To drink or not to drink, that is the question

But on a more serious note - “sugar tax” in UK, recently proposed and soon to be effective, is thought to be the cause behind change of IrnBru recipe; the company tells us that it’s thinking about customer and removes excessive sugar without affecting the taste. But, should the government be the one to dictate what consumers should or should not buy? And that is the main question – where is the line of government interference and customer preferences? Yes, it is more than clear that (not just) added sugar contributes to obesity – just add sedentary lifestyle and you’ll get a crisis. From government’s perspective, it is more than desirable to have healthy and effective citizens, and as such it will do the quickest and easiest thing to ameliorate a large and complex problem of the whole society. War on fat forced many producers to start making “light” versions of their products, which suffer from less-palatable experience due to fat removal. So let’s add cheap sugar to improve the taste. That drives prices down, making sugar-loaded items more and more accessible. And if the consumer does not know about what consumption of this particular food item will do to their health, the main determining factor will be the price and quantity. The human brain is still hard-wired to seek out sugar and fat, as during the time of hunters and gatherers these were sought-after and fairly rare in the nature. And now transport this brain just a few thousand years to the future (a very short hop in evolutionary timescale) and put it in front of a fridge, which is in every home. Or on the corner in one of our cities. Food. It’s everywhere. And you don’t even have to do exert copious amounts of energy to attain it. Just pop by the local shop and fill your shopping cart, with not enough time to properly appreciate what each food item does to your body and your health. So, from this point of view “sugar tax” makes a lot of sense – since we can assume majority of the population will be swayed by price changes, let’s increase the price of the “harmful” part and decrease overall consumption this way. Buying the same product for the same price? It may taste the same, but it will not have the same ingredients. But is it a good idea to have the government dictate what should or should not be consumed by the customer? Restrictions and bans seem to be incredibly popular way of conforming to the majority of public consensus, and not just in UK or Czechia. The issue is that in order for the product price and taste to remain the same, the producer needs to find an alternative to sugar in its products – mostly artificial sweeteners, whose effects are highly debated in both academic and lay circles of the population. Producers’ behaviour is completely understandable – in order to not lose its customers, it needs to maintain the same product and its taste, while trying to cut down costs on now-expensive sugar. But why is it an issue that the producers are forced to change their products to more healthy ones? Why is is it an issue, that the government will earn more on taxes, which can in turn be used, for example, public health system? It’s because we are treating the effects of the problem, not its causes. Today’s world is so over-saturated with information that it would be hard to find a person who has the time to sit down in the evening and read a few research papers on nutritional science; hence why the “problematic” approach of the government may be the lesser of all evils. So, is there a perfect line? That’s hard to say for a particular problem – after all, we can talk endlessly about “plastic taxes”, or “Smoking in restaurants”, but we would most likely arrive to an enormous set of possible solutions, each satisfying different group of people to a different degree. The government seems to try to choose the one that satisfies the most people in the long-term. And that’s a step in a good direction.So, let’s go back to IrnBru. What would be the best course of reaction to the “sugar tax”? Oh, why don’t we just leave the market do the work – add “IrnBru New” recipe with 50% less sugar, maintain the original recipe (albeit with a higher price) and see what the customers think. Driven by the price? IrnBru New is for you. Driven by exact taste? IrnBru Original is your choice. No customer loss, and you’ll probably get even more customers due to your stance on traditional recipe of your drink. Win win. Now you may ask – why such a long blog post about sugar tax, when it should be about university? Well, my last semester is in its second half, and there is only a month until I will be handing my dissertation in. Then it is just the exams, and my studies are most likely concluded, followed by professional experience in the field. It’s however important to understand the society around you, and I believe that knowing what problems other countries face is a great mental exercise in predicting what would happen in Czechia – after all, IrnBru is to Scotland what Kofola is to Czechia. And some issues will be ever-present in all societies, as in the democratic system many people will have many ideas about how to solve a problem.