Chocolate and crisps 'should be taxed' to bring down the price of vegetables and tackle the obesity crisis, doctor warns
Dame Sally Davies declared herself “chief nanny” with radical plans to tackle the obesity.
She wants the controversial sugar tax expanded immediately to cover coffees and milkshakes.
The cash raised could be used to subsidy the cost of healthy foods.
Treats, such as Mars bars, and junk food should be taxed unless they are made healthier.
England’s Chief Medical Officer also called for a ban on any added sugar and salt in infant meals.
And Dame Sally demanded limits on the number of takeaway shops.
She challenged the Government to do more to boost wellbeing, saying the food environment must be “shaped” so that it is “easy to make the healthy choice”.
And she added defiantly: “Do you want to call that nanny state? If so, I am chief nanny.”
Dame Sally claims poor lifestyle is to blame for half of long-term ill-health and compared her ideas with mandatory seat-belts laws.
She rapped the food industry for causing “harm” and insisted makers are “not doing enough”.
Two in three adults are too fat, raising their risk of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Dame Sally, as she launched her annual report, said cutting levels of salt and sugar in our diet would save lives.
Health bosses want children to eat 20 per cent less sugar by 2020.
But two in three major brands have so far ignored Government pleas.
Dame Sally said: “Our sugar targets have not been met.
"If we don’t get there, we’ll need a fiscal effort to mandate it, the same with salt.”
She said the money raised “could be used to help health”.
But Christopher Snowdon, from the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “The Chief Medical Officer is becoming detached from reality.
“While the country struggles with the cost of living, she wants to make food more expensive.”
Dame Sally has said previously women should think of breast cancer when they drink wine and obesity is as big a threat as terrorism.
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