Ministers should put extra taxes on unhealthy foods such as sugary soft drinks to tackle growing obesity, urges a leading health charity that is part-funded by the Department of Health (DoH).
The National Heart Forum's (NHF) call comes days after Denmark, which last year became the first country to increase duties on foods high in saturated fat, scrapped its experiment saying it had failed.
"Carefully applied food taxes are both cost-effective and justified to help tackle the spiralling costs and huge social burdens of non-communicable diseases such as coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes caused by over-consumption of unhealthy foods high in fat, sugar and salt," said Jane Landon, the NHF's deputy chief executive.
An NHF report backs "excise duties applied with care to specific food categories such as sugary soft drinks which are 'unhealthy', non-essential and which can easily be substituted for a healthier alternative". Revenue could be used to subsidise the cost of fruit and vegetables to help win public support, it recommends.
"Fat taxes" are increasingly popular internationally. David Cameron said last year that the UK would consider introducing them, but the DoH simply pledged to "keep all international evidence under review" and restated its backing for its controversial system of voluntary initiatives with the food and drink industries.
The Food and Drink Federation dismissed the NHF's call as "simply a revenue raising scheme that will hit families hard. Research shows that calorie intake from sugar sweetened drinks in the UK is just 2% so it will have an effect on people's pockets, but not their waistlines", said Terry Jones, its director of communications.
But Professor Jack Winkler, a nutrition expert, said: "2012 has been a bad year for the advocates of taxes on 'bad' foods. Far from the case for such taxes being overwhelming, I think the Danish reversal will prove the high water mark for such policy proposals, and interest in the subject will now recede."
The Labour shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, who believes fat taxes would hit poorer people the hardest, told the Guardian last week he now favoured new laws to force food producers to reduce the amount of fat, salt and sugar in many products.
