Doctors want fizzy drink tax and ban on junk food ads

Fizzy drinks should be heavily taxed and junk food adverts banished until after the watershed, doctors have said, in a call for action over obesity.

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which represents nearly every doctor in the UK, said ballooning waistlines already constituted a "huge crisis".

Its report said current measures were failing and called for unhealthy foods to be treated more like cigarettes.

Its recommendations include:

• ·         A ban on advertising foods high in saturated fat, sugar and salt before 9pm
• ·         Further taxes on sugary drinks to increase prices by at least 20%
• ·         A reduction in fast food outlets near schools and leisure centres
• ·         A £100m budget for interventions such as weight-loss surgery
• ·         No junk food or vending machines in hospitals, where all food must meet the same nutritional standards as in schools
• ·         Food labels to include calorie information for children

Its clear obesity is a growing problem but I don’t think these measures are the answer, I would really like to know why there is a request of £100m in the budget for things like weight loss surgery.

Is there a logical explanation as to why that amount of money should be put aside to suck the lard out pigs that can’t control themselves around food, because I can’t see one.  

Instead make them spend the money on say a gym membership or simpler than that put them on a diet don’t subsidise them with public money, spend that extra £100m on surgery for people who are in ill-health through no fault of their own.  

I also think comparing junk food to like cigarettes is a little extreme, because I doubt anyone’s ever died from inhaling the aroma’s of someone else’s calorie laden dinner.

Although this obesity is similar in a way to smoking, and perhaps the answer to both is let them get on with it, if you want to smoke and increase your chances of contracting cancer fine go ahead and if you want to over eat to the point where you’re at risk of a heart attack or developing diabetes then fine go ahead, just don’t come crying to the NHS and wasting their resources when you run into problems.