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PROGRAMME INFO |
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Every week Nick Ross invites a panel of public figures to discuss an issue of current concern.
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Fat Tax
Listen to the 10 September 2003 programme.
Obesity in England has tripled over the past twenty years and continues to rise. Most adults are overweight, and one in five is obese, but for the first time ever, this dangerous problem is affecting people at progressively younger ages.
This autumn, the Department of Health will announce measures to combat obesity, and they could go as far as banning advertising on children's tv. But this week's Commission looks at another possible, and much-publicised solution - a Fat Tax.
Advocates argue that not only would this tax help pay for the treatment of some of the 63% of overweight people in the UK, but it would cut down the amount of unhealthy food with high fat content being eaten, and in turn make us healthier.
Critics say we would still pay for our favourite foods, and besides, some people are genetically prone to obesity - a fat tax would not help.
However, taxes on tobacco, and to an extent alcohol introduced as preventative health measures have helped to cut the numbers of smokers and drinkers, and in turn reduce illness.
Obesity causes health risks as serious as those caused by tobacco and alcohol, but because food is a necessity and not a luxury, we see it in a completely different light. But should we?
Nick Ross and a panel of three independent commissioners hear the evidence of our five expert witnesses, and reach some inspirational conclusions.
The Commissioners
Air Marshall Sir Timothy Garden
During his 30 years in the military Sir Timothy Garden rose to senior appointments in the Ministry of Defence including Assistant Chief of the Air Staff and Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Programmes). As an Air Marshal, he was the Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies and after retirement, he became the Director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs until mid 1998.
Sir Timothy has published extensively on security topics, including books on nuclear strategy and on military technology. He is a member of a number of academic advisory boards including the NATO Defense College in Rome, and was a member of the panel of experts for the recent UK Strategic Defence Review. He was awarded a CB in 1992 and a KCB two years later.
David Taylor
David Taylor is President of the Association of IT Directors, Certus, visiting MBA lecturer at Imperial College, London and a designer of IT and leadership events throughout the world. However, he is most renowned as a leadership expert, having worked within hundreds of companies, and with many CEOs. His technique has earned him the title 'The Naked Leader', which was also the title of his 2002 book on self-exploration and success in management.
Shahwar Sadeque
An education and IT consultant Shahwar Sadeque is a lay member of the Royal College of Physicians ethics committee and has a particular interest in ethnic minority health issues. Shahwar is also a Marshall Commissioner, and was formerly a BBC Governor, a member of the Patient Information Advisory Group, and on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
The Witnesses
Professor Tim Lang
Professor Of Food Policy at City University
Professor Lang believes that the main problems of obesity are cultural, and are down to the changes society has undergone over the past 30 years. Primarily this is to do with the promotion of sedentary lifestyles by technology, advertising and convenience products which began with the mass introduction of the car.
Ever since then, our exercise levels have declined and we have more time on our hands. However, with this time we don't exercise, we relax, and it is here that marketing takes the lead.
Tim believes that through the 'brilliance' of modern marketing, the consumer has been twisted into many shapes and forced into aspiring to and consuming a number of things detrimental to our health.
Therefore, Tim's recommendations are to rein back a society and culture which marginalises you if you want to be healthy, and in turn target the producers and advertisers by putting a premium on advertising fatty food.
Jo Morley
Founder of www.bigpeople.org.uk and member of the size acceptance movement, Jo Morley is keenly opposed to what she sees as the blanket discrimination against fat people in the UK.
Not everybody is a size ten, but our culture has reached the point that if you are any larger you are somehow ugly and in some cases stupid. A fat tax is the next step in demonizing fat people and continuing to promote the unnatural skinny body image presented by the media.
She sees a fat tax as a total waste of time, which serves to introduce beurocracy over anything else. Jo does not believe it will have an effect on many people who are either naturally large or who eat low fat, low sugar and high carbohydrate diets (as she does).
The biggest fundamental problem Jo sees with a fat tax is the policing of the tax, and the issues surrounding how to levy a tax on items with low fat and high sugar content; or indeed in clearer cut cases with high levels of fat and proportionately low levels of saturated fat.
She also fully believes that a fat tax would hit lower income people more than wealthier people.
Dr Martin Breach
GP, BMA Public Health Committee Spokesman
Dr Martin Breach is a GP in Haydock, Merseyside, and is on the British Medical Association Public Health Committee.
In June 2003 he revived calls for VAT to be imposed on saturated fats - essentially a fat tax. He believes education is essential in starting children on the correct diet at the right age, but at the moment this is not happening. By taxing saturated fats, and thus raising the retail price of fatty foods, Martin believes that people will refuse to pay the inflated rates and instead turn to cheaper healthier options.
In response to criticisms that these measures would target and affect mainly the poorer levels of society, Martin and the BMA propose compensation for poor families in order to help them eat healthily and get more exercise.
This compensation would take the form of subsidies on fruit, vegetables and other food, thus making healthy food markedly cheaper for poorer families who currently cannot afford to eat as healthily as more affluent families.
Susie Orbach
Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist and writer. In 1976 she co-founded the Women's Therapy centre in London and in 1981 The Women's Therapy Centre Institute in New York.
She is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and has worked as a consultant to the World Bank. Her books include The Impossibility of Sex, Fat is a Feminist Issue, Hunger Strike, What Do Women Want? And On Eating. Her campaigning organisation AnyBody wants 'ethically' manufactured clothes that are 'not displayed on mannequins who are only one size' to be marked with a logo, and is also working on subversive advertisements designed to 'broaden the aesthetic', subtly promoting the idea that you don't have to be thin to be gorgeous.
Susie Orbach believes that there is, of course, a health difference between being size 18 and being clinically obese, and what we should be doing is accepting variety.
Susie believes we are extremely messed up about food at the moment and that continuous dieting is partly to blame for the rise in obesity because it makes us lose touch with normal bodily mechanisms that regulate eating.
Since Fat is a Feminist Issue much has changed, but Orbach alleged even then that fat is a capitalist issue as well. She believes that a fat tax will affect the poor primarily, and indeed that a fat tax per se will have little effect on its own.
Instead we need much more joined up thinking which treats society's issues with weight as well as our individual ones.
Paul Gately
Lecturer in Exercise, Physiology and Health, Leeds Metropolitan University, and founder of the Carnegie International Weight Loss Camp, Yorkshire.
Having worked closely with overweight people, especially children, Paul is determined that a fat tax is the best way to target obesity.
By making fatty foods more expensive, poorer families, who in general are more prone to being overweight will be able to buy less of it. In turn he also advocates implementing greater taxes on the elements of our lifestyle which contribute to obesity, and in turn making certain products tax deductible. He is however unsure of how to define which products would be taxable.
Paul is certain that the revenue from these taxes must be put to proper use, to help combat obesity and not lost in the governmental ether. This, he believes is the key to combating obesity in lower socio-economic groups, and it is only by reinvesting the money that the taxes produce (which will come in a large part from the poorer parts of society) that we can specifically help these key sections of society.
Obesity Facts
63% of men are classed as overweight.
52% of women are classed as overweight
17% of men are obese (1999) compared to 6% in 1980
20% of women are obese (1999) compared to 8% in 1980.
18% of men and 22% of women have raised cholesterol levels.
(Govt, 1999.)
However, only 3% of men and 6% of women perceive themselves as obese.
Child obesity rates have doubled between 1982 and 2002. 10% of six year olds and 17% of 15 year olds are obese.
The estimated human cost of obesity is: 18 million sick days a year, 30,000 deaths a year resulting in 40,000 lost years of working life. Deaths linked to obesity shorten life. (National Audit Office)
Future estimates belies that at the current rate, 25% of all British adults will be obese by 2010. This would significantly increase the incidence of associated heart diseases and would cost the economy over £3.5 billion a year by that date. (National Audit Office)
Although there are inherent uncertainties in quantifying the link between obesity and associated disease, the National Audit Office estimated in 2001 that it costs at least half a billion pounds in treatment costs to the NHS each year, and possibly in excess of £2bn to the wider economy.
86% of women have dieted at some time
Almost half of dieters do not succeed in keeping the weight off for a year
Nearly a fifth put it all back on within six months
The body slows its metabolic rate as weight is lost, which eventually causes weight gain.
Two thirds of 16-24-year-old women would like to swap their body for someone else's (Mori phone poll, 2001)
One in five British women would take a pill to give them their ideal body (Mori telephone survey, 2001)
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PRESENTER |
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| Nick Ross |
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Nick Ross is one of Britain's best-known factual broadcasters.
He has fronted Crimewatch since its inception in 1984 and has presented a wide sweep of the BBC's journalism in news, including rolling news, current affairs, politics, law, crime and consumer issues.
His credits include several eponymous programmes including Nick Ross, a highly praised series of talk shows (1999), Westminster with Nick Ross (live television coverage of parliament, 1994-1997) for which he was a member of the Downing Street lobby, and in 1997 he was named 'Broadcaster of the Year' for his long-running Radio 4 programme Call Nick Ross (1986-1997).
In 1999 he won a best documentary prize for a controversial and autobiographical TV history of the troubles in Northern Ireland, We Shall Overcome.
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