Jamie Oliver calls out Canada after UK announces ‘sugar tax’

[Jamie Oliver attends an event in Toronto on Oct. 7, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young]

It’s time for Canada and other countries to step up in the fight against obesity by following the lead of the United Kingdom government and its new tax on sugary drinks, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver says.

Oliver recorded his passionate views via video on Wednesday just after the UK government’s budget announced the surprise tax on soft drinks in an effort to slash the country’s childhood obesity numbers.

“This is a bold, brave move from Mr. (George) Osborne and from the government,” said Oliver outside the UK Parliament. “This will send ripples around the world as far as how these weak, pathetic governments combat the rise in childhood obesity and diet-related disease.”

Oliver, who advocated for the change, said it’s now time for other governments to do their part.

“If you’re looking at this from other countries,” he said, “Germany, pull your finger out. Australia, pull your finger out. Canada, pull your finger out. It’s about time your governments got on this. I know you’re talking about it behind closed doors but you’re scared of the industry.”

Health Canada said the agency knows that many Canadian organizations want a tax on sugary drinks.

“We will continue to monitor the international experience and consult with experts and health stakeholders on this issue,” spokesman Eric Morrissette said in an email. “Health Canada is committed to making it easier for Canadians to make healthy food and beverage choices as part of a comprehensive approach to healthy eating, which will include measures to decrease sugar-sweetened beverage consumption.“

According to the UK government budget, the new industry levy targets producers and importers of soft drinks that contain added sugar. It’s designed to encourage companies to reformulate by reducing the amount of added sugar in their drinks, move consumers towards alternative beverages with lower sugar content and reduce portion size.

The UK government estimates that the tax will raise about 520 million pounds in its first year, or over $977.6 million Cdn but will eventually fall over time. The tax won’t affect milk-based drinks or fruit juices and is expected to be rolled out over the next two years.

For the Canadian Diabetes Association — which during the last federal election called for a similar tax to be implemented — this is exactly the type of example Canada needs to follow.

According to a new Senate report called Obesity in Canada, between 48,000 and 66,000 Canadians die from conditions linked to excess weight each year and nearly two-thirds of adults and one-third of children are obese or overweight. The cost of obesity in Canada sits between $4.6 billion and $7.1 billion annually in healthcare and lost productivity.

Diabetes association spokesman Paul Kilbertus believes that a sugary drinks tax would work in Canada, but also says it’s only one part of the overall solution.

“We’ve seen it work in a number of other countries, most notably in Mexico and France,” Kilbertus tells Yahoo Canada News. “Certainly we need to do more. A single tax on a single product is not the overall solution. We’re also calling for clearer labelling on foods so people can actually understand more easily how healthy the food is, because right now the labelling is complex. We’re also calling for implementation of further limitations on advertising food and beverages to children.”

For Kilbertus, taking such a proactive approach to fighting obesity and diabetes is something that Canada needs to seriously consider now.

“The health of Canadians is really that important,” he said. “The main reason we’re calling for this now is that in recent years there has been scientific evidence that has come forward that shows that sugar sweetened beverages increase your risk for diabetes, regardless of your body weight. So even if you’re a thin person with a healthy weight, if you get your calories from sugar sweetened beverages, then your risk for diabetes increases.”

The Canadian Beverage Association says such a tax will not help solve the problem but rather create more issues, including job losses within the beverage industry.

“In terms of implementing these things as a public health measure they’re not effective,” said spokeswoman Carolyn Fell. “It really just doesn’t reflect consumer trends in Canada. We know Canadians are drinking a lot less sugar sweetened beverages than they have in the past. It just doesn’t add up that a tax is required to change consumption when people are already changing their consumption patterns.”

Fell argues that similar taxes have been tried in other places, like Denmark, and hasn’t worked.

Back in 2011, Denmark implemented a “fat tax” on all food products that contained more than 2.3 per cent saturated fat. But instead of discouraging Danes from consuming the fatty foods, it just pushed them to cross the German and Swedish borders to stock up on those goods.

According to the Institute of Economic Affairs, the tax was blamed for helping Denmark’s inflation rise 4.7 per cent a year, which led to real wages falling by 0.8 per cent, and was estimated to have cost 1,300 Danish jobs.

The country ended up reversing the tax almost two years later.

The solution, Fell said, is to not single out one industry to tackle the obesity problem, particularly when Canadians only consume about 4 per cent of their calories from beverages, according to the most recent numbers from Statistics Canada published in 2004.

“Our industry has already taken measures, like putting calories on the front of cans and set a goal for reducing calories by 20 per cent over the next decade for example,” Fell said. “So if the government really wants to impact overall public health, it seems as a beverage industry we can only take so much responsibility. It needs to be a more holistic approach where people are not laser-focused on one thing to the exclusion of the rest of their diet.”