It’s not news that soft drinks contain way more sugar than is healthy for an average sized human, but many people don’t grasp just how toxic it really is. The old villain was glucose, and this was replaced with fructose, which was marketed as healthier, but is actually far more toxic. New research is being done all the time on the damage caused by fructose, which is in everything we eat, from fizzy drink and sweets and bread and fruit juice. Excess sugar is associated with a host of chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, which are costing the NHS billions of pounds a year. In these times of scarcity, where the government is cutting on benefits, the NHS is over stretched, and like cigarettes and alcohol, the companies who profit from producing fizzy drinks should be taxed

The facts and figures:

In the UK we eat and drink around 70 per cent more sugar than our recommended daily allowance

Fructose is directly contributing to heart disease and diabetes, and associated with cancer and dementia

Many experts indicate that large food and beverages companies are perfectly aware of what they are doing but are not doing enough to tackle it

Despite fructose being totally poisonous for your body, many products sweetened with it advertise that it is the healthier choice

Currently health ministers are waiting for a report on sugar by its scientific advisory committee on nutrition.  This will be the first report on sugar in more than 20 years and will be critical in deciding how much sugar will be in our diets

We believe that we should tax food and drink with excessive sugar, as they do in many European countries and some states in the United States

Taxing companies just 20p on each bottle of fizzy drink would raise £1 billion a year – money that could be put to a good cause, such as children’s health and nutritious school dinners 

If you agree that fizzy drinks should be taxed, join the cause and sign the petition. If we get it to 100,000 signatures, the matter could be debated in the House of Commons!

View Channel 4's programme Dispatches Are you addicted to Sugar?

View the Video Sugar the bitter truth from Dr Lustig with more than 4 Million Views

Read this excellent report from worlds expert on how to reverse the epidemic of obesity. 

Read this article from the Daily Mail on how food giants sweet talk Ministers. Read here

The Guardian, take action and save the NHS 50 billion a year. Read More

Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular medicine who has also led anti-salt campaigns, said: ‘We rarely get access to ministers – they don’t want to see us.

'My impression is that if the food industry want to see them, they get in. The food industry is riding all over us. It’s a scandal"