BORIS IS ATTACKING THE POOR AGAIN

First we had the sugar tax, where soft drinks manufacturers have either had to reduce the amount of sugar in their drinks, keep them the same but put the price up or reduce the size of the bottle. Now, regardless of whether they did in fact reduce the sugar, the bottle sizes are smaller and yet the prices have not gone down, in fact in many cases they have gone up.

Now Boris Johnson is talking of doing similar with unhealthy food. He also wants to ban junk food advertising before the 9pm watershed. This time the ‘Covid 19’ is being used as the reason for this. Saying people who are obese are more likely to be badly affected if they caught the virus and more likely to die.

What Boris Johnson doesn’t mention though, is the fact that a lot of obese people are like this because they cannot afford to buy the more expensive better quality, healthier food. Unhealthy, high fat, high sugar, food is generally a lot cheaper, so obviously if you are for example stuck in a zero hours job where you never know when you will be working next, or where you are on minimum wage, or where you are not working etc then you have to buy the food that you can afford to buy rather than what you would like to buy. It is all very well going out and spending a lot on a healthy nutritious meal, but not if it means you go without food for the rest of the week because of it.

If Boris Johnson really was worried about obese people, then all he has to do is make healthier food a great deal cheaper and also offer free cookery classes around the country to give people a chance to pick up ideas on ways to make healthy, nutritious and cheap meals.

The way Boris Johnson wants to do it, will as is always the case benefit the wealthy. The prices will go up and the sizes will reduce on unhealthy food, meaning the poorest will suffer the most, and the manufacturers and their share holders will benefit the most.