Labour’s daft sugar policy

Stuff reports:

Deputy leader and health spokeswoman Annette King told the party’s annual conference in Palmerston North on Saturday that Labour would also require “front of package labelling” that was easy to understand based around the number of teaspoons of sugar in a product.

So what will and will not be included?

However, King said some treat foods, such as lollies, would not be covered by the policy.

“They are a treat, they are a sweet. But if you look at the food that has got sugar in it that didn’t use to have sugar in it… We’ve got sugar in peanut butter. we’ve even got a bit of sugar in our Marmite, we’ve got  sugar in our yoghurt that has a heart tick on it.”

Umm, the sugar in peanut butter mainly comes from the peanuts and is pretty small. It has around 1 gram per 15 grams.

Also most of the sugar in yoghurt comes from the milk and the fruit. There’s not huge amounts added in.

But Labour are saying peanut butter may be given a health warning, but not lollies! You’d need to have 1.35 kgs of peanut butter to exceed the recommended sugar limit in a day!

3 News also reported:

She envisaged the policy would apply to foods such as cereals, peanut butter, yoghurt and tomato sauce that did not have sugar added to them in the past.

But Ms King said treat foods such as lollies, chocolate and ice-cream would not be caught out by the requirements.

So ice cream won’t have Labour’s health warming, but other products may. What else could be caught by their policy to have health warnings on processed food with sugar in it?

Now milk is a processed food and it contains nearly 13 teaspoons of sugar per bottle. So under Labour’s policy a one litre milk bottle will carry a health warning saying it has 12.5 teaspoons of sugar!

Look at the sugar in these peas.  The packet has over 12 teaspoons of sugar. Labour’s policy would see peas given a health warning!

I look forward to Labour promoting their idiotic policy where milk, peas and peanut butter are given health warnings, but ice cream and lollies are not!