Sugar tax: thanks George but can we talk?

Cans of Coca-Cola which would currently fall within the higher rate of the sugar tax (PA)

So, we’ve ‘done something’ about sugar. Or will, in 2018 when it all stirs through. Sweet.

So mainstream Britain now ‘gets’ sugar like it ‘gets’ fags, booze and gas-guzzling. Too much is bad, right? So tax me. I’ll self-regulate. It’s hardly grappling with the vested interests of those who profit from our habitual propensity for self-abuse. More a token gesture that conserves the status quo ante. How British of us.

The High Street is complicit. Here’s a slightly ‘healthier’ choice - at a premium, naturally. As the appetite for better food has grown, we see two demons raise their heads: halo-ism and faux-healthy. Take Pret’s current stance: big window signs saying Go Go Go Organic that in fact only refer to coffee and milk. Yes, they show beans. No, they’re not making any provenance claims for their bread, beef or tomatoes. But they have to hope there’s a halo.

I don’t demonise Pret. They and Leon are beacons of rectitude in a sea of cynicism. The second trend is far more pernicious. It occurs where the kitchen is dictated to by the marketing department (with legal counsel), so they can ‘join the healthy eating boom’ without having to skill up or, heaven forbid, affect margins.

The most alarming example I’ve seen is a trade advertisement I happened to receive from a manufacturer of bread mix, promising ‘double your money’ with none of the downside – a faux-sourdough product that allows you to use the modish Sourdough-word while delivering precisely none of the nutrition benefits.

So the currency of better health is being debased by marketing departments driven by the wrong sort of breadheads – and queues of eager customers believe they’re making better choices, while in fact often eating less healthy food and paying more for it. Worse still, they’re being thrown off course from a worthy destination and more likely to give up.

This makes me especially angry because I’ve seen the benefits of a genuinely healthy diet at first hand.

Late in 2010, my partner Melissa was diagnosed with cancer and self-nourished her way back to health. She sailed through chemotherapy. The professionals agreed: knowing what to consume, in what quantities and at what times, had the most beneficial effect of all on her swift recovery. As she leapfrogged current mainstream medical thinking, her progress stumped them all.

We have since each put in easily more than the 10,000 hours that qualifies us as experts. We have our own company that lives and breathes the same principles that worked for her.

We called it Modern Baker. It’s going really well. But I can now see how hopeless the High Street is for anyone not properly informed. Big Food’s love of a profitable bandwagon means that it’s actually got worse.

So while a sugar tax might be a good toe in the water, what’s really required is some far more fundamental tightening of the regulations.

We all need to challenge any law that allows food manufactures to exploit a ‘healthy’ impulse with less nutritional products; take control of what we eat, not what what we’re told, mistrust everything, ask questions, inform ourselves. Refuse to be taken in.

Perhaps the most persuasive statistic of all has nothing to do with Melissa’s self-managed recovery from cancer. It’s that, after a life of calorie counting, she now eats wonderful, tasty food in remarkably large quantities, and her weight hasn’t shifted one gram.

Don’t fall for High Street Doublespeak. Find out. Then speak out.

Leo Campbell is co-founder of the Modern Baker