Jamie Oliver has made an appeal to David Cameron and parents across the country to join his latest campaign to levy a 20p tax per litre on sugary drinks such as Coca-Cola.
“If School Dinners was Star Wars, this is definitely Empire Strikes Back,” said Oliver, who added that he was tired of seeing teachers pull cans of Red Bull out of children’s packed lunch boxes.
Talking to a young teenage girl at a preview of his new documentary, Jamie’s Sugar Rush, in London yesterday, he said: “Us parents of the last 30 years have completely let your generation down. We’ve brainwashed you all.”
In the film the celebrity chef takes a gory tour of the effects of too much sugar on young people and the “crumbling” NHS. In one hospital scene Oliver looks on in horror while a six-year-old has a mouthful of rotten teeth removed and he winces in another when the bandages are removed from an amputation caused by type 2 diabetes.
The problems posed by diabetes and obesity are clearly the catalysts for this latest crusade by Oliver. He feels that together they create a “cloud of doom” effect which is “kind of taking the piss out of the NHS”.
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“Diabetes kills more people than any combat we’re involved in,” said Oliver. The “sugar tax” would be used to help up to 200,000 obese people and raise £1 billion a year to tackle diet-related diseases in schools and the NHS.
“I’ve picked a really hard one this time and I know I’m going to get a bashing. But I’m appealing to Mr Cameron as one father to another and because every clever person I’ve met agrees with me on this.”
Oliver has been lobbying the Prime Minister and has sent him a framed graphic showing that one in five schoolchildren aged five is overweight, a figure that rises to one in three by the age of 11, and is predictably worse among children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“If the past five years have been about dementia then the next five will be all about obesity. I believe that the government will unveil a master obesity strategy at the end of the year or early next year,” he claimed.
As a father of four children aged under 14, Oliver is only too aware that “sugar is everywhere”. “Sweets are at children’s eye level in shops. Anyone who has shopped with kids knows what aggro it is. You’re only ever 30 seconds away from complete anarchy.”
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Oliver will “show government how it’s done” with a tax imposed on sugary drinks served in his own chain of restaurants, starting next month. John Vincent, co-founder of Leon restaurants and an adviser to the government on school dinners, also vowed to add a 10p tax to soft drinks at his chain of restaurants. “I live next door to a surgeon,” said Vincent, “and he says he is putting more and more limbs in bin liners.”
When Oliver met with a group of influential restaurant group directors recently to explore the problem of sugary drinks he brought along a pile of mannequins’ limbs to ram home the point that there are 7,000 amputations a year in the UK due to diabetes.
Taking on the powerful soft drinks industry will be a daunting task. Sugar consumption is going down but from a high plateau, argued Ian Wright, director general of the Food and Drink Federation, when pressed by Oliver in the film.
“Demonising one nutrient out of a range on the national menu is not a healthy way to proceed,” said Wright. “Consumer choice is the best way to go on this because government intervention simply doesn’t work.”
Oliver believes that whatever deal is made it has to be a compulsory one that levels the playing field. “Industry says we should self regulate but data and stats alone don’t work. It’s time for a bit of structure.”
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The celebrity chef also expressed anger about fast food advertisements during prime-time family shows such as Britain’s Got Talent. When asked about the Great British Bake Off, however, he said he was not an alien against cakes. “We’ve attacked sugary sweet drinks because they are the single worst culprit. They are easily available and you’re still hungry after drinking them. They deserve to be on the naughty step. Cake is a family treat, to be eaten now and again, and on the show it’s made together from raw ingredients.”
Jamie Oliver’s Sugar Rush will air on Thursday, September 3 at 9pm on Channel 4.