Overly simplistic approach won’t work

Sam Chung writes: Re. “The powerful forces aligning against a sugar tax” (Wednesday)

 

Experts are being far too simplistic in their advocacy for a sugar tax. Any proposal must consider the broad impact it may have on the products offered to consumers. For example, if a sugar tax leads to a deluge of products that use artificial sweetners we may actually increase kilojoule intake. The Garvan Institute has found that sweetners increase appetite and kilojoule intake because they disrupt the way our brains interpret what we have consumed. 

  

A sugar tax may be a good idea, but it’s not as simple as some suggest.

 

Jock Webb writes: Re. “On Israel and Palestine” (Thursday)

Very well put Marcus L’Estrange. We have all forgotten, or chosen to, the essential criminality of Israel’s origins. It is built on stolen land and is now stealing more of it. I can get myself around the formation of  Israel (just) but it has always beggared me why the poor bloody locals who had done nothing had to pay for the malfeasance of Germany and its allies. Israel was founded on terrorism and paid for for decades by the West and the US in particular. It has committed heinous crimes in Lebanon and supported the racist South African apartheid regime in word and deed. Were Jewish land being annexed and stolen as Netanyahu steals it there would be wailing and cries of terrorism. When women are moved to the back of the bus by these ultra orthodox parasites in Jerusalem we would scream mistreatment of women, were they Muslims. But Israel can do no wrong according to the spineless hypocrites who lead our nation. Israel is guilty of the very mistreatment of minorities that it has so long complained about on behalf of Jews. Israel is taking away civil and political rights of innocent people, confiscating their property and oppressing them in a way that is all too familiar. It is therefore doubly shameful.