Time to treat sugar the same way we do tobacco

Sugar is a major cause of obesity and insulin resistance.

From the Grim Reaper to our success fighting the scourge of tobacco smoking, Australia has been a world leader in public health campaigns. But the modern health menace comes not in the form of a virus or a cigarette. Diabetes and obesity are far more challenging to combat, let alone target. They’re multifactorial phenomena, not just about food and exercise.

These are diseases with far-reaching social determinants that stretch from economics to housing to town planning. They affect everybody, but they are far worse among the poor.

We have failed miserably to formulate public health policies or campaigns that address rising rates of metabolic disease. We have formulated national obesity plans and national preventive health policy blueprints, but put exactly zero dollars behind them.

The report of the diabetes inquiry has laid out a path forward. As the inquiry, chaired by Labor MP and pediatrician Mike Freelander, makes clear, the time for appeasing the junk food lobby is over. We must treat sugar in the same way we treat tobacco. The committee has called for a front-of-pack labelling system in which the teaspoons of sugar in drinks and foods is displayed clearly.

The marketing of junk food, especially to children, is next in line. There are zero reasons why it shouldn’t be done. Limp policies on food and sugary drink regulation cut it for not one second longer. The giants of the processed food industry have been allowed to control the absurd voluntary healthy star ratings system – and they have been a miserable failure.

Low carb gets a big guernsey in the report, and so it should. It’s extremely effective in reducing insulin resistance and the need for insulin.

The rest is not so easy and requires hard policy work from governments: dealing with poverty, poor housing, and the flooding of commuter belts with rapacious fast food outlets.

This must be a national project with the closest of co-operation between all arms of government. There’s no single Grim Reaper here, but that doesn’t mean it’s all too hard.