November the 14th was World Diabetes Day and on Thursday we marked the occasion at the hospital by giving a medal to one of our patients who has had diabetes for 70 years. I was asked by a local reporter covering the story how best we might try to prevent type 2 diabetes and what I thought about the idea of a sugar tax. There’s been a lot of debate in the media about the effectiveness of this and the evidence is definitely there that if you increase the price of goods that you do not want people to buy then sales will fall. As an example, with cigarettes and alcohol the price elasticity of a 10% rise in price causes about a 2.5 to 5% reduction in sales, although price rises apparently do more to deter young smokers than old.

In Mexico they have a huge problem with obesity and have introduced a sugar tax. This has led to a reduction in the consumption of sugary drinks, but a 20% rise in the cost is needed to show an appreciable reduction in sales. My personal feeling is that “bad” foods go in fads, be it fat, carbs, sugar, gluten or salt, and what was bad last decade may be considered good now. The whole thing is so confusing! Also if we restrict one bad food from our diet might we not top up on others? And how long can we stick to it, most of us aren’t able to completely stop eating the things we love without having the occasional relapse, and human nature is such that a slip may easily lead to a relapse.

Education, education, education

In my opinion, the best prevention for type 2 diabetes is education. An understanding about how to manage a healthy balanced diet, and that a little bit of what you fancy does you good as long as it is only a little bit and it isn’t every day! It needs to be emphasised that we did not evolve to be sitting around all day, but to be working the fields or hunting down our supper. So when the hunt is as easy as calling up for a pizza, then we need to do some other activity to make up for it. So am I in favour of the sugar tax? On it’s own no, but if the money raised goes to educating our population about healthy lifestyles, then perhaps, just perhaps it could work.