Chief medical officer fuels the row
England’s chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies fuelled the row over sugar, when she claimed research would prove it was addictive and a tax should be introduced, in March.
“We have to find a new way – not of ostracising people who are obese and making them feel bad about themselves – but somehow of helping them to understand this is pathological and will cause them harm,” she said according to media reports.
Leading professor of biological psychology in nutrition and behaviour at Bristol University, Professor Peter Rogers said a debate about it being addictive was not helpful.
“I would certainly suggest that sugar doesn’t pose a health risk to human beings and a debate about calling it addictive is not helpful either,” he added. “Yes, we have a few animal studies that have reported to show addictive effects, but it’s at much weaker levels than addictive drugs.”
Addiction meant feeling helpless to control one’s own behaviour, so saying sugar is addictive is a misuse of the science, because it does not lead to that conclusion, he added.
Taxes on food and drink containing high levels of saturated fat, sugar and salt would need to be so high to have any significant effect on reducing obesity levels in the UK population that they would not be acceptable to consumers, leading academics revealed two months after Davies’s claims.