I've spent the last 10 years campaigning for better food for our kids.
From school dinners to processed junk.
But now I'm going into my biggest battle ever.
This time I'm taking on sugar.
It's everywhere.
It's in your food.
Nobody would suspect that little pot to have nearly 20 teaspoons of sugar in it.
In your drinks.
Do most mothers feed their babies coke and breastfeed at the same time?
Yeah, mostly everyone.
And all over the UK press.
More and more we're hearing calls from health experts to slash the amount of sugar in our
diets.
We're just allowing our children to have this.
That is a scandal.
And it's rich fever pitch when it comes to warnings about sugar and our health.
We are red light flashing, flood lights, sirens, alarms.
We're beyond red.
I'm tired of all the talking and waiting around for something to be done while more and more
people get sick.
Children Becky's age should not have type 2 diabetes.
The health system is collapsing.
So I've decided to do something about it.
It's going to get interesting pretty quick I think.
We've all seen the headlines, unhealthy diets are putting incredible pressure on the NHS.
But I don't think that we really understand what that means.
I'm here at St George's Hospital in London to try and get my head around it.
This is recovery.
This is the way through to see Mario.
What's going on here is nothing to do with being overweight or obese.
Hi buddy.
Hi.
This is Mario.
These are all the x-rays we've taken of Mario.
Look at the tooth in front.
Nearly all decayed.
It's just a shell.
That's just a big lump of bacteria.
That's empty.
Well what we do is blow in and out of here.
That's great.
Like this.
OK.
Six year old Mario is a healthy boy who regularly cleans his teeth.
But he's got a real weakness for sugary drinks.
This is a bit of a tough watch, but it's important to see.
Is he breathing for himself now?
So now you're breathing for him.
The machine's taking over.
It's so quick and absolutely brutal.
The only way to get the teeth out is to yank them out.
In my head, this environment that's expensive and full of care and you kind of get it when
it's for cancers and this and the other and poor kids with leukaemia and stuff like that.
This is tooth decay?
Yes.
From sugar?
From sugar.
So fast, exhausting work and they've got another five kids to get through this morning.
Now Mario is off to recovery where he'll be reunited with his parents.
Absolutely I mean to see a child put under that, that is really quite nerve wracking.
Mario will be OK, but it's hard to see.
He's OK.
Let's get mum's out.
Yeah, shall we get mum's out?
Quite hard, big procedure and completely avoidable.
How big is the problem?
Massive.
Oh my lord.
That's just decay.
It's decay that's gone right through the tooth, all the way through the enamel, through to
the middle of the tooth, into the nerve and so they're just rotten.
And if they have 20 teeth, which is a full set of children's teeth and they all need
to come out.
20 teeth?
20 teeth, that happens routinely.
That's not exceptional or rare, that's frequent.
The problem then comes if the decay carries on into the adult teeth and those adult teeth
need to be lost.
That's happening routinely now, we see that frequently.
We'll often replace them with dentures.
False teeth?
False teeth.
So the sugar is pretty much responsible for most of this?
Not pretty much entirely.
It doesn't matter how well you brush your teeth, if you do it twice a day, if you constantly
sip or eat sugar throughout the day, you can easily overwhelm any preventative regime you
do.
So you can brush all day, it won't make a difference.
It's not just Mario.
Each year 26,000 primary school aged kids go to hospital just because of rotten teeth.
Pulling out kids' teeth costs the NHS around ??30 million a year.
Sugar is the biggest source of children going to hospital in the country.
The numbers are enormous, they're terrifying and it's the biggest pressing problem we have.
We are red light, flashing, floodlights, sirens, alarms.
We're beyond red.
The demand for our services, particularly for children's teeth, is absolutely overwhelming.
Today's definitely shocked me.
You step outside the building and you see this institution called the hospital and we're
kind of taking the piss out of it.
We're putting it under extraordinary pressure.
You know, it's getting absolutely ridiculous.
We need to help these guys do their job and focus on the things that really matter, not
pulling out bloody teeth because there's too much sugary shit in the environment.
I definitely feel fired up, definitely up for a bit of a fight.
It isn't just the kids that are getting caught out by too much sugar.
The World Health Organisation are so worried they've told us we all need to cut back.
Experts here agree and have now recommended adults have no more than seven teaspoons of
sugar a day.
Pretty terrifying then that many people in the UK are getting through over 40.
Experts are worried about what they call free sugars.
So that's any extra sugars added to food and drink, plus sugars found in honey and syrup
and even natural sugars found in fruit juices.
I've asked my mate Lucy to show me how sugar could be getting into our everyday diets without
us even realising.
So here's a cake.
We know we shouldn't be having that every day, but it's not about cake really is it?
Not all about cake.
What bit worries you the most?
How much sugar we're consuming without realising it, without it being in these obvious bits.
So what's hidden in the everyday food that we don't assume have any sugar in.
Can we start by going through like some typical meal options for a day and I can explain it
to you much better that way.
So where do we start?
Breakfast.
Can you pour out a like normal breakfast serving for brown flakes?
I mean that is quite a blokey portion.
To my brown flakes I'm adding some milk, some low-fat lemon yoghurt and berries.
Lucy has picked products that we would think of as healthy and selected the brand with
the highest sugar content.
Can I get you to guess how much free sugar is in your lovely breakfast there?
I've got no clue.
56.4 grams.
Doesn't sound great.
Which in teaspoons is 14.1.
Oh shit the bed.
How do we get to that much?
Okay so let's do this in teaspoons which is 4 grams.
There were roughly 5 teaspoons of added sugar in my man-sized serving of brown flakes.
Nearly 3 teaspoons in my portion of yoghurt and over 6 teaspoons of free sugar in my orange
juice.
If the experts are saying we should have no more than 7 teaspoons a day, that's twice
the amount just for this breakfast.
Let's move on to lunch.
Tomato soup and bread.
Would you think either of those have a significant amount of sugar in?
You'll have natural sugars from the tomatoes and I don't know if they've sweetened the
bread but it looks fairly branded so I imagine there is a bit of added sugar.
Let's have a little look.
Different brands can have different amounts of sugar so you need to check the labels.
Sadly labels don't list the value for added sugars but comparing the total sugars in similar
products can help us estimate.
Some wholemeal bread has nearly twice as much sugar and this cream of tomato soup has about
2 teaspoons more than some other brands.
So this healthy looking lunch would add about 3 more teaspoons of free sugar to your day.
Next up, an afternoon snack and a drink.
So most people would feel that that's a pretty healthy snack, it's not something to be too
concerned about.
In half of this bottle there is 3 and a half teaspoons of sugar.
I thought it was water.
Oh it's flavoured water.
In one bottle, which most of us would drink, there is 7 teaspoons of sugar.
That's sweet, ok.
In this bar not many of us would think that there's actually 2 teaspoons of sugar in it.
So that's 9 teaspoons of sugar in a healthy looking snack.
So what next?
I'm going to cheer you up, I'm going to get you to do some cooking for dinner.
Next up, Lucy wants me to whip up a good old stir fry.
Now I haven't cheeked out on you, we've got a lemon and ginger stir fry sauce.
So I'd just like you to add that in.
That's the amount for 2 people.
So by adding that sauce in, you've just increased the sugar content by nearly 10 teaspoons per
person.
Per person!
Even if I was making a sweet and sour dish, I mean you know, of course sugar has the amazing
ability to balance tartness and even balance bitterness.
I would never add 10 teaspoons per person.
And this really epitomises hidden sugar, because nobody would suspect that little pot to have
nearly 20 teaspoons of sugar in it.
That's crazy.
And once you've tot up your breakfast, your lunch, your snack and your evening meal, you're
actually having roughly 36 teaspoons of sugar.
That's too much.
Whenever you buy something that's in a packet or in a bottle, read the label, because you
cannot tell if it's got added sugar in it until you look at it.
And even then, you can't tell the difference between total and added.
This is a healthy looking day's food.
No chocolate bars here, yet it's actually 5 times the amount of free sugar UK experts
now say we should be having each day.
36 teaspoons when we should be aiming for less than 7.
We urgently need to do something about this.
Do you know what?
I'm really bothered about all of this sugar in our food and drinks.
And it isn't just about our kids' teeth being yanked out.
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Experts warn that eating too much sugar can help make people obese, increasing their risk
of developing diet-related illnesses like heart disease and some types of cancer.
In the last few years, one disease in particular has gripped the UK, and I'm really worried
about it.
There's been this kind of cloud of doom.
This disease, type 2 diabetes, that everyone's talking about, it's always associated with
diet-related disease.
I just don't know enough about it.
I don't think enough people do.
Like, what is it?
How does it affect the body?
So today I'm going to the Royal Free Hospital to find out about type 2 diabetes.
I kind of need to get my head around it.
All right, mate.
Thank you.
Type 2 diabetes is increasing on an alarming scale in the UK.
There are currently 3.5 million people with the disease, costing the NHS almost ??9 billion
per year.
And it's only going to get worse if we continue the way that we're going.
There are two main types of diabetes, but we're only talking about type 2 today, as
that's the one that can be linked to lifestyle factors such as diet.
This is a specialist foot clinic.
Type 2 diabetes can affect the nerves and blood vessels, resulting in wounds that can
become ulcers, and in the most extreme cases, can lead to amputations.
So with Julian, we're checking both feet.
Julian has recently had his foot amputated.
I didn't know I had diabetes at the time.
A couple of toes had gone gangrenous and got infected.
They originally took the three toes off, and it was only about a month ago that they did
this later surgery.
But it couldn't happen to me.
I'm not sure they had diabetes, but they did.
This is at the hard end of diet-related disease, isn't it?
It is.
And unfortunately, it's not more common than you might think.
So in the UK, there's up to about 7,000 amputations, low-limb amputations a year.
That would shock people.
I mean, that's got to be, what, 130 people a week?
It is.
That's extraordinary.
Losing limbs, removing limbs, trying to save limbs all feels quite medieval to me.
I find it utterly shocking.
Were you expecting to lose your leg?
No.
No.
So it must have been an ordeal.
No, the first thought I had was they took three toes.
When I think about amputations, it's usually in relation to the Paralympics or because
of war.
Hello, Ralph.
Hello.
How are you, mate?
I'm doing research, and in 13 years of British combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were
around 300 amputations.
Come on, then, Sharkey.
But 7,000 amputations just in a year in the UK due to diabetes, I find heartbreaking.
Why aren't we talking about this more?
Diabetes is already 10% of the NHS budget.
That's extraordinary.
Yes.
And just for type 2, that's 8.8 billion.
So the future ain't looking bright, is it?
Well, if there's this continued rise in obesity, it's going to be a huge, huge burden on the
households.
So how worried are you about that?
As a fellow countryman and medical practitioner, I mean, like, are we green?
Are we amber?
Or are we flashing red?
I think we're flashing red.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, I think that's accepted.
This burden is only going to get worse now that type 2 diabetes is increasingly affecting
our kids.
So I'm now off to see a 15-year-old girl with type 2 diabetes, which is scary and shocking.
And this is a disease that used to be for old people in their 70s and 80s, and it's
getting younger and younger and younger.
And I'm struggling with the words to say how angry I am and how upset I am and how bothered
I am.
Until 20 years ago, there were virtually no kids in the UK with this disease.
Now there's hundreds.
Schoolgirl Becky was diagnosed aged just 13.
Although in some cases genetics can play a role, the rapid rise in numbers is largely
thought to be down to diet.
And sugar is a big part of the problem.
Hi!
Come in!
Nice to meet you.
Come through.
Thanks for having me.
Obviously, type 2 is massively affected by diet.
As a mother, I'm sure you were tracing back what would have happened to you.
Yeah.
I made some really poor choices.
I started getting pocket money, and at the end of the day I'd just go into the corn shop,
buy drinks and sweets and stuff and biscuits and chocolate.
Looking back, I kind of fell out of the habit of cooking meals every day and got more into
the habit of buying something that was quick and easy or buying a takeaway.
As a parent, it is my responsibility to take care of my children.
I mean, I had half an idea and was trying to get healthy things, but maybe if the packaging
on the...
But you're still getting it wrong.
Yeah, I was still getting it wrong.
Children Becky's age should not have type 2 diabetes.
This should not be happening.
And it's not just Becky.
Becky has to keep a constant track of her blood sugar levels.
If left untreated, abnormal levels can lead to potentially dangerous complications.
Looks like something from Star Trek.
Touch it in.
I don't like needles.
This is normal for me.
You kind of get used to it.
So you have to do this to yourself every day.
You've got to take your own bloods.
Yeah.
Morning, night, after, like, breakfast and lunch and dinner and before.
As long as you're monitoring it day and night to make sure it doesn't spike.
That's a constant worry for you?
Yeah, my friend, she actually went into a coma with her diabetes.
That's how she was diagnosed, because she went into a coma.
All of this monitoring and all the learning you've had to do, it's not really something
I ever thought teenagers, 13, 14, 15-year-olds would have to deal with.
It's quite annoying to have to try and be so responsible.
When you usually get home, your mum makes dinner, you don't have to worry about it.
Just don't have to think about it.
Yeah.
So basically what you're saying is having type 2 diabetes sucks.
Yeah.
It does.
A lot.
She's tagged this one - young and skinny.
Mum Claire shows me when she started to see the problem.
This is when she'd just started high school and that's when she really started to put
the weight on.
What are your worries for the future, then, for Becky?
There's so many health complications she can get and even if she does lose the weight,
the type 2 diabetes might not go away.
In her whole life, it literally does, it makes your whole life based around what you can
and can't eat, rather than being...
A teenager.
Being a teenager.
In Britain today, one in five kids turn up at primary school at the age of four overweight
or obese.
But what's disgusting is when they leave at 11.
One in three are overweight or obese.
And that's not good.
One of the biggest problems is that as a kid, it's pretty darn tough to escape sugar.
It's everywhere.
This is eight-year-old Ori and her mum, Ola.
Could you just look at me a second?
They're going to help me see the world from a child's perspective.
This year, they reckon advertising spend in Britain is set to hit ??16 billion.
And loads of these ads will reach our kids.
So this is their local corner shop in Ryslip.
So it's basically, if you track the little red dot, it's just showing where she's looking.
And it's kind of about branding, really, and eye height and how companies or brands advertise
to kids.
Mummy.
You can see her homing in on those drinks.
That's amazing.
OK, so now they're going to Tesco.
Some sweet markets have recognised that it's not very ethical to kind of have all the sweets
and sugary products next to the till.
That's mental, because they're at the sweet-free checkouts.
Please can I pop one to eat?
But all the sweets are right next door.
That's amazing.
Look, around 70% of confectionery sales are impulse buys.
So you can see why shops make them so easy to reach.
Right, this is Superdrug.
There's no sweets in the pharmacy, though, is there?
Every checkout seems to have, even the pharmacy, there's a load of sweets.
They're just everywhere.
Look at her eye.
Mum's got no chance.
As many as 90% of snacks at a child's eye level at convenient supermarket checkouts
are classified as unhealthy.
Right, Marks and Spencers, what's going on in here?
OK, cake's on the way in.
And cake's on the way out.
I love it.
Top and tail end, double-ended.
And look at that wall of Percy Pigs at Auri's eye level.
It's terrible when you see it like this.
M&S have recently committed to removing sweets from their tills, but many other retailers
still do this.
I've got to say, that's really interesting.
I've been shopping with my kids, and it is aggro.
I mean, you're always trying to keep the happy balance, and you're only 30 seconds away from
anarchy with a load of kids.
And it's just at that checkout bit, trying to get through.
But I just think it's hard being a parent, because you can say no like five or six times.
But when it's everywhere, when it's total sugar saturation, it's hard, isn't it?
I asked the shops for an explanation.
Tesco's came back and said, "We've replaced sweets and chocolates on the checkouts with
a wide variety of healthier snacks that appeal to customers.
We will continue to keep how we implement the policy under review."
Sadly Superdrug didn't get back to me.
Next it's Saturday night primetime TV.
Britain's Got Talent.
Watched by 10 million people, shows like this often attract over 1 million child viewers,
who can be exposed to up to 11 unhealthy food adverts an hour.
These shows don't qualify as children's programming, so advertisers don't face the same Ofcom ban,
preventing them from advertising foods high in fat, salt and sugar.
Okay, so here we go.
Straight in to a Coke advert.
So take a look at this glossy ad, which to me seems to suggest if you drink Coke, you'll
be happy, healthy and good at sport.
There are regulations that protect children's programming against junk food, but this for
me is even bigger.
This is the big rating stuff.
This is a family show.
And we've had Coke.
We're now on to Harry Bow.
Oh, now McDonald's.
So that's sort of interesting.
I watch the show and I watch it with my kids.
It's a family show.
We love it.
And I think the way that public health is going, that is probably inappropriate.
Obesity is up.
Type 2 diabetes is up.
And too many kids are having all their teeth removed.
Sugar is everywhere and sugary marketing feels inescapable.
It's getting ridiculous.
So what does the industry have to say about all of this?
One spokesperson was bold enough to come and speak to me.
Sugar, too much of it.
Children we know having too much of certain types of food is bad for your health.
Is it OK to market those aggressively to children?
I don't think we do market them aggressively to children.
If you look at the regulatory and self-regulatory codes, we work within those codes.
And the reality is, is the masses of kids are online and watching shows like Britain's
Got Talent, where they are being marketed.
If the family's watching together, it's down to the parents to exercise discretion.
But you don't do that, do you?
Well, no, but they can talk about it, can't they?
It doesn't just mean don't watch it.
It means you can say to kids what you think is appropriate behaviour when the ads come
on and I'm sure quite a lot of parents do do that.
But too much sugar is very detrimental to your health.
Too much anything is very detrimental to your health.
Too much fat, too much salt.
It's demonising...
Not too much fruit and veg.
Well, demonising one nutrient out of a whole range of them in the national menu is not
going to be a helpful way to proceed.
There is a hierarchy of nutrients.
It's a problem, right?
Well, obesity is a problem.
And our position is very much about responsibility in this.
Responsibility on the part of individual consumers, manufacturers, and of those who sell through
the supermarkets or other shops, and of course through restaurants.
At the moment, we're consuming lots more sugar than we're supposed to.
We need to cut it quite drastically.
Obviously sugar consumption in the UK per head is going down, not up, but from quite
a high plateau.
Now, the second report says that that's too much and they're the experts, so we have to
listen to them.
Sugar does seem to, kind of like if it was a badly behaved child, it would need to be
put on the naughty step.
And I'm saying it needs to go on the naughty step.
But I think what you're saying is let feralness go?
I mean, like, do you acknowledge that sugar is actually a problem?
I think we acknowledge that excessive consumption of any single thing is a problem.
OK, it's not statutory at the moment to say on any packaging about added sugars.
Yeah.
Well, one of the issues there is do people understand it?
I mean, we've spent 80 years in this country educating people on the notion of calories
and they've just about got it.
If you start mucking about with the way you express these things, I think you put a barrier
to people's understanding.
Is it possible that businesses that need to make a profit can self-regulate successfully?
Yeah.
These businesses are responsible businesses.
So yes, it is possible to do that.
Our argument would be that the consumer's choice is the best way to go because government
interventions simply don't work.
Look, I get it, I run a business.
Businesses need to make profit to exist, of course.
But I always think that public health comes first, for sure.
And self-regulation and personal responsibility isn't working.
It's not working.
And the fact is that it's not working because kids are getting sicker.
That's why I think now is the time for the British government to step up and just get
tougher on the industry's ass.
One country where the government have been forced to take action on sugar is Mexico.
It has some of the worst problems in the world, but could also offer some solutions.
Thirty-five years ago, a third of people here were obese or overweight.
Today, that figure has almost doubled, making them one of the fattest populations in the
world.
Type 2 diabetes is the leading cause of death, with an estimated 8 million people affected.
In 1994, a trade agreement with the USA allowed increasing levels of processed food and sugary
drinks to flood local economies.
Local Mexican diets rapidly shifted towards high-calorie, processed foods and sugary sweetened
drinks.
I'm meeting the man leading the charge against sugary brands in Mexico, prominent campaigner
Alejandro Calvillo.
Thank you so much for meeting me.
You are in the country with the highest level of soda consumption in the world, one of the
highest levels of diabetes, obesity, overweight, and a lot of sickness related with the junk
food consumption.
You know, the people here in the little communities in the mountains, in the rural areas, drink
a lot, a lot of coke.
The communities don't have water to drink of quality, but they have coke.
Right, so you've got a problem then.
And the health system is collapsing at this moment, because we have a lot of people with
diabetes, with amputation, blindness related with diabetes.
It's a human drama that we are living here.
I want to see for myself how bad it really is.
So I've asked Alejandro to show me how sugary products are being marketed in some of the
poorer and more remote indigenous areas.
Before we even reach the first town, we're greeted with some familiar branding.
You are at the entrance of Sinacantan, one of the most important indigenous communities
here in Chiapas.
And you find this billboard that says, "Welcome to Sinacantan."
You see the coke bottle with the traditional dress of the woman here.
The same as the girls behind me?
Yes.
This actual advertising is not just specific to the area, it's specific to this village.
It's to this village.
I mean, don't get me wrong, marketing is supposed to be efficient.
Yes.
This is very efficient.
The problem is when your product is creating a health problem, you need to stop it.
They cannot deal with the health impact of this level of soda consumption.
These huge village-specific Coca-Cola billboards are the welcome signs to several indigenous
villages in the Chiapas.
The Coca-Cola bottling plant just 15 minutes down the road means that trucks here are often
Coca-Cola red.
Okay, so what are we looking at?
Of the marketing and the promotion of soda consumption.
You have all the soda there.
Branding in the church, this is PepsiCo.
I must say, it is kind of an ambush on the whole town.
Next, Alejandro takes me to the Mayan village of San Juan de Mula.
Communities here drink a lot of soda, over two litres per person per day.
Too many sugary drinks can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and Alejandro
is very concerned about the levels of the disease here.
Why is it different here than the rest of Mexico then?
Because the introduction of the soda consumption is so strong that it's part of the culture.
They receive the Coke in the baby bottle.
The kids receive all the time.
Do the people in here today know about the scale of complexities and amputations?
How many amputations do you have in Mexico?
It's around, in 2013, 75,000 amputations.
75,000?
Related with diabetes.
So you're about twice the size of Britain, with like 10 times the problem.
The problem is the health system.
We don't have the capacity to deal with the...
Saving lives.
Yeah.
Alejandro's concern is that soda, and in particular Coke, has become an intrinsic part of culture.
I'm off to a family gathering in Romarillo to see this for myself.
How you doing, man?
Good.
Thanks for having me.
So this is the father-in-law's altar.
So now we're going to the little ceremony.
So how important is having fizzy drinks for this offering?
It shows that we're thankful to the saints and to offer them the drink too.
The tradition is that they are thirsty.
This is very traditional amongst all of the community.
Yeah.
Coke will be offered up.
Yeah.
Every party.
Every party, every...
And if you didn't, it would simply not be right.
Yeah.
So the Coke's been embraced as a kind of spiritual, sort of authentic part of the experience.
Yeah.
Just looking around me now, there's all these lovely people, your family.
Every one of them's got a massive big old bottle of Coke.
I mean, how many of these will they be drinking a day, average?
Average, they would be drinking like three or four bottles.
Yeah.
And then the little one here?
We usually serve the little one too.
Yeah.
All the ages.
So even...
Because I noticed she was just breastfeeding a minute ago.
Yeah.
But she's straight on the soda as well.
So you mix them both up.
Yeah.
Do most mothers feed their babies Coke and breastfeed at the same time?
Yeah, mostly everyone.
So this drink is really the modern holy water?
Yeah.
So, Vin Santo.
Vin Coco.
Vin Coco.
Okay.
Coke, successfully offered to the saints, time to cook up a feast.
She's making mole, which is like the absolute classic dish.
It's really, really good.
This is like my idea of heaven.
But this absolutely beautiful traditional dish seems completely at odds with the drink
it's being served up with.
It's interesting seeing the modern day place for soda so central to everything.
Just the sheer quantity of Coke getting knocked back by three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
80 year olds.
I haven't seen one kid drink a glass of water.
It's all soda.
So what did Coke have to say for themselves?
We ensure our brands are marketed responsibly and never to children under 12.
We offer low and no sugar options.
We provide consumers with the information they need to make informed choices about our
drinks.
I'm shocked by what I've seen here, but the campaigners have been fighting back hard.
A huge step forward in tackling the problem was the introduction of a soda tax in 2014.
I'm keen to ask Alejandro how it's worked so far.
And I wonder if it could provide part of the solution to our problems back home.
So you've achieved a soda tax of 10%.
What is it?
The soda tax applies only for the drinks that have sugar added.
And how much?
It's one peso per litre.
That is like 10% of the price.
Right.
OK.
And how much money is that raising a year?
In 2014, the revenue was $1.2 billion.
That's good.
New money.
And did you see any drop off in consumption?
In the first quarter, we have the only independent research.
We have a reduction of 10% of the soda consumption and increase in water consumption and increase
in milk also.
Wow.
That's the story for Britain that I want to read.
So what about the general public?
Do they understand the logic between you take from Peter to pay Paul?
Yes.
You say to people, do you support the soda taxes?
This money go to water fountain size schools?
They say yes.
80% say yes.
And now in Mexico, more than 80% make a very clear relation between soda consumption and
diabetes.
OK.
Thank you.
Because everything that you guys have been doing here kind of gives me hope.
Now, you'll hear critics of these taxes saying it costs jobs and won't reduce how many sugary
drinks people have.
But the latest figures for Mexico's soda tax show that there's been a reduction in soda
consumption of 6% and it's early days.
There's definitely a long way to go in addressing the health crisis in Mexico.
But I feel really inspired by Alejandro's victory.
I reckon we should be doing the same here in Britain.
Campaigners say a 20 pence per litre sugary drinks tax in the UK could raise up to a billion
pounds a year, reduce obesity by around 200,000 people and save the NHS around 15 million
pounds a year.
You'll hear people argue that a tax like this is unfair on those who drink in moderation.
But for me, we just need to take action.
So would and could the British government impose their very own sugary drinks tax?
I don't know and I'm definitely not going to hang around and wait to find out.
But what I will do is put my neck on the line because I want to show them that it can work,
it will work and that the money raised can go to places that will really make a difference
in health.
So I'm going to impose my very own sugary drinks tax in my restaurants.
I'm introducing a sugary drinks tax in my own UK restaurants to show the government
how it's done.
I reckon I could raise around ??80,000 a year and I want to spend that cash on children's
food education.
Just imagine what we could achieve if we had a tax on a national scale and use that
cash to help schools and inspire children to make better choices.
This was one of my schools 10 years ago in school dinners campaign.
This is Charlemanor and if we're going to tax sugary drinks, seven pence on a can, then
there's a billion pounds a year raised through that.
And I think a massive chunk of that should go into primary schools across Britain to
support teachers and support learning.
And if you want to know what a school looks like when they put food at the heart of it,
come and have a look at this.
Let's have a look.
OK, here we go.
Head teacher Tim Baker has put food and cooking at the very centre of his school and the lessons.
Hello.
And the school and pupils are reaping the rewards in great results.
What we're teaching is cooking skills.
We know English and maths are essential life skills, but actually cooking skills are life's
necessities.
What are you cooking with today?
Beetroot.
Hands up if you like beetroot.
Me!
Me!
Me!
It's not very often you get an army of kids saying they love beetroot.
Where do you get your beetroot from?
Here.
So who's going to take me there to get some?
Me!
Me!
Me!
The kids even have their own garden where they grow all kinds of food for cooking and
learning.
Oh, wow.
So who's going to pull the beetroot out for me?
Me!
That's it, go on.
Whee!
These are lovely beetroots.
Well, good luck with the cake baking.
Is it going to taste nice?
It's going to be yummy.
It has honey.
Honey from the bees.
But you haven't got bees here, though.
We do have bees.
Have you?
Bees?
Look, bee honey.
The responsibility for primary schools is to enable the children to learn and to be
successful.
And so we have a responsibility to ensure they are eating healthily and understand why
it's important to eat healthily.
If you're going to get taxed seven pence on a can of Coke and a proportion of that is
going to be given to head teachers in primary schools across the country, is that money
well spent or not?
Incredibly well spent.
What we've got to make sure is that we educate these children.
And to educate those children, we need that new money.
The benefits of Tim's personal mission to teach kids about food are clear.
You guys are 11, right?
Yes.
So how many of you can cook?
Me.
That's all of them.
Hello.
This is quite a big deal for me because ten years ago when I came here, the food was terrible.
And this is beautiful.
You know, everything that Tim's doing here is about raising kids who are more likely
to lead healthier, longer, more productive lives.
For a nationwide sugary drinks tax to work, the money raised must be ring-fenced to help
fight the problem.
I want to show the government how it's done.
I've committed to a tax in my restaurants, but can I get others to join me?
It's going to take some convincing, so I've called in some leading experts to help me.
These guys are all CEOs, directors and founders of some of the biggest and brightest restaurant
groups in the UK.
I'm really excited that we've got some amazing businesses from the restaurant industry in
the room.
If I can do just some broad strokes about where Britain is right now with public health.
We have some of the most unhealthy kids in Europe.
The single biggest reason for a child being put under general anaesthetic is actually
to have multiple teeth extractions.
So here we've got a pile of 130 legs and this represents the expected amount of amputations
every single week in Britain just from diabetes.
7,000 a year.
And it's just not acceptable.
Doing nothing I think is unforgivable.
What I'm kind of heading for is a kind of self-inflicted tax on sugary drinks.
I don't think I'm mad.
I know it's important.
Graham, why sugar?
Well sugar is a completely unnecessary source of calories.
We have this crisis of obesity and absolutely nothing has happened in the last five years
and that is a scandal.
We're just allowing our children to become obese, everyone else to get obese and they're
dying of it completely unnecessarily.
We need to change.
One way of changing this is to have a tax.
In terms of implementing something like this in the restaurant, I wonder whether there
is another way for us particularly that might implement something where you actually steer
people towards something that's better.
Trying to persuade people to do something has not worked in terms of obesity or many
of the other nutrition related diseases.
You know I think there are other ways that one can potentially attack the problem.
Putting this tax on it would firstly discourage people from drinking sugary drinks and also
raising the money for education in schools and for the health service would be a really
fantastic thing as well because we do need money to address the obesity crisis.
Tim, what difference would that money make?
Most essentially what it would fund is a healthier outcome for the school children of, you know,
across Britain.
Does it have the power to help curb kids leaving primary school overweight or obese?
I challenge anyone here to come to my school and find three children that will be leaving
my school obese.
We are proof that it works.
This kind of levy should kickstart the government and say what the hell are we doing sitting
in Whitehall not producing any kind of strategy and here are these guys who are taking it
on their own to do something.
I would be 100% behind you in what you're trying to do.
Thank you, Tam.
There is precedent.
Mexico are doing it, seeing the benefits of lower consumption and money raised.
I think the restaurant industry absolutely has the power and the kind of verve and excitement
and access to the public to do it beautifully.
That was intense.
Time to find out if anyone's up for it.
It's a huge opportunity and it's a journey that we're on.
I think we need to mull it over.
How is this right for our business?
What is it for Costa and then Whitbread and all the board names?
I think it's something we may well be interested in as a business but it's that big stack of
legs that really confessed me.
I didn't really realise quite how dramatic the problem was.
We'll look at how we can get involved.
I'd like to try and help.
Any kind of tax is a tough sell but I believe this is different and I'm determined to get
this off the ground.
My biggest worry is the urgency, the urgency in which change is needed.
And I know personally that I hate doing nothing.
So definitely a rocket up the arse of the government is a really positive thing.
We want them briefed and working hard for us and it's going to be really interesting
to see if an industry that's connected to food can come together as a unified voice.
The tax will roll out in my UK restaurants this autumn.
I hope some of the other restaurants will decide to join me but what I really want is
for the government to start listening.
This is what's at stake.
The kids of Britain, right?
Their health, their wellbeing.
Where will they be in 10, 15, 20 years?
Where will their kids be?
I believe we can make change happen but I need your help because this really matters
and I want us to make a whole load of noise about it.
If you think we should introduce a national sugary drinks tax then please, please get
online and show your support now.
Go to channel4.com/sugarrush and sign.
It's that simple and the more people that sign up, the more voices get heard and the
more pressure it puts on the government to change their strategy.
We need a sugary drinks tax and that billion pounds we can raise a year, that can be spent
in schools all across Britain, in hospitals all across Britain, in nurseries.
That's what we need and this, this is what it's all about.
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