Celebrity chef and Turkey Twizzler-slayer Jamie Oliver is delighted about the government’s new sugar tax.
In fact, he did a dance of joy outside the Houses of Parliament in response to the measure announced in George Osborne’s Budget yesterday.
We did it guys !!we did it !!! A sugar levy on sugary sweetened drinks …… A profound move… https://t.co/0XkydLzLCo
— Jamie Oliver (@jamieoliver) March 16, 2016
For healthy-eating advocate Oliver, this is a long-awaited victory that should go a long way to “tackling childhood obesity and our crumbling NHS.”
The ecstatic chef told the BBC that the passing of the bill came as a “massive surprise”:
“I never thought we’d get it. Everyone I met in power about it was ‘umming and ahing’. I was getting no body language that it was a go-er … We just kept bringing the logic”.
The tax, which is technically a levy (insert boring economics here), will come into effect in April 2018, and is expected to significantly raise the price of many popular sugar-packed products.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX5hnGQE7N4
"Massive surprise" @jamieoliver on #sugartax
"I was getting no body language it was a go-er" the chef tells @huwbbc https://t.co/QuDqb0iw1S
— BBC Daily Politics and Sunday Politics (@daily_politics) March 16, 2016