That may be the narrative that some people have taken (usually the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" dickheads who love to have a go at obese people), but that isn't why the government did it.

The reason is simply to prevent the overuse of sugar in snacks and drinks. As I mentioned earlier, if you want to see what happens without a sugar tax, just look at America. Their food contains significantly more sugar, and people adjust their taste to it over time.

Like how a cup of tea with two sugars can taste great for someone and absolutely sickening to someone who has tea with one sugar.

And it IS working. A recent study found that since its implementation children consume 3g of sugar less per day from drinks, and adults consume 5.2g [1].

That's around 20 calories per day, or 7,300 calories per year. Which roughly equates to 1kg of body fat burned (7,700 calories).

And remember, this is just on average. Obese people would almost certainly see bigger drops in sugar per day than average, and more calories saved.

But its not so much about the calories saved per person, its the fact that people will adjust their tastes overtime, and change their habits.

As I mentioned before, sugar is not a main cause of obesity, but we need to approach it from multiple angles. A sugar tax is one of them, and it makes a meaningful contribution. But it won't do anything alone.

If we could also have initiatives to improve sleep quality, lower stress, and encourage walking more that would be fantastic. But these aren't as easily "fixed". You can't tax bad sleep, or stress. You can encourage walking more (and the NHS couch to 5K is a great example of that) but you can't make it law.