Forget chocolate this Easter, drink Smoothies!
03/04/2007

Despite a year long campaign by healthy Fruit Smoothie producers Innocent, the Chancellor chose not to reduce VAT on fruit juices in his Budget in March.

Fruit Smoothie producers Innocent have been campaigning for one year to have the VAT on fruit juice reduced [or is that rejuiced?] from 17.5% to 5% which they claim will increase consumption of fruit by 500 million portions per year. Most food is exempt from VAT, including fruit, but because fruit juice falls into the category of beverages, it’s taxed at the normal rate. Only beverages that are dairy based are zero-rated like food.

Considering it is some years since Labour introduced their 5-a-day campaign to encourage us to eat more fruit and vegetables, it is puzzling as to why this fiscal burden still remains.

In March 2005, the Department of Health [DH] published their Choosing health; Choosing a better diet. It contained many of the arguments for promoting fruit and vegetable consumption: lower chances of suffering heart disease, stroke, cancer and raised blood pressure. Improving diets overall to reduce the incidence of obesity and type 2 diabetes were central themes. Not so long ago we associated poor eating or poverty with people being thin. Now the opposite is true; people with poor diets are usually overweight because they eat too many saturated fats and sugary foods. So the rising prevalence of obesity [it’s trebled in the past 20 years] is a particularly alarming phenomenon as we see overweight people i.e. people with poor nutrition, all around us. The tragedy is when children are allowed to become overweight, as 70% will go on to be obese adults. This is not about choice. This is about Western malnutrition; fast-food TV dinners replacing family meal times; the demise of good, local grocers and the cost of good food.

The DH figures also showed that children in the lowest socio-economic groups ate 50% less fruit than their contemporaries in the highest group. Back in 2001, the Child Poverty Action group highlighted that the cost to a low income couple with two children to eat according to Government guidelines was £61 a week. This would amount to a much higher proportion of their total income than for better off families, and the evidence shows that other bills often take precedence.

So why hasn’t anything been done about the cost of natural fruit drinks which are an easy way to imbibe the all important vitamins? Not only that, but children love smoothies – ask any mother or father who has tried them. It is the easiest way to get any child to have fruit in their diet. As JFK famously said, you have to meet people where they are at, and most children who wouldn’t touch a tomato would down a Smoothie - no question.

So here’s the recipe for change: If you’re a politician, you can sign EDM 558 asking for VAT on fruit juice to be removed. Add this into a Parliamentary Bill; Combine that with some generic social marketing of the superb Smoothie, and hey presto! Children’s health could only improve.

Related Articles
Innocent Drinks
a blog about our smoothies and some other stuff
more

24/4/2007
http://petittions.pm.gov.uk/fruitjuiceVAT/
Sign the Petition to have VAT of Fruit Smoothies and Fruit Juice removed!