be packaged in plain packaging after a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research recommended making sweet treats less appealing.
Last year, Parliament approved a tax on sugar and the vote on ban advertising for junk food is one of many items on its to-do list, reports Perspecs.
Is plain packaging the next step in promoting public health or is there excessive government interference?
The demand
The intention behind plain packaging is to make snacks more boring and less likely to be noticed on shelves, reducing the number of sweet treats bought by impulse buys and children harbading their parents. .
IPPR director, Tom Kibasi, believes that "plain packaging" will help us all make better choices "and lead a healthier life in the long run. The report of its think tank describes the current situation in the United Kingdom as an "environment conducive to obesity".
The BBC reports that sugar is starting to receive the same treatment as tobacco, where drastic measures have been taken to improve public health.
Cigarettes have been hit by taxes, advertising bans and plain packaging to dissuade people from buying them, and the government is in the process of taking the same measures for sugar.
The BBC also reports that Britons of all ages consume too much sugar, with children and adolescents being the worst offenders.
The counterclaim
When introducing plain packaging for tobacco, cigarette manufacturers argued that their implementation violated commercial freedom and undermined competition in the marketplace.
The same arguments are now used by the Food and Drink Federation, which stated that companies allowed to mark their products with packaging constituted "fundamental commercial freedom" and "crucial for competition".
Tim Rycroft of the FDF insisted that companies were already playing an important role in the fight against unhealthy snacks by turning their products into smaller and less sugar-laden products. He warned against the use by governments of "flagship measures" that had not yet been successful.
In their article for Forbes, Lorenzo Montanari and Philip Thompson reviewed five years of the effects of smoking on plain packaging and found them unsuccessful.
Their verdict was that the plain packaging for cigarettes did not lead to a radical change and should not be applied to other products, including sweet snacks. They also warned that neutral packaging could hit companies that use intellectual property in their branding strategy.
Facts
The Department of Health and Social Welfare is awaiting the verdict of Professor Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer of Health for England, before deciding whether or not to adopt a simple packaging law for women. snacks.
It aims to halve child obesity in the United Kingdom by 2030 and approves the extension of the sugar tax to cover more products. She is open to the idea of a simple packaging for snacks.
Dame Sally is to submit to the government a report outlining her recommendations for next steps in the fight against obesity by September. Processed foods are also part of the examination after studies have badociated them with an increased risk of premature death.
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It is recommended not to consume more than five percent of a person's daily calorie intake in free sugars. In the UK, each age group consumes at least twice that amount. Children and adolescents consume three times the amount of sugar recommended in their diet.
Obesity is a serious problem in the UK, the NHS chief stating that it is "new smoking" as one of the leading causes of cancer.
More and more people are admitted to the hospital for reasons related to obesity, and the government has found that rates of "severe obesity" in children of old age were at the highest rate ever recorded. Sugary snacks are considered the main reason for the increase in the rate of obesity in children.
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