Prof Ivo Vlaev says all products containing excess sugar should be taxed to prevent consumers switching to substitutes

A government health adviser has urged ministers to extend the new sugar tax to sweets, yoghurts, breakfast cereals and any foods containing dangerously large amounts of sugar.

Prof Ivo Vlaev, who works with the Cabinet Office’s “nudge” unit, told the Guardian: “I think the sugar tax does not cover enough ground. All products that contain unhealthy amounts of sugar should be taxed because people turn to substitutes.

“If we tax only sugary products that are currently popular, consumers will turn to less popular ones. Sugar is the problem, therefore logically all products with excess sugar should be subject to the sugar tax.”

Vlaev also works with the behavioural insights team at Public Health England, and is a professor of behavioural science at Warwick Business School specialising in how financial incentives or penalties can drive healthier habits.



The existing traffic-light labelling system used by many supermarkets to identify products high in fat, salt or sugar could identify where the levy should be added, beyond the heavily sweetened soft drinks that George Osborne announced in the budget would be subject to Britain’s first sugar tax from April 2018.

“What counts as ‘heavily sugared products’ are products that contain a level of sugar content usually labelled as red in the traffic light system, which is currently used to indicate content on most packaging. All products that pass this limit should fall into this category, for example biscuits, cakes, sweets, yoghurt, breakfast cereals and so on. Those colour labels are there for a reason,” Vlaev said.

Answering questions at the conclusion of a European council summit in Brussels on Friday, David Cameron brushed off suggestions that the levy could be extended to chocolate.

The prime minister said: “Those are the proposals we have brought forward. If we wanted to bring forward other proposals we would have done – we didn’t, we brought forward the sugary drinks proposal, and that is the right one in my view.”

Asked whether he banned his children, Nancy, Elwen and Florence, from consuming sugary drinks at home, he added: “As for what happens in the Cameron household, like all parents there is a bit of a battle as you can imagine over sugar intake. We tried to have some good rules, which we try to keep to, but like all parents sometimes it is a battle you win, sometimes it is a battle that you don’t always win.

“But all parents have this issue of trying to make sure your children have a reasonable diet, take enough exercise, that they are growing up strong, and so we do what we can.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has identified potential flaws in Osborne’s planned levy, including the possibility of consumers simply switching from sugary drinks to other heavily sweetened products.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Singling out soft drinks for taxation will not solve Britain’s obesity problem, health professionals warn. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty

“If people have a strong taste for sugar they could switch to fruit juices, milkshakes, chocolate or confectionery. This could reduce the impact of the tax on total sugar consumption”, IFS economist Kate Smith said in her analysis.

Under the proposals, a levy will be applied on tax soft drinks containing five grams of sugar per 100ml and a higher fee on those that have at least 8g. But the IFS believes “a more sensible schedule would be a constant or increasing tax per gram of sugar”.

Prof Graham MacGregor, chairman of Action on Sugar, backed Vlaev. “We should tax all the things that sugar is in to an unhealthy degree, such as breakfast cereals that have large an unnecessary amount of sugar in them,” he said.

“Sugar-sweetened drinks are an obvious first target of the tax. But if the government wants to reduce sugar consumption across the board, it should tax sugar in the same way in any product.

“Clearly where there is unnecessary sugar in any food product it would be a good idea to tax it to encourage manufacturers to reduce the amount of sugar in it and thereby cut calories,” added MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular health at Queen Mary University of London.

The Royal Society for Public Health, which represents 6,500 specialists, said Osborne was right to target soft drinks because “they represent ‘dead calories’ with no other nutritional benefit”, said Shirley Cramer, its chief executive.

Other foodstuffs also contained worryingly large amounts of sugar, she added. But ministers might be better to pressure food producers into reducing that as part of an effort to make them healthier.

The Department of Health said the government had no plans to extend the sugar tax beyond soft drinks. But it stressed that the delayed childhood obesity strategy would contain further measures to tackle rising numbers of dangerously overweight children.

“Soft drinks are the largest single source of sugar for children aged 11 to 18. Sugar-sweetened beverages are empty calories, providing little or no nutritional value,” said Prof Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer.

“The experts at the scientific advisory committee on nutrition supported this through their recommendation that sugar-sweetened beverages should be consumed infrequently and in small amounts.”