Dietary Advice and Childhood Obesity Strategy Debate
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Kelvin Hopkins
Main Page: Kelvin Hopkins (Independent - Luton North)Department Debates - View all Kelvin Hopkins's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Dietary Advice and Childhood Obesity Strategy
Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
May I first declare that I am a believer in the nanny state? It was the nanny state that stopped children being sent down mines and up chimneys, and much more besides. May I applaud my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) for raising this very important issue? Last week when I had a peanut butter sandwich, it tasted rather sweet, so I checked the jar and found it had sugar in it. May I suggest to the Minister that we go well beyond a sugar tax and have some means of stopping sugar being put wrongly into foodstuffs?
Alistair Burt
We now have a sugar app, which means that the next time the hon. Gentleman goes down to the supermarket and wants to check how much sugar there is in a product, he can use the app by placing a device against the barcode. My family have used it and they have found, to their astonishment, how much sugar is contained in products that they never expected to contain it. This is not only about making sure that there is a reduction in sugar content where that is possible and appropriate, but about alerting consumers to the amount of sugar, which is really important. I shall ensure that the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, gives him details about the app he can use.