Sugar tax needed, say US experts

Bulls**t.

Sugar is as damaging and addictive as alcohol or tobacco and should be regulated, claim US health experts.

According to a University of California team, new policies such as taxes are needed to control soaring consumption of sugar and sweeteners...

The consumption of sugar has tripled worldwide over the past 50 years, with links to obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes.

In a comment in the journal Nature, Prof Lustig, a leading child obesity expert, says governments need to consider major shifts in policy, such as taxes, limiting sales of sweet food and drinks during school hours, or even stopping children from buying them below a certain age.

The professor of paediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, told the BBC: "It [sugar] meets all the criteria for societal intervention that alcohol and tobacco meet."

Hogwash.

Taxes on cigarettes and alcohol affect smokers and drinkers, respectively, almost exclusively.

A sugar tax affects all of us.

The problem is people who are too fat.

All that is necessary is to charge the fat the real cost of their sick care and weight loss will ensue.

Here is one way to do the right thing correctly.