About 60 percent of people in Finland said they would support an additional tax on foods with high sugar content, according to a survey sponsored by Terve Paino, an organisation advocating a healthy body weight.
At the same time, 31 percent of the survey's respondents said they were opposed to such a tax. Opinions about the matter were shared fairly equally among men and women, according to the group.
Terve Paino noted that over the past four decades obesity in Finland doubled among adults and tripled among children. It said that the upward trend is continuing.
Obesity not only wreaks havoc on a person's metabolism, it is also a contributor to dozens of diseases and costs the public healthcare system and society billions of euros, according to the group.
"Reducing sugar consumption by increasing prices on high sugar products with an additional tax would help combat the country's ever-increasing obesity levels, which is one of the major challenges facing our public health system today," Terve Paino's chair, Pertti Mustajoki, said in a press release issued on Tuesday.
The survey was carried out by polling firm Verian and queried 1,023 people
Support for a tax on sugary foods in the latest survey was roughly two percentage points higher than a similar survey carried out by polling firm Taloustutkimus three years ago, according to the organisation.
There is a form of the sugar tax already on the books, but it only applies to sugary drinks, which only account for around 20 percent of an average Finn's daily sugar consumption.
The group said that extending the tax to other high-sugar products, like sweets, could easily help the state rake in more than 500 million euros in additional revenue. The current tax on sweetened drinks alone brings the state around 220 million euros per year, according to Terve Paino.
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