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    UK sugar tax to be extended to more soft drinks and milkshakes
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    UK sugar tax to be extended to more soft drinks and milkshakes

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    1. seadoubleyou73 on

      “The UK’s sugar tax will be extended to more soft drinks as well as milkshakes under plans to fight obesity to be set out on Tuesday.

      Wes Streeting, the health secretary, will announce he is cutting the level at which the sugar tax is imposed after major brands changed their recipes to avoid the levy, threatening to catch some of Britain’s best-known drinks, according to two people briefed on the plans.

      Milkshakes and pre-packaged coffees such as lattes and cappuccinos will also be included as ministers extend the levy to milk-based drinks for the first time. The sugar tax was introduced by George Osborne in 2016 as a levy on drinks with a sugar content of 5g per 100ml. This has led to numerous brands reformulating products to avoid the tax, widely hailed as a public health success.

      However, officials believe it is now time to be more ambitious with many brands having sugar content just below 5g. Streeting will set out plans to lower the threshold to 4.5g per 100ml, catching drinks such as Pepsi.

      Many well known brands such as Fanta and Irn-Bru sit at 4.5g and it is unclear if they will be caught by the tax. Milk-based drinks, originally exempted to protect children’s calcium intake, will now be included to end what a consultation described as an “anomaly”.

      The tax rates, currently set at 19.4p per litre for drinks with a sugar content between 5g and 8g per 100ml and 25.9p above that, are also likely to be increased. Rates rose this year for the first time and a consultation proposed raising them with inflation for the next four years.”

    2. JoeyJoJoeJr_Shabadoo on

      The best thing about the budget will be that papers can’t speculate about what’s going to be in the budget any more.

    3. Noitche on

      This constant fiddling and Nanny State creep is just insane. I know it raises revenue and I know it appeases all the quangos that have been set up to focus narrowly on ‘issues’ but literally no-one actually voted for this.

      It’s a systemic problem, because no individual company can fight it, and none is going to be the first to robustly argue against it, such is the suspicion against any business these days.

      I’m a massive Diet Coke drinker but part of me hopes for some smoking-style revelation about aspartame in the future just so the technocrats that took against sugar get the opprobrium they deserve.

    6. bartleby999 on

      Used to laugh when I watched Demolition Man and John Spartan would get gasps when he asked for salt because salt was banned.

      Yet, this satirical take seems more and more plausible now days.

      I don’t drink this stuff – But this constant nanny state behaviour is getting tedious.

    7. EddViBritannia on

      A lot of drinks were absolutely ruined in an attempt to comply with the sugur tax, and now they’re delibrately fucking with the limits again to change it first.

      Why not just tax anything above 0.5g (To avoid stuff with trace sugars) and be fucking done with it. Constantly fiddling with shit is causing massive uncertinty, the type of stuff that genuinely messes with buissness and pushes prices up.

    8. PsychologySpecific16 on

      “We will be a government who teeads lightly in your life”

      Not even milkshakes are safe 😂

    10. CuriousCarrot24 on

      JUST FUCK OFF

      STOP PUNISHING ME WHO ACTUALLY EXERCISES REGULARLY AND UTILISES GLUCOSE BECAUSE SOME OBESE PERSON WITH ZERO IMPULSE CONTROL AND SELF DISCIPLINE CANNOT CONTROL THEIR EATING HABITS

    12. PikachuuuCSGO on

      At some point companies will start selling no sugar drinks with instructions to add x spuns of sugar before drinking.

      Next step is to tax granulated sugar that you buy from the baking section.

    13. Fre4kyGeek on

      All soft drinks taste like shit since they brought in the sugar tax. Just carbonated water with a hint of taste. I got that used to it that I forgot what they actually tasted like until I went abroad. I also put on a ton of weight after they brought in the tax which is interesting to say the least. Ha

    14. sofiestarr on

      So

      1) Packaged milkshakes will be more expensive

      2) They won’t be included in meal deals

      3) They’ll probably start using artificial sweeteners instead of sugar

      They really want everyone to be as miserable as possible

    15. Otherwise_Fly_2263 on

      Maybe people should just have to pass a BMI test to get a sugar drink. I’m not fat, I have a regular coke maybe once a month or so, usually with a McDonald’s or meal out when I’m driving. Why the fuck should I have to pay more because some fat cunts drink it like it’s water.

    18. claireboobear on

      I just want real sugar drinks that taste nice no artificial sugar why should adults suffer because they don’t want kids to have sugar I want to be able to enjoy my sugar drink with no weird bitter aftertaste what about the drugs that rott your teeth away sugar isn’t the only thing rotts teeth ..in this god forsaken land they touch drinks but they dont touch processed food that makes you fat

    19. Thaiaaron on

      Collective punishment because a small percentage of the population has zero impulse control and gets obese.

    21. Transasaurus-Hex on

      The issue is that they keep increasing all the prices to fit. The vending machine at work has diet coke at the same price as regular coke.

    23. drspa44 on

      If I had a convenience shop, I’d just start selling tiny packets of sugar separately, so the customer can buy a diet drink and sprinkle in however much sugar they like.

    24. pmdpmd99 on

      I’d happily drink soft drinks etc with less sugar but no sweetener whatsoever. Not only does sweetener send me wonky in the head, it’s also disgusting. I would also happily pay a bit extra for old fashioned sugary drinks with no sweetener, of course. It’s not like I was ever downing gallons of the stuff anyway. Coke is about the only mainstream soft drink without sweetener now, and man alive that is just too sweet.

    25. jam_scot on

      As a type 1 diabetic who needs sugary drinks sometimes I feel attacked. They’ve reduced the sugar in so many drinks they are useless now for low BG levels. The one which didn’t comply is now more expensive.

    26. EgoCity on

      Yeah and the low sugar stuff will go up too… everyone is skint I’m sick of the government working against us with stupid ideas

    28. KebabAnnhilator on

      How about (just a thought)…

      We have some policies to make healthier drinks cheaper, rather than costing the taxpayer more year on year through hundreds of policies…