BY JAMES SIMONS
Brent council have launched a ‘slash sugar’ campaign this week to address the number of children with rotten teeth in the council.
The campaign is designed to urge residents to reduce their intake of sugary drinks, and to have no sugar at all on a Tuesday.
A social-media website and Twitter has also been set up where residents will be asked to tweet their sugar-free alternatives using the hashtag #sugarfreetuesday.
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All schools in the borough as well as several businesses are to get involved in the campaign, as part of a shake up to improve the feeding habits of children. Brent council have also said that a toolkit will be provided as part of the campaign so workplaces, community groups and educational establishments can use them.
The campaign comes in the wake of the special concern expressed about the high intake of sugar in the nation’s diets, and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver urging the government to introduce a ‘sugar tax’ as a deterrent.
Recent statistics reveal that 46 per cent of five-year-olds in the borough had one or more decayed missing or filled teeth.
In addition around 11 per cent of four-year-old children are obese with the figure surging to 24 per cent for 10-year-olds.
The borough also has the second highest number of residents who have type-two diabetes which can be prevented through a healthier lifestyle.
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Cllr Krupesh Hirani, Brent Council’s cabinet member for adult public health, told eye of media “we want to start encouraging health behaviour from an early age because it would have long term benefits on the public as well. “It’s an important campaign in this borough because we have some of the worst statistics on child oral health
“The messagE and imagery of our Slash Sugar campaign is hard-hitting and we want people to be shocked into changing their behavior.
TARGETING PARENTS
He continued ”We will be targeting parents as well , we want to see them sign their children with the dentist between the ages of 0 and 5 We want to see our campaign spread across all ages. We are going to start seeing the content of sugar in fizzy drinks like coke highlighted very soon. I mean if you think that there are about 7 or 8 grams of sugar in coke, it is very difficult to comprehend that we have that amount of sugar in our tea. We want the imagery on our slash sugar campaign to be hard hitting and shock people into changing. We are soon going to have the concept of the sugar tax which will hopefully move customers towards healthier options.
“We would love to see a movement starting in Brent via #sugarfreetuesday that can sweep across the whole country. The same happened with smoking; the number of people taking up smoking has dropped in the last 2 decades. ” It started with bans in pubs, then in public places, and now we even have added pressure on packaging . We want to see the same happen with sugar”
High intake of sugar is common in almost every aspect of our diet today. Many cereals frosties contain a very high amount of sugar. All fizzy drinks are laden with sugar, and habitually consumed by most children. Adults are already set in their ways and have a more challenging task of changing a lifestyle they have become very comfortable with over the years. Yet the sugar in these drinks contribute to the erosion of the teeth, as well as potential diabetes. The borough of Brent has the worse case of Diabetes in the country.
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