i'm sure would be too much brighter than if you knew me by phone from phones to the persians. these friends don't on t.v. don't come. welcome back you're watching our thinkers look at top stories and the low end relations fall when nato airstrike which killed more than twenty of its soldiers pakistan says it will now play no part in the international meeting on building a secure ghana stanislava but is also set to permanently close a vital milledge recent lives through its territory. britain orders the evacuation of its embassy in iran and warns of serious consequences after angry protesters stormed the silting to iran as follows london's decision to impose more sanctions on the country over its nuclear program the. doubts are cast over egyptian

parliamentary elections as protesters continue their demand for the early hours to step down a record number of hopefuls have turned up to vote for change in the country for the first time since president mubarak was toppled. possible serves persist with putting up roadblocks along a disputed border despite nato forces clamping down with your gas and rubber bullets protesters have been mounting barricades for months to defy cazan authorities imposing a great band with serbia and as we have lines here an art you'll be back at the top of the hour with more updates up next though as our debate show crossed off with peter lavelle and today he's asking his guests whether those suffering from obesity should be forced to pay the so-called fat tax.

hello and welcome to cross talk peter lavelle taxing people in the name of health is one of the aims of the so-called fat tax governments all over the world and throughout history have adopted policies to influence behavior in the name of public health should food be the subject of a sin tax like alcohol and tobacco. cross-talk the so-called fat tax i'm joined by mimi roth in new york she is president of the national action against obesity in los angeles we have robert ferguson he is c.e.o. of diet free life and serves on the presidential task force on obesity for the national medical association and in manchester we cross to bill bradley he is the london chapter leader of the western a price foundation or i focus is crossed i mean you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it but first tell us more about what is called the fact tax well first i must say it's quite ironic to see one of the least obese countries in the world be the first to implement the measure but irony aside let's figure out

what this tax is all about the law which went into effect in denmark in early october levies a surcharge on foods high in saturated fats all with good intent politicians claim it will help to reduce cardiovascular disease obesity and diabetes at the political level there was a high degree of consensus for this law there was wide agreement about trying to improve the average danish life about trying to improve the health of the danish people. but outside of politics the measure is finding few allies first it will take years before empirical evidence can prove that the tax not only causes measurable changes in behavior but also translates into tangible health improvements at the same time studies have shown a positive correlation between income level and better diet quality which means that the fat tax will hit the poor first and foremost a daunting prospect for those already mired in the economic crisis critics of the approach also say there are more efficient alternatives such as taxing people who already are overweight

a practice often deemed unethical and controversial and for that reason avoided meanwhile countries like the us which has the highest obesity rating in the world has been instead trying to target diet habits and want children who want to get parents information so they can make good decisions we want to improve the quality of food in our schools and we want to make food more affordable and accessible but if all else fails there's already talk that the u.s. along with other western countries could follow denmark's example and who knows after all research has shown that taxing smoking for example does reduce its consumption then mark now expects to rake in some two hundred thirty three million dollars in fat tax revenues money it has promised to spend on health programs and maybe it's something to think about amid those absurd measures something the think about ok i'd like to first go to mimi in new york what's wrong with the fat tax because are the days on to something because you know i used to be a smoker and i quit smoking for health reasons but if i lived in the united states i probably would have quit because it's just too damn expensive to buy cigarettes

so you know we have governments all the time influencing behavior why not do it when it comes to obesity. i'm actually all for the tax the reality is did mark has a ten percent obesity rate that's the perfect time to address obesity ninety percent of people who lose weight do not keep it off it is very hard to reverse obesity the only way to reverse that trend is to prevent it so it's the perfect timing for denmark to make big measures to reverse to reverse the trend and get in front of any escalating obesity numbers and i'll tell you what any survey around the world the best looking people always come up to be that day and they must be doing something right robert what do you think about that every i mean if a tax about the best way of controlling obesity because we had mimi there saying we should get out there in the front of the game here before it happens i mean there's so many countries especially in the industrialized west where we're decades behind the ball here i mean what's the best way of controlling it into a lot of people are saying that taxes are doing it maybe because like i said with

alcohol and tobacco it seems that change people's behavior well here's the deal and this is you know some coming from someone who's in the trenches you do not want to have a fat tax and this is why number one in order it's tax somebody you must identify what makes that product or food unhealthy so my big question around the globe is who are the people responsible for tell me what is actually help the and what is not healthy that's number one so once we can figure that out and i can't wait to meet these people who are actually categorizing the food as healthy there must talk from there and we also know that when you. know that is in food by the way that's a very interesting point and philip we've got to go to philip here i mean we can get everyone here on the panel philip you know it's interesting thing is that we need experts to tell us what's healthy what's not healthy i mean i think even we all know if we go to mcdonald's every single day that's not going to be healthy for

you ok i mean that's common knowledge that you know it's not a mystery. but when we. go ahead philip things we believe that governments make the mistake of demonizing traditional nutrient dense foods and fats from grass fed animals mcdonald's doesn't provide that you know these firm factory farm animals which have a completely different nutrient. provision. instead the government has replaced natural fats in traditional foods with excess carbohydrate toxic margery and vegetable oils and we actually believe that these what are causing obesity and disease so a fat tax will actually cause more obesity we believe what mimi what you know if you imagine actually just just at the british government prior to nine hundred eighty three promoted a carbohydrate restricted diet to encourage weight loss and they suddenly turned

around when they adopted the low fat agenda ok robert what do you think about that you were chuckling there you agree or disagree with that. why i agree with the fact that trans fats in. interior interest or five fats are unhealthy is something that we all benefit to avoid but at the same time it blows my mind that people look at fast food me on a matter we condemn it here's the reality i've had clients big mags eat fillet of fish is fries then go from your far left to right as far as fast food fine dining organic or not and they've all been able to reduce their waistline and expand their life my i'm talking about elevated cholesterol we've brought it down so it's not so much the why. and if you haven't already and not only here go ahead maybe go ahead jump in that's the point of the program. here is that here is the only thing i need. any signs that the you cannot you cannot solve

today's problems using the mindset that created the problem you're coming from a diet mentality and a diet mentality is not was going. save people i just want to say that everything. begins and still going on since you have not been in the past why you have time identifying with the challenges the motional challenges that people are faced with no no. reason that you don't see where you. are they are showing people how they can literally be successful regards of their economic situation or their cultural identity you're the one who is placing judgment on people and stopping them from being able to maximize life based on their situation and circumstances and that my friend is what we define as wellness meeting people where they are and showing them how to make it work so as education is going to you anyway knows we're talking about anymore. about that i come where you're here because you. go ahead we've got new york i come i come

from a long line of. my mother my father my aunts my uncles my grandparents you know and i know just how difficult it is to maintain health i run four miles a day i watch what i eat i do not call that going on a diet i just call that being responsible about what i eat i think that what we all have to do is figure out what kinds of foods we can eat that allow us to maintain health and it's not just about life expectancy it's about being well for the length of your life if you are sickly like my grandmother who has not gotten out of bed in four years not even to go to the bathroom she lives in a twenty four hour care home she's now in renal failure all because of obesity i've seen my entire family suffer this i do know what i'm talking about it is about not just a fat tax you're right let's get you know let's look at the high sugar foods to people need to eat in a way they can maintain healthy for the length of their life life and all those

other words you're using i think you lost us on when you got hyperbolic the reality is it's very different very. well in this environment to control our impulses but we have to control our sex impulses we have to control other impulses like and we also have to learn to control our food impulses food is a wonderful thing but we can be completely out of control with food all the time and industry and lobbyist want to keep us out of control at all times with fear what do you want me. i want to. leave just please. i want to address the sugar issue we're concerned. targeting sugar will encourage artificial sweeteners and these actually can induce food cravings by creating an chill in response and. aspartame a particularly toxic this is produced from g.m.o. bacteria and it breaks down into formaldehyde and methanol in the gut and we're

going to see a lot more of this but the ironic thing about the. government's nutritional guidelines one of the most ironic things is over half of the calories proposed from carbohydrates in the body breaks these all down into sugars and the only use of sugar in the diet really is energy and we've got excess carbohydrates in the body is putting this on the waist in the bottom everywhere you don't want it to be because we're just overloaded with carbohydrates through these dietary guidelines ok robert if you're right if the simple carbohydrates are exactly right complex carbohydrates like that symbols are a good thing but it's those simple carbohydrates that are very troubling. and we know that. actually. when you have truth because one of the problems with starchy carbs are you know you're actually have more calories you're off topic i'm not promoting starchy i'm not promoting stuff i'm not promoting starchy all right i want to i want to go to robert before we go to the break go ahead robert you said we're off topic go ahead. we're talking about

a fat tax we all want people to be well and to live their best life that's what i do every day and it sounds like both of these people or are advocating the same thing but the reality is we do not want to tax people for food again who is determining what makes a food healthy and i'm healthy that's the person i want to know and as a climatologist i can't wait to have that one on one conversation all right we're going to know you're you may wish to hear when you go to a short break and we'll continue our discussion on this tax day with our team. and. i had to go through a ten year old boy that. we train them out of jail. develop

the orders for them. we never explain to them why it's ok. most people at the point of looking down and time to pull the trigger became objectors. i don't remember squeezing the trigger i don't remember seeing him go down well i remembers that we shot at. the other side are soldiers too and soldiers do it so they're trying to kill us we're trying to kill them and that's just the ugly face of war. nothing honorable and. i went to the war zone. and i started seeing now i

need to check. in on a way to do their arrival and kill another person that's why. the . wealthy british science. markets. scandal find out what's really happening to the global economy for no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cause a report on r.t. . and you can. start.

welcome back to cross talk i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing fatty food taxation. and you can say. ok me and i to go back to you in new york well when taxes mention a lot of people claim that it disappears proportionately hurts the poor because they have fewer choices they have less time to work with their hourly workers and in many cases i mean i was brought up in america there's not a great deal of not maybe better now but when i was growing up knowledge about nutrition is very very little if you're a working class family and you don't have much united earning well you don't have good health conditions i mean you fall into this trap of not eating healthy food because number one it's relatively cheap. but it but you know what's expensive being sickly for decades you know it's expensive having diabetes to type two diabetes for decades that's what's really expensive eating broccoli black b. maybe some brown rice not expensive drinking water instead of sweetened drinks not

expensive it's a myth that it is so expensive to eat reasonably it what is costing us in suffering and money is that we are bringing health this health crisis onto ourselves a full three quarters of our seven hundred fifty billion dollar health bill is due to our lifestyle choices and we know as we've seen with higher taxes on tobacco and in denmark they've already been taxing candy and they've eliminated or minimized trans fat they have had a positive response we know in the us as we elevated the taxes on tobacco the higher the taxes go the consumption goes down so there is nothing wrong with taxing soda there's nothing wrong with taxing unnecessary ubiquitous products that when consumed do not promote health we're not talking about food we're talking about junk food really ok when you were over what about that because i mean you're going to go well go ahead because i mean again the point here is that you know

disproportionately poor people don't have access to high quality food and it's just a fact it's a fact of life ok and there's a lot of lack of knowledge to even if you want to be well you might not be able to afford it exactly you just hit the nail on the here the key here is that you want to meet people were. and this is where mimi is totally missing the boat in this because she is coming from a diet mentality i agree that broccoli is ideal i recommend it all the time but the same time i have clients who you know they are concentrating on the fact that their food is subsidized therefore when they go to a food bank they want to learn how to eat the foods they have access to and i've been able to show them. to actually do that and get upgrades with their overall health and as a result of the knowledge in feeling better about where they are then they're in a better position to get a better job to have more money so it's education that i want to promote in the us

almost taxing people for lack of education. that's what we do in the i think we are going to do it when he's a little. fillip go ahead go ahead go ahead yeah it's all about education and you know you need freedom of choice in order to be able to educate anybody about and if they need me and this gets rid of freedom of choice but. there isn't really any now who doesn't know that water's healthy phil if you want me. in the diet. that's not what. he does we don't need to be awash and that's rated fat almost everyone in the united states of america ingest way too much saturated fat may not be true in every notion but in the most developed nations there is. saturated fat when you go west in price has a specific agenda to promote animal fat we all know that so i think that you come with a bias to say that animal fat is you know something that everyone i want to talk to

say that we see a lot of the stick of butter every day. well let's take it let's just take one of your points about controlling sexual abuse well the sex hormones are produced from cholesterol we've got to you know. i mean but your actions around i know you say sex hormones are produced from cholesterol and we were in futility is just off the charts right now. because. and animal fats there are exactly what children need to grow healthy and strong they're what the elderly need the brain is more than sixty percent fat restricting the out of these. are here for having. ok well anyway these crews and i was. not getting the nutrient dense foods which they used to eat and were telling me not to eat ok. well i mean i love his passion but the focus

here is on should we or do we advocate you know people being taxed based on the foods that the and i say you know and i say that because education is key meet people where they are and then as a result of that learning curve they'll be in a position where they can make the choices that are going to work best for them that's what it comes down to i mean when you say. i don't care i'm saying these guys are all ok maybe if i can go to you i mean you want to make let's make them where they are ok i think we would all agree let's see what he says was ok i think we would all agree that obesity is an epidemic ok in the end do i meet them where they are and guess what i mean the epidemic going down where they will say well he doesn't realize all right i need to tell you senator basically point is my point is when we hear a word like epidemic that's a national international emergency now are we doing things to meet that emergency because for goodness sake i mean if you walk in all across the united states and i

don't see a v.c. so much here in russia the way i see younger people getting bigger and bigger because of the imported western diet so i mean what are these what is the agenda because if this is turning into such a health disaster which it is as we it's been pointed out on this program what has to be done without the government always being taking the lead i mean we do it through schools family religion what mimi first. all of the above and you know what we need to stop concentrating on the people who are already overweight and obese we need to consecrate and concentrate on the zero preparedness see to age five group it is about obesity prevention we need to do everything we can to stop mentoring a new fat kid every single day every child in the last few years who has become obese that's on our watch we've all known better for many years now just how dangerous trans fats are high sugar consumption sweetened drinks and yet every day more and more children become obese it's about pre pregnancy to age five we need to

take all of our funds all of our energy and concentrate on that segment if we want to reverse obesity rather what do you know that america has been doing the. americas being during the since nine hundred seventy five promoting their. high carbohydrate diet and they've been pushing it to precise age group i don't know what i think. people are getting more obese. here about taxes to enforce what they're already trying to push and that's going to make more of the ok robert what do you think about that philip philip philip in the united states you are generalizing so that's not what we're advocating and pushing so maybe you have to go to. the government is emerging what i mean. there are i'm talking about. ok so. many united states are now following the guidelines of the of the government the reality is we need

a methodology and the methodology that is going to work begins with education it keeps coming back to that i believe that everybody needs and thereby needs help and so i'm not going to say let's focus on zero to five i'm all about let's focus on the individuals who are the ones who are the leaders and when you work with the leaders like the parents and the parents can make it work for them then kids always do what they see their parents do not so much what their parents tell them soul is not about going to the schools it's not. about meeting people and look and when i say meet people where they are then that is i mean a person where they are compassion me me to be able to do that which what i'm getting from you you're definitely lacking and i mean it to be insulting but you're truly missing the whole point people are they are is caring and that's where i come from i mean they want to help that you know he made. who has me and me who has me me helped to reduce their waistline i want to hear how mimi has been able to make

a big impact on helping people that's what i want to hear anybody answer this is turning into your program so go right ahead. well there was here and the solution i certainly i certainly have testified on behalf of the list is a menu boards of people have more information i've testified on behalf of the soda tax i've changed school food i've been involved with getting the. supply in america i get countless e-mails and phone calls every day from the people that i've helped i do not put people on diets i've never advocated anyone going on a diet diet simply means the kind of food we eat we all have a diet we all eat something but going on a diet i have never advocated nor have i ever done and so i'm not you know i don't need my and this whole show to be about me while i appreciate the attention it's my belief is about reversing the obesity trend and if you really want to reverse the obesity trend we see that ninety percent of those who gain weight and lose it gain

it back so the idea is to prevent every conventional means prepare and then see to age five ok if you want go ahead the reason why you don't. know because you know the low fat diet does not provide the body the nutrients are required to first so it will fit him and all these essential fats really necessary for the body. like a sixty percent of the brain is fact the lungs are very fast. this is exactly what the body needs to develop and be healthy ok robert what do you know we're almost out of time you get three found a natural first room grass fed animals i'm not talking about that people are eating fast food ok robert is it here is. the war against obesity ok because there seems to be so many different approaches and how to do with it. yeah that was part of the problem all of the different approaches and as you got to hear me me there's a really have an answer she's arguing about things that you know i'm sure there's

some good that comes out of it but we want to method we want to show people how to make. you know i have requires a new way here news i would think tales of my you know people i know people me me me me your ears. there are people who are actually listening and who watch this program and you're insulting them you don't realize and that's why i'm hoping that you can realize let's not insult here is an example of that at the end of the day as i mean here we have all this air rewon right fears and not just us you sundering used to pander people. this is being impersonated my goodness like when we come recession we've run out of time but a fascinating discussion and expect this with this topic many thanks to my guest today in manchester los angeles and in new york and thanks for viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember crosstalk.