Apr
20th

Fat Tax Could Save Lives, says Health Promotion Research Group Director

By Thierry Battiste in Food, Health
April 20, 2012 - 11:24 am

University of Oxford director Mike Rayner, urges government to tax all unhealthy foods from butter to biscuits.

Fat tax could help save thousands of lives. A fat tax could raise money and encourages people to eat more healthy foods, Rayner says.

The health promotion research group director said that at least 1/4 portion of the British adults are obese and that this drives the government to spend billions of pounds every year on health services.

He called for taxes of fatty foods like soft drinks for 12p, 2 cents bigger than fat tax in France. He claims that it would prevent thousands of death a year as people will now opt to buy healthier drinks.

Labour MP Angela Eagle and Liberal Democrat minister Steve Webb, however, suggested that better packaging and eduction would be more practical than adding tax on fatty foods.

“Taxes were already used to discourage people from drinking or smoking. Fat tax plan would definitely raise money for the Treasury and prevent deaths.” says Mr Rayner.

“There’s evidence to show that manipulating food prices can encourage healthy eating. So why are we so reluctant to change the way we tax food?” Rayner added.

See the rest of the story here

UK: Traffic Polution Kills More People Than Traffic Accidents A Year, Says Study

Night Shift Workers Vulnerable To Diabetes and Obesity

Related sites:

Removal Companies

Sell House Fast

Apr
18th

UK: Traffic Polution Kills More People Than Traffic Accidents A Year, Says Study

By Thierry Battiste in Health
April 18, 2012 - 07:19 am

According to a recent study of UK air quality, road pollution is more than twice as deadly as traffic accidents as its number of deaths averages 5,000 a year. By comparison, there are 1850 deaths due to road accidents recorded on 2010.

The said study was carried out by pollutions experts from MIT in Massachussets, Steve Yim and Steven Barrett. The analysis was published in Environment Science and Technology, “Public Health Impacts of Combustion Emissions in the United Kingdom“.

Nearly 5,000 premature deaths each year have been estimated as the effect of combustion exhaust across the UK. Further 2,000 deaths annually have been also estimated as the effect of exhaust gasses from aeroplanes.

The said findings were also parallel to a separate report by the government’s Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP), which found that in 2008, an estimate casualty of 29000 people in UK were caused by air pollution.

The new study arrives at a slightly lower annual figure of 19,000, a difference the lead author of the COMEAP study, Fintan Hurley, attributes to differing methodology.