What we learned from Michael Mosley's Lose a Stone in 21 Days

https://www.getthegloss.com/news/lo...-what-we-learnt

A sugar tax – and a drop in obesity-related diseases – could save the NHS billions

The Institute for Public Policy Research wants to go beyond Boris Johnson's own obesity crackdown

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...e-nhs-billions/

The picture is getting clearer.

If the tax money is spent on something genuinely health-promoting that would be a plus, but realistically if I decided I wanted some junk food an eight percent higher price wouldn't deter me from buying it so don't know if it will others. Energy density? I wonder if that would include sugary foods like fat-free candies and sweet drinks that are a bit lower in absolute energy density but not healthy. Hopefully the unhealthy food definition won't expand to include high energy density nutritious foods like meat, dairy or natural fats that some people still picture as unhealthy.

My guess is that it won't affect most people, unless they really, truly can not afford it. Since taxes are shown as part of the purchase price on the shelf in the UK, chances are that 8% will only be looked at as an 8% price increase - they'll complain but pay it anyway, because they want that particular junk food.






Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that's exactly what will happen. If they expand it to starch based junk (instead of just sugary junk), then they're dangerously close to putting a junk food tax on the staff of life: Bread, and other staples, such as pasta, rice, and flour. Even just using the term energy dense implies fats, since fats have more than twice the cals/gram as carbs and protein. And fats still have a widely held reputation as the baddest of the bad baddies in the dietary world, and that's not likely to change any time soon, unless they really start listening to those who actually know what they're talking about, such as Maholtra and Mosley.




If they leave it at sugars, and expand into starch based foods (such as chips/crisps, and biscuits/cookies), then that would certainly help.

The problem is that when it comes to taxing the chips and cookies, it's far more than likely they'll be going after fat, not starch, for the exact reasons I stated above.

It's just more of the "lose weight dammit" exhortations if they aren't helping anyone figure out what they should do.

It's easy to say "just don't eat junk food" which led to me eating LOTS of unbuttered toast with jam, baked potatoes with fake butter on them, and those rice cakes with caramel drizzles on them.

Sooooooooo healthy.

Open the door a crack, and all hades breaks loose as taxes are applied to any food determined to be unhealthy including red meat, bacon, and high (healthy) fat-ladened foods. Yet, taxes are unlikely to ever be applied to healthy whole grain-based foods making it so easy for the food manufacturers to skirt the issue. Since there is currently no agreement on how healthy foods are defined, this is the slipperiest of slopes. Sheer ice.

Also gutless of them to set 2030 to halve childhood obesity. It's indicative of how clueless many who make these pronouncements are. Malhotra recommends a 21-day plan to enhance health and immunity. If we ever achieve agreement on which foods are healthy, this goal wouldn't be unreasonable to be set for 2023 for those willing to comply.

So not exactly a tax, but I did give a wry smile when I read this:

However, I do wonder what, if any, difference it will make to the amount of wheat consumed in the UK.

Good point. Not sure it will make a difference at all.

In a dicumentary about the royal family during Ww2, discussed the push to eat bread during that era. Included bran to stretch the loaf. Loaf kept til a day old to make slucing it very thin possible to stretch loaf out for the week. Brittish gov pushed bread eating.

Maybe the poor harvest will push some people to other foods.

Just watched all three episodes of the Fast 800 “Lose a stone in 21 days” that Demi referred to above. Very impressed with the stress on low carb, he didn’t sugar coat it(!) at all. Bread, pasta, spuds, rice, sweets, cake, choc - all out. I know that sticking to 800 calories is a shock but this is designed as a shock to the system for BMI 30+, like the Atkins Fat Fast. I might even follow this two days of seven.

Pair that withPhinneys presentation on BMR and looking at the Greatest Looser.

From what I read a year or two ago, the push to eat more bread in the US actually started in the 1920's. Those were years of plenty - and they had so much excessive wheat production that they simply couldn't store all the grain that was being produced. So the US government ran ads telling people to eat more bread.



This was of course before the stock market crash and Great Depression years, when things completely reversed -there were huge crop failures, the dust bowl, massive unemployment, and many were standing in bread lines, just to get something to eat.



My guess is in those few years between the beginning of the push to eat more bread and the depression years, people were easily indoctrinated into and addicted to eating bread 3 times a day, every day.


Interestingly enough, when the US entered WWII, there were a whole new type of bread ad - they asked people to cut down on the amount of bread they ate each day, in order to provide sufficient wheat for the troops.

Governments do a whole lot of meddling, that is for sure. Lets hope the UK and tbe US can get this one right.

All three parts of the Lose a Stone program are on YouTube. First part: https://youtu.be/rQOsaeduYx4