Two Senators Oppose Call For Junk Food Ban and Sugar Tax To Solve Country’s Obesity Problem

Two senators have opposed to the call for a junk food ban and sugar tax.

One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson said that there was “no way in the world” she would support such a ban or tax.

“It’s about time people took responsibility for their own actions and what they put in their mouth,” she told Network Seven on Monday.

Derryn Hinch also said that a sugar tax would be unfair and unworkable, and instead, wants registration fees for children’s sport to be tax deductible.

This comes after nutrition experts are calling for a national approach to find solutions for the country’s obesity problem.

Around a hundred experts from 53 organisations have all joined in for a landmark study and created a 47-point plan to address the problem.

The study found that a big hindrance to addressing the problem is the difference in how states and federal governments implement nutrition policies.

Dr Gary Sacks, the leader of the study and a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University, said in a statement that there is no one seemingly magical solution to solve the problem.

“There is no silver bullet to helping people eat more healthily. We know from international evidence that we need coordination across federal, state and local government to implement a whole suite of different policies to tackle the problem,” he said.

The study recommends the development of an overall national strategy and implementation plan for improving the diets of Australians, that includes taxing junk food, especially sugary drinks, to make them more expensive and reducing advertising and marketing of those products to children.

“Often good policies exist, but they are not being implemented in a coordinated way,” Dr Sacks said.

Another suggestion would be to ban junk foods from schools and sports venues, but more importantly, children must not be too exposed to junk food.

“It’s a good start to have policies for restricting junk foods in school canteens, if kids are then inundated with unhealthy foods at sports venues, and they see relentless junk food ads on prime-time TV, it doesn’t make it easy for them to eat well,” Dr Sacks said.

Source: Sbs.com.au