Sugar tax won’t work…if you really want it, you’ll pay double
SKY News sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao bravely released an emotional video this week explaining that her breast cancer had returned.
Revealing it is now at stage three, the inspirational 55-year-old outlined a number of alternative treatments she has added to 16 brutal rounds of chemotherapy, including starting a keto diet.
In this country, “going keto” is still considered some sort of wacky and unworkable fad.
But if you walk down the aisles of any major supermarket or chemist in the USA, Australia or New Zealand you are overwhelmed by products specifically designed for such a lifestyle.
That’s because keto is increasingly becoming a favourite of doctors who need their patients to lose weight fast or, in the case of people like Jacquie, want them to cut the vast majority of carbs from their diet to stop feeding cancers or other diseases.
Keto is the anti-sugar, pro-fat diet that has ripped up two decades of mainstream advice about how to lose weight.
As you may remember, I started it last August and, while I’m far from looking like Harry Styles, I’ve kept off the three inches I lost from around my waist, have stopped trying to starve myself three days a week on a ridiculous fast, and can never imagine going back.
The Sun’s picture editor started at the same time as me and is, quite literally, half the man he once was.
KETO WORKS FOR FOLKS LIKE US
Keto works for folk like us who adore food more than life itself, because you’re allowed to eat a lot of naughty stuff — chicken wings, cheese and even cream — that tastes great and keeps you full.
But for the diet to work properly it’s critical that you know the sugar content of every single thing you put in your mouth.
In my case carbs are only meant to make up six per cent of my overall food intake.
I am completely supportive of Boris Johnson’s war on obesity resulting from his Damascene conversion after nearly dying from coronavirus.
However, I’m certain his aim will NOT be achieved by adding sugar taxes to unhealthy foods.
When I used to binge, if I wanted to down an entire tub of Häagen-Dazs cookie-dough ice cream, an extra 50p on the price certainly wouldn’t have stopped me. Nothing would have.
Anyone with an overeating problem will understand that the only way you stop is by deciding to make change from within.
IT’S PSYCHOLOGICAL
External factors like the price don’t make a blind bit of difference. It’s largely psychological.
The solution, I have no doubt, comes in the form of education alongside clear and detailed food labelling to make these lifestyle changes manageable.
I like to think I’m a relatively intelligent guy, but trying to work out the carb and sugar content in many foods based on the complicated labels is nigh on impossible.
It shouldn’t be difficult, which makes it obvious food companies don’t want us to be able to easily consume that information.
That’s why the idea of doctors sending obese patients to Weight Watchers, with a government-funded subsidy, is one of the best fat-busting ideas I’ve heard in years.
Having successfully completed its programme in the past, WW is all about practical food education, and it really works.
But as a keto convert now, I stress that providing the calorie content of food is not enough any more — it’s necessary to see the breakdown of carbs, sugar and protein to deliver to a range of regimes.
Once that happens, the commercial sector will quickly catch up — there’s a small fortune waiting to be made from these diet products.
I mean, I’d pay double if an entrepreneurial ice-cream company ever managed to develop sugar-free cookie dough . . .
Oz’s josh Spice
IN Australia at the moment Victoria, which includes the country’s second biggest city Melbourne, is viewed as a pariah state.
After a relatively minor coronavirus outbreak, residents have been banned from travelling to football games in Sydney, while the rest of the country is relentlessly mocking them.
It’s led to jokes like this one: “Covid and Australia are like the Spice Girls. People are doing their best but Victoria is ruining it for everyone.”
While I did have to laugh, it’s this sort of divisiveness that makes me incredibly nervous about the impact of local lockdowns like the one in Leicester.
We don’t need that sort of toxic parochialism here at a time of great social unrest.
I remain convinced that the best way to beat coronavirus is by a great international effort, shared by major democracies, that allows responsible movement.
I’ve said right from the moment the US closed its border to China in the early days of this pandemic that these types of measures are short-sighted and nonsensical.
KEEP UNITED
Viruses don’t care about borders. Not between countries, where they can still get in via air travel, and certainly not between cities.
Not to mention the fact it seems inevitable that inner-city suburbs or metropolitan areas where more working-class and BAME folk live are going to be hit hardest by spikes in Covid-19.
These local lockdowns could end up increasing the disparities and social tensions between the wealthy and the struggling, which goes completely against the Government’s agenda to level up.
The UK has flattened the curve with a sensible and measured lockdown that is being gradually lifted by each nation at similar times, broadly in line with the public mood and our changing behaviours.
That’s the way to keep united and beat this thing together.
Shut up me me me Meghan
SO now we’re supposed to feel sorry for a multi-millionaire Hollywood actress who decided to join the British Royal Family knowing EXACTLY what the role would entail?
I know most of you are well and truly sick of the woe-is-me moaning coming from His Royal Wokeness Harry and his shy and retiring wife Meghan.
But how mortifying that they’ve chosen to bring their self-involved nonsense to a time-wasting court case, in the middle of a pandemic, that drags her poor father through more hell.
If only self-help guru Oprah (Meghan’s BFF since she became famous) would have the balls to tell them both to grow up.
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