The David Gillespie Blog

Nestlé is the world’s largest food company. Headquartered in Switzerland, it operates 456 factories and employs 283,000 people worldwide. Much of its business revolves around making us fat. And since that side of the business is doing so well, it has decided to branch into the diet industry too.

Nestlé is the name behind a vast range of sweeties (Kit Kat, Wonka, Smarties, Aero, Violet Crumble and Allen’s Sweets to name just a few) and their range of ice-cream is second to none (Peter’s, Dixie, Skinny Cow and Connoisseur are all part of the portfolio)

They also do a nice range of sugar filled ‘health food’. Including things like Fruit Fix (72% sugar), Nesquik (99% sugar), Milo (46% sugar), muesli bars (up to 31% sugar) and a huge range of cereals (under the Uncle Toby’s brand), boasting healthy gems like Healthwise (30% sugar) and Oats Temptations (34% sugar).

It’s perhaps a little less well known that Nestlé is also the company behind some of the biggest brands in the weightloss industry. They own the Optifast diet shakes promoted strongly by the doctors at the Wesley Hospital Weightloss centre, the Musashi brand of shakes and supplements for serious gym junkies and even the Lean Cuisine range of frozen diet meals.

I found all of those brands by looking (carefully) at the Nestlé web site. But strangely I didn’t find any mention of their biggest weightloss business – Jenny Craig. That’s right, Jenny Craig, the little ole diet outfit founded in Melbourne in 1983 (and purchased by Nestlé in 2006 – for over $800 million) is now one of the biggest weightloss corporations on the planet.

The science on sugar consumption is unequivocal. Eating large amounts of sugar is the most effective way to pile on the unwanted kilo’s. It’s also the most effective way to ensure you’re a candidate for heart disease and a list of other conditions that doesn’t bear thinking about.

By definition, Nestlé’s diet products and Jenny Craig programs are sold to people who are overweight. So Nestlé is selling those people a “cure” to a condition which was in no small part caused by consumption of Nestlé’s own products.

Ok, so Nestlé has spotted a growing (pun intended) market and made sure it’s got the products to address the need. Their shareholders would be disappointed if they didn’t do this. But its ethically dubious (putting it mildly) to sell people a substance which makes them fat and then sell them the ‘cure’ (without at least telling them you are the same people doing the selling).

If the cure doesn’t actually work (and the purveyor knows this) then we are well on the track to outrageously unethical (if not downright immoral) corporate behaviour. So, does Jenny Craig work?

A systematic review of the published research (on commercial weightloss programs) conducted in 2005 revealed that of the 1,500 available studies only 10 (!) met the inclusion criteria relating to study quality (because many studies are very short term, very small studies usually sponsored by the entity selling the diet). The researchers couldn’t find a single credible study of Jenny Craig and, of the rest, only one was a high quality, multi-site randomized trial.

That trial (of Jenny Craig’s primary competitor, Weight Watchers) found that if you could convince people to stick to the diet for two years (less than three quarters did), they lost a whole 3 kilograms (they started at an average of 94 kg and ended at 91kg after two years! – where do I sign up?). And for that privilege the dieters paid US$167 every three months (or US$445 per kg lost – which by the way is significantly less than an equivalent Jenny Craig diet would cost).

Granted, that study was based on Weight Watchers and not Jenny Craig, but it seems this astounding lack of success is not a one-off observation.

A 2007 UCLA review of 31 credible long term weight loss studies found that most people on calorie restricting diets (such as that promoted by Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers) initially lost 5 to 10 percent of their body weight. But they also found that the majority of people regained all the weight (plus a bit more) within 12 months. Sustained weight loss was found only in a very, very small minority of participants.

In the computer software industry, a persistent conspiracy theory about anti-virus software manufacturers has always bubbled just below the surface of acceptable dinner party chit chat. The theory goes that most of the worst viruses are in fact written by secret skunkworks sponsored by Antivirus software makers (the people being paid to get rid of them). By constantly creating new viruses, the need for their cures grows exponentially.

The software virus theory has never been proven (and probably never will be). But when it comes to what we put in our mouths, exactly that kind of thing is going on right before our eyes (if we care to look).

Sugar is a highly addictive substance that sells product. A food maker will always want to have more sugar than the product next to theirs on the shelves. Unfortunately it has the side-effect of making us fat.

If having a sugar loaded product means the customer gets fatter, then (from Nestle’s perspective) that’s another market opportunity. If the cure to the fatness is only temporary (and doesn’t cure the addiction to sugar), so much the better. Then you’ve got both sides of the business generating repeat income for each other.

Maybe Nestlé knows all this (and plans things this way) or maybe they’re just lucky, but whether Nestlé knows it or not, selling the disease and a non-cure sure isn’t hurting their (expanding) bottom line.

The Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) last week released the results of a 16 year study that says full-fat dairy reduces the risk of heart-related deaths by sixty-nine per cent. But rather than applauding the new work, the Heart Foundation put up the shutters. Are they worried the emperor has no clothes or is money the real problem?

The study (published in the prestigious European Journal of Clinical Nutrition) followed the dairy consumption of 1,529 adult Australians aged 25-78 years. The participants were asked about their dairy intake on three occasions (1992, 1994 and 1996). The results were then cross-matched to National Death Index data between 1992 and 2007.

The data showed a significant relationship between the consumption of full fat dairy and heart disease deaths. But not the one you might think. The people who consumed full-fat dairy had a sixty-nine per cent lower risk of death by heart attack than those gritting their teeth and gulping down low-fat milk.

The QIMR study comes on the back of a significant US study on heart disease risk published in April. In that study a group of 6,113 average American adults was divided into five groups based on their sugar consumption.

One of the groups was a standout on many of the traditional measures for heart disease risk. They had the lowest fat consumption (just 28.9% of total calories – the Heart Foundation recommends keeping it under 35%). They had the lowest saturated fat consumption (just 9.7% of total calories). And they had the lowest cholesterol intake by a country mile (only 238mg).

This group were poster children for the low-fat lifestyle. There was just one little problem, their blood work was awful. On average the folks in the low-fat group had by far the worst blood cholesterol and triglyceride (blood lipid) readings of all five groups. And they weren’t just bad, they were time-to-order-some-drugs bad.

Just like the QIMR participants, the people doing everything right (from a fat consumption perspective) were the ones most likely to end up dead from a heart attack. Interestingly (in the US study), they were also the one’s eating the most sugar.

It’s all well and good to notice correlations like that, but to have any value as a scientific observation, there has to be plausible explanation for why it might be so. A pair of studies published in 2000 and 2007 may just provide that explanation.

In June 2000, Dr Krauss and his team over at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Department of Molecular Medicine at UC-Berkeley published the results of experiments they had been doing on low-fat diets.

LDL cholesterol (or ‘bad cholesterol’) particles come in a range of sizes. People can be divided into two main groups according to which size is most common in their blood. Some people have mostly large LDL particles (Pattern A) while others have mostly small ones (Pattern B). Pattern B are the ones who tend to die from heart disease.

Which pattern you are is largely a matter of genetics. But Dr Krauss found a way to convert a perfectly healthy Pattern A person to Pattern B (heart attack waiting to happen). Just put them on a low-fat diet.

Then in 2007, some researchers in Switzerland found another way to convert Pattern A to Pattern B – have the patient consume sugar. So it seems the two most excellent ways of ensuring a high risk of heart attack is to either be on a low-fat diet or eat lots of sugar.

If that was what you were aiming for, you wouldn’t find it too tricky. The vast majority of low-fat foods are higher in sugar than their full-fat brethren. Eating a low fat diet kills two (fat) birds with the one stone. Slurping up a Diet Yoghurt lowers your fat intake and increases your sugar intake – all at the same time – how efficient.

Faced with the latest evidence from a high quality Australian research team (at QIMR), the Australian Heart Foundation didn’t suggest the issue needed investigation. They didn’t even pretend that they might look at the research and its implications.

No, (rather like the Church of England faced with Darwin’s theory of evolution) they responded to the new evidence with outright denial. In a story about the study which aired last week, a Heart Foundation spokesman said “we strongly recommend to people to have no fat or low fat products in their diet.”

Perhaps the Heart Foundation is in denial because it fears a sudden change of course (after decades of touting the ‘low-fat’ message) might scare the horses (that would be, um, oh that’s right, us). Or perhaps there are more sinister motives leaching out of the stack of money it makes from endorsing low fat (and often high sugar) products with the tick program.

Let’s not forget there are real lives at risk every single day in the battle against heart disease. The Heart Foundation is one of the primary (and most trusted) providers of advice on heart health. For that reason, it receives significant financial support from the Australian public on the understanding that it has our best interests at heart (pun very much intended).

The evidence is mounting that the advice being dispensed is just plain wrong, but the Heart Foundation seems unable see it. If the obvious commercial conflict can’t be resolved then the tick program needs to go. The Australian public needs to hear the truth about what causes heart disease – a low fat diet, lots of sugar or both.

The Victorian government is forcing fast food restaurants to tell us how many calories are in their meals. Premier Brumby says this will “drag back” the “runaway train” of Type II Diabetes. But the science says there isn’t any real point to showing us how many calories are in a burger (or anything else). And the evidence (from places that have already been there, done that and bought the T-shirt) is that it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to what we eat anyway.

Most food contains 4 calories of energy per gram of food. The exceptions are fat (which has 9 calories per gram) and alcohol (which has 7). So a difference in the calorie content of two similar weights (or serves) of food really is just another way of saying one has more fat than the other (or more booze, but I don’t think anyone is worried about that at Macca’s).

We are exceedingly efficient at using our calories. The 150 calories in a glass of apple juice would let us ride a bicycle 8 km, but the same energy (in petrol) would only push a car 250 metres.

Our appetite control is also exceedingly efficient at making sure we don’t consume more calories than we need. Our hormones are so sophisticated they can even tell the difference between fat calories and calories from everything else (and adjust accordingly).

The science says sugar contains an appetite hormone disruptor (called fructose). With sugar in our diet, our bodies can no longer tell when we have had enough calories. Sugar gives our bodies permission to keep on eating and we don’t stop until we are physically restrained by the size of our stomach (or jeans). When that problem, well, passes, our broken appetite control gives us permission to keep eating until we’re stuffed again.

The result is that we are eating way too many calories, but fabulous as they are, our hormones can’t read a calorie sticker slapped on a board out the front of a KFC (even assuming any of us really knew how many we were supposed to be eating anyway). Our broken appetite control is the reason that Diabetes (and obesity) is a run-away train, not a lack of calorie labelling.

Because all a calorie really measures is (relative) fat content, the processed food industry isn’t all that bothered about calorie labelling. They’ll happily slap a calorie count on a can of soft drink (full of appetite hormone disruptor) because they know it comes out looking pretty good next to an equivalent quantity of milk (soft drink – 150 calories v unflavoured milk – 240 calories).

The sugar in the soft drink will make us want to eat more of everything but it’s the milk (which actually fills us up) that comes out looking sorry on a government mandated calorie counting sign. Sugar is effectively invisible on that sign. Indeed they could add more of the addictive substance and not materially affect the calorie count (especially if they use it to replace fat).

The Victorian plan is a straight copy of the calorie labelling laws enacted in New York City in mid 2008. But a Yale and New York University study on the effect of the laws (completed in October last year) showed the effect was exactly – nothing.

The researchers interviewed customers at multiple restaurants in four fast-food chains (McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and KFC). They collected 1,156 receipts from customers two weeks before the laws were introduced and four weeks afterwards. A similar population in a state without the law was used as the control.

The locations were chosen because of a high proportion of obesity and diabetes among poor minority populations. So if Premier Brumby’s runaway train theory was correct, these were exactly the people who should react to the signs.

In New York and in the control city, the average customer ordered a meal with 825 calories before the laws came into effect. Afterwards the New York customer had bumped their order up to 846 calories but the control customers were still ordering the same.

People were ordering more calories after signs were introduced! While that’s probably just a statistical anomaly, there’s certainly no suggestion the signs had any effect at all on what people ordered.

Never ones to be troubled by evidence of effectiveness, other states are now piling on to the Victorian bandwagon. The South Australian and New South Wales Governments think it’s a terrific idea and are rushing to implement.

Laws like this fit all the criteria for high visibility politics, so our elected representatives are drooling over them. Every time we walk past a Government mandated calorie sign (and ignore it) we can be reminded how much our politicians are looking out for us.

Everybody wins. The Pollie looks like he cares about our welfare and is on the job. The Nutritionists cheer them on because they are being listened to. And the food manufacturers know it won’t affect sales anyway.

The only loser is – well, ah – us. We will still get fatter and still get Type II Diabetes (but everybody knows those fat chickens will come home to roost on someone else’s watch) – bon appétit!

Nutella has the nutrition profile of a chocolate bar (and that’s probably an insult to the chocolate bar). But according to their latest advertising, we are supposed to be feeding it to our kids as part of a “balanced breakfast.”

The ad says Nutella contains “premium Hazelnuts, cocoa and the goodness of milk” (cue artistic shots of milk, nuts and cocoa pouring out of the sky). The actual ingredient list looks a little more like this

sugar (50%), palm oil (called “Vegetable Oil” on the label), hazelnuts (13%), skim milk powder (8.7%), fat-reduced cocoa powder (7.4%), emulsifier (soy lecithin), flavouring (vanillin)

I guess a shot showing ribbons of sugar, palm oil and hazelnuts is less artistically appealing (no matter how much more accurate it would be).

In 2008, a remarkably similar advertisement in the UK provoked 53 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). People said that the ad was misleading because it did not make clear that the product was high in sugar and fat.

The ASA agreed and found that as the ad had only mentioned hazelnuts, skimmed milk and cocoa powder (when in fact it had a high sugar and fat content) it was indeed misleading. The Authority decided therefore that the advertisement should no longer be shown on British television.

Of course (when similar complaints were lodged regarding an almost identical commercial here) the Australian equivalent of the ASA decided there was nothing wrong with the ad because it “carefully” used the phrase “balanced breakfast” rather than saying it was a “healthy” breakfast.

On the basis of that reasoning, soft drinks could be advertised as a part of a healthy (sorry, I mean balanced) breakfast for children because they contain (quite a lot of) water.

(Australian) Industry self-regulation clearly leaves a little to be desired. So I’ll be putting all my complaints via the ACCC in future. They may take longer but at least they appear to get it right in the end.

I very much doubt that anybody suffers under the impression that a chocolate bar is a healthy breakfast for children (or anybody else). But chocolate bar purveyors are not flooding our screens with ads suggesting they are.

Nutella contains (cumulatively) lethal amounts of sugar and palm oil (which has been implicated in the destruction of Orang-utan habitats). I’m struggling to think of a food less suitable for consumption at all, let alone as part of a ‘balanced’ breakfast for our children.

If they must advertise the stuff then at the very least, Ferrero (the maker of Nutella) should be forced to emphasise the real ingredients rather than a highly selective cherry-picking of the healthier ones (used largely for flavouring).

You can’t blame Ferrero for giving this a go. Clearly (in Australia, at least) they are within their rights. But we need more than a toothless tiger (with a propensity for legalistic interpretation) ‘safeguarding’ our ability to make informed choices.

If Ferrero is allowed to advertise sugar and palm oil as “skimmed milk and (fat reduced) cocoa”, what else is being pushed at us with (legally finetuned) definitions hiding behind the advertising puff? We deserve better.

The Heart Foundation is getting its undies in a twist about Coles using a tick in their branding. But consumers might be healthier if they let the Coles tick guide their purchases.

Heart Foundation healthy weight director Susan Anderson complains “we receive many calls and emails from outraged shoppers who have been tricked by phony ticks.” And Senator Nick Xenophon wants to call in the Feds, saying “Coles is being deceptive and the ACCC should investigate.”

Incidentally Nick isn’t worried about the consumer accidentally choosing an unhealthy food. He explains his real concern is that consumers will think the product is Heart Foundation approved and “that is fundamentally unfair to the Heart Foundation. “ Oh, ok, good point. We wouldn’t want to endanger their licensing revenue.

A major study released in April showed definitively that when it comes to Heart Disease (presumably the primary concern of the Heart Foundation), sugar consumption was (by far) the strongest indicator of risk. So how do the products which bear the Heart Foundation Tick stack up in the sugar stakes?

Nestle’s Fruit Fix Bars proudly bear the Heart Foundation tick but are around 72% sugar. However a tick-free Mars Bar is only 58% sugar. I guess they’d need to top it up a bit to earn a ‘tick’?

Other high sugar products proudly bearing the tick include Nestle’s Billabong Ice Blocks (23% sugar), Nestle’s B-Smart Milo (32% Sugar), Kellogg’s K-Time Twist Bars (38% sugar), and Nestle’s Nesquik Plus (60% sugar). It looks like letting the Heart Foundation tick guide you through supermarket aisles could land you in very high sugar territory indeed.

But what of the claim that Coles is leading healthy-food seekers astray with their tick? We all eat breakfast cereals, so the brekkie aisle is a good place to do some comparison shopping.

Coles make a few breakfast cereals emblazoned with their tricky ticks. They are Rolled Oats (no sugar), Wheat Biscuits (less than 1% sugar) and Corn Flakes (10% sugar). Nothing too dreadful there (even if the corn flakes could have less sugar).

But the Heart Foundation endorsed list of breakfast cereals includes Australia’s tenth most sugary cereal (Kellogg’s Just Right – 32% sugar) and the 12^th most sugary (Nestle’s Healthwise for Heart Health – 30% sugar). Following the Heart Foundation down the cereal aisle could fill your breakfast bowl with at least three times as much sugar as opting for the Coles tick.

The good news is that if you are prone to ticklexia, you’re in much safer territory from a sugar (and therefore heart health) perspective. Although you probably want to be a little bit careful. Coles have ticks on shaving cream and laundry powder too.

Even when you venture out of the supermarket, the Heart Foundation can be treated as fairly consistent warning of high sugar content. Over at the much-maligned Macca’s the tick approved meals are some of the higher sugar options on (the non-pudding part of) the menu.

A tick-approved Seared Chicken Sweet Chili Wrap, Garden Salad and Italian Dressing will serve you up 4 whole teaspoons of sugar (quite a bit for a salad really). But a plain old Big Mac will add ‘just’ 1.5 teaspoons of sugar to your day. And a Filet-o-Fish, piles on a mere half teaspoon.

The Heart Foundation happily endorses high sugar products because unlike its US counterpart (and in the face of overwhelming science), it considers sugar a harmless (even necessary) addition to our diet. In response to one of my earlier rants, Susan Anderson even told Cardiology Update “Although associated with tooth decay… eating sugar itself is not clearly associated with other health problems.”

I had always believed (like most of us, I suspect) that the Australian Heart Foundation was a powerful force for good in ensuring we all ate well. We trust the Heart Foundation to tell us the truth, not what is commercially convenient for its clients.

The science on sugar says it is lethal. We wouldn’t tolerate our doctor taking payment from sugar manufacturers in return for recommendations. So why should we tolerate it from the Heart Foundation. Whacking a tick on a children’s food product (like Fruit Fix) that has more sugar than a Mars Bar is at best a conflict of interest and at worst, negligent.

So, please Heart Foundation, let’s have less media hype about Coles (using a logo vaguely reminiscent of the tick) and a lot more media hype about the lethal effects of sugar. I know that will hurt your income stream but is that really what’s important here?

Also published in Crikey (subscription required). You can also read the Heart Foundation’s response here (about half way down the page – no subscription required).

The budget contained a blizzard of announcements on health. And most of them are focused on preventing chronic disease. But the reality is that they will have approximately the same effect on chronic disease (and cost twice as much) as the home insulation program – nada, nil, nothing and nix.

Chronic disease is a priority because (as the budget papers point out) the big three (heart disease, diabetes and cancers) ”account for 70 per cent of health care expenditure … [and] 50 per cent of GP consultations.” And these costs are projected to blow out to (really) unsustainable levels in the next two decades.

And the reason for all this chronic disease trouble? Well, that’s easy, we’re all ‘too fat’. According to the papers, “[the number of fat people] has significantly increased over the last 25 years [with] 68 per cent of adult men 55 per cent of adult women [now being] overweight or obese.”

You’ll no doubt be relieved to discover that the Government knows the cause all this fatitude and (even better) knows what to do about it. You see it’s all down to ‘lifestyle factors’. Translation: we eat too much fat and we don’t do enough exercise.

But the Government’s not just going to sit back and wait for the bills. They’ve got a four (no, not a five) year plan and it goes like this:

2010

• Grants for “healthy lifestyle programs” in the community
• “Public Awareness campaigns”

2011

• Create Medicare Locals (GP centres) for delivery of preventive primary health care
• More Public Awareness campaigns
• More grants for healthy lifestyle programs in the community
• States given money to implement healthy lifestyle programs in workplaces and schools
• Awards for excellence in promoting healthy lifestyles

2012

• Finish installing Medicare Locals
• Money for more nurses and diabetes treatment
• More Public Awareness campaigns
• More grants for healthy lifestyle programs in the community
• States given more money to implement healthy lifestyle programs in workplaces and schools

2013

• More Public Awareness campaigns
• More grants for healthy lifestyle programs in the community
• States given more money to implement healthy lifestyle programs in workplaces and schools
• Bonus payments for States that show we lost weight

That’s right, the plan is to nag us to death (or more precisely, to nag us to health). If you want to know what a “public awareness” campaign looks like when it’s at home, you need look no further than the recent “Measure Up” ads and posters.

According to a recent evaluation of that campaign, it was wildly successful. Now, by successful they don’t mean that there is any evidence that it had any effect on obesity or chronic disease. No, what they mean is that 91 per cent of us saw it.

The ads successfully told us we are too fat and we should do something about it. And thank goodness we have them because without all that advertising, we’d be forced to well, ah … use a mirror?

The government is backing up these ads with loads of new lifestyle programs and money for GPs to target ‘primary prevention’. You won’t be able to visit a doctor, go to work or enter a school without being nagged about your ‘lifestyle’.

Last September, the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne published the results of a study into exactly how effective that kind of nagging is. The research team asked 66 general practitioners to administer advice “targeting change in nutrition, physical activity, and sedentary behaviour.” The advice was in accordance with the national healthy living guidelines.

In the study, 258 obese Melbourne children were randomly assigned to either an intervention or a control group. The children in the intervention group saw their GP four times over a 12 week period and received all the recommended advice about nutrition and exercise. The kids in the control group lived life as normal without any nagging from their doctor.

Twelve months later, the researchers checked in with the kids to see what difference it made. The result was that the counselling “did not improve BMI, physical activity, or nutrition in overweight or mildly obese 5-10 year olds.” The researchers went on to note that “and it would be very costly if universally implemented.”

In stark contrast, there are over 80 studies (and counting) which show that taking the simple step of reducing the availability of sugar sweetened beverages (soft drinks and juices) has a dramatic effect on obesity and chronic disease. This kind of evidence seems to have escaped the research powers of our health hierarchy. Because even in the face of unequivocal proof that the advice we give our children doesn’t work, we’re lining up for more of the same.

Telling people to exercise more and eat less fat is immensely costly (as the budget has just proven) and the evidence says it doesn’t work. But it appears that we are not about to let those details get in the way of a campaign designed to convince us the Government is doing something about health.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Let’s stop the insanity on health.

What would we do without smokers? Until last Thursday, their dirty little habit tipped $7 billion a year into Australia’s tax coffers.

And now the little nudge Kevin gave the price on Friday will mean that over the next four years smokers will be sending a total of $33 billion to the tax man (go team). In the same time frame, Kevin’s new mining tax will have raised just $12 billion (as long as the resource boom holds up).

Even better than that (as any pollie worth his salt, well knows), whacking smokers is an exceedingly popular blood sport. Almost 90% of Australians are in favour of raising ciggy taxes. So in political terms smoking taxes are as close to free money as you’ll ever get.

In return for their generous contribution to nation building our nicotine addicted brethren ask very little. They cost the health system just $0.3 billion per annum (largely because they have the good grace to die quickly and inexpensively). And they don’t mind being treated like lepers as long as we let them keep smoking somewhere (even if they do have to take a cab to the designated smoking zone).

So it’s a good thing smokers are happy to continue to pay all that moolah because (‘reformed’ or not) by 2033, the Australian health system will be costing up to $295 billion every year (up from the $94 billion it currently costs). To put that in perspective, last year the total tax take for the entire country was a mere $338 billion.

If it weren’t for smokers, the queues at our hospitals would already be a helluva lot longer. Unfortunately smokers are not a renewable resource (for tax dollars). Every time we increase the tax, a few more (clearly less patriotic ones) give up. Since 1980, we’ve mined the revenue base down from 34% to just 19% of adults.

Worse than that, there is a very high likelihood that they swap their expensive (and taxable) addiction for a tax free addiction like sugar. A series of rat studies out of Princeton University over the last six years, have suggested that nicotine and sugar share the same (neurological) addiction pathways. Which might explain why smokers tend to hit the sweets when they give up.

Since people willing to have their brain hacked open while they suck on a lolly have been a little thin on the ground, we’ve had to be happy with animal studies. But advances in scanning technology are meaning that more and more human studies are starting to appear. And these studies are telling us exactly the same thing. Sugar is just as addictive as nicotine in humans.

Getting people addicted to sugar is not a good thing for our ailing health system. Sugar addicts develop lifelong diseases like Type II Diabetes and Heart Disease. These chronic conditions are currently managed (and not cured) with a continuous supply of very expensive medication. And ultimately end with people occupying expensive acute beds for very long periods.

The health budget is a runaway tram because of the accelerating blowout in these chronic (and largely preventable) diseases. By 2033 Type II diabetes alone is likely to cost a billion (or so) more to treat every year than we currently prise out of the smokers.

Taxing smokers until they quit provides a great band-aid for the sugar induced blowout in health. But what happens when we’ve converted them all to sugar addicts? How do we pay for the health system they will desperately need? Who do we tax then?

Ooh here’s a thought, how about we stop feeding people sugar instead? Nah, you’re right, that’s a silly idea, we’ll probably just tax the sugar instead.