Forget fat tax, says food expert

A fat tax would be an awful method of tackling obesity, a leading food expert told a conference in Ireland today.

Christopher Haskins, who is the food advisor to the British government, said it was impossible to determine what food was healthy and what was not.

“There’s natural sugar in fruit. Are we going to tax fruit?” he said. “No food is unhealthy as long as you eat it in moderate levels.

"If you eat five Ulster breakfasts a day (an Irish fry with fried bread) you’ll be in trouble, but if you eat one a week it won’t do you any harm at all.”

Speaking at the opening of the International Food Conference in University College Dublin, Mr Haskins said the problem of obesity was mainly caused by poverty.

He said poor people had a more fatalistic attitude to life and consequently drank more, smoked more and ate more unhealthy food.

“Most people understand what is good and bad for you. It is not an ignorance issue, it is a despair issue. If you could solve the problem of poverty, you would solve 80% of diet problems.

“The 20% of middle class people who eat too much can be left to sort it out themselves,” he said.

Mr Haskins grew up on a farm in Wicklow before becoming the head of the Northern Foods Company in Britain which is now worth €1.3bn.

He said in the affluent world, food had never been safer, despite the fears of the middle class. But he admitted that food science had been tainted by its recent failures.

“30 years ago scientists were heroes. They’ve made the blunder of feeding vegetarian animals with meat and they have allowed themselves to be influenced too much by politicians. We’ve got to rebuild public confidence in science.”

He said there needed to be a rational debate on genetically modified (GM) foods, which had been unfairly dismissed as Frankenstein food.

“GM sugar could lead to a huge reduction in the use of pesticides and herbicides and if you look at the average banana, it is sprayed 40 times because of fungicidal disease. Think of a GM banana without the need for pesticides. It would also be very good for people who have to spray the bananas, often without any protection.”

He predicted that in 20 years the major food producers would be replaced by innovative small food businesses who were not afraid to take risks.

He said supermarkets would become large warehouses for these businesses to franchise their products.

The International Food Conference is hosting a range of experts over the next two days to identify new technologies in food production and new methods of restoring consumer confidence in food.