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Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver wants the sugar tax extended to cover milkshakes and other milky drinks in a bid to tackle what he calls Britain’s obesity crisis.
Talking to MPs at a Commons inquiry on childhood obesity, Oliver also called for tighter restrictions on advertising junk food.
Taxes on were introduced last month on non-dairy sugary drinks – but the chef wants to see the levy extended to cover milky beverages too.
‘Logic’
Oliver said: “I definitely don’t think we should overuse taxing, but I think there is some logic to opening it out to milk products, which are jam-packed with additives and sugar and they’re currently outside of that taxing.”
To support his claims, he showed MPs a bottle of strawberry-flavoured Yazoo milk, which contains 33g (equivalent to nine teaspoons) of sugar.
Oliver was joined by fellow celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who told politicians: “It costs more to treat type two diabetes and obesity-related disease than it does to run the police service, the fire service and the judiciary in this country.”
