Government Researchers call for tax on fatty foods

There are Food Nazis everywhere - UK Department of Public Health researchers, at Oxford University, are claiming that more than 3,000 fatal heart attacks and strokes could be prevented in the UK each year if Value Added Tax (VAT) was slapped on a vast range of foods.

Dr Mike Rayner, who worked on the study, said: “the time is right for more debate on the issue of 'fat taxes'”

Such a tax would, of course, be music to the ears of the EC who are pushing to completely remove the UK’s zero rated category for VAT applied to such things as books and some food.

It is absolute unalloyed health fascism. They want to force you to do what they believe is good for you – and it will cost you money.

Basically they plan to drive up the price of ‘unhealthy’ foods through taxation to the point where people are effectively forced to resort to more ‘healthy’ foods. They calculate this would initially inflate household food bills by 4.6%.

There is no pretence that they imagine the average individual is capable, or entitled, to manage their own eating habits, or by extension even own their own bodies. Even if their claim is true their proposal is still something to be vigorously resisted on principle alone.

Downing Street's strategy unit was reportedly flirting with the idea in 2004, but Tony Blair rejected it.

Such a move would probably suit any government wishing to make concessions to the EC by falling in line, by providing something else to blame the move on. Something like saving the NHS from the criminal recklessness of the general greedy fat over eating population who gain weight specifically to drain the coffers of the NHS. Though it would lead, rightly, to accusations of nanny-statism.

Maura Gillespie, of the British Heart Foundation, indicated that they aren’t yet convinced by the idea saying: "Further evidence is needed on the effect of targeted food taxes before we can support a 'fat tax'."

The thing is though , to some extent all this is only playing with statistics. No matter what, until they come up with a way of indefinitely extending healthy life, you are just shifting the balance of the causes of death around. One less heart attack will be one more stroke, or Alzheimer’s. Even if you could live forever it would be stats on what accident finally did for you.

Eventually some Health & Safety Fascist would be banning you from using plastic eating utensils because they were too dangerous to you any anyone nearby.