As a starting point, it would be worthwhile for services engaging with people diagnosed with mental illness, and in particular schizophrenia, to consider implementing caffeine-related health literacy strategies to educate consumers about the risk of excessive sugar and caffeine consumption and the interactions between caffeine, tobacco, sugar and antipsychotic medications.
However, given the health implications of excessive sugar consumption, they may ultimately be used to find ways to make sugar less desirable, or to make artificial sweeteners more closely mimic the real thing.
However, excessive sugar in the bloodstream is toxic, so our bodies also evolved to rapidly convert digested sugar in the bloodstream into fat.
Excessive sugar consumption is one of the leading causes of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
"When Jamie explained to me firsthand how widespread the shocking consequences of excessive sugar consumption are amongst children, it was clear to me that we had to act".
Though the drinks and food industry still hotly contests it, a scientific consensus is now emerging that fatal problems can be traced back to excessive sugar consumption.
Excessive sugar is a real issue: it causes huge and expensive health problems in modern society, and government needs to address the root of those.
In fact, the research now seems to indicate that taking in excessive sugar is more liable to make you fat than consuming fat is.
You can offset the excessive sugar by accompanying the cake with the healthier fruits that the Very Hungry Caterpillar chomps his way through in the earliest days – one apple, two pears, three plums, four strawberries and five oranges.
But some, including tax expert Richard Murphy, are concerned that it is a regressive way of dealing with the problem of excessive sugar in drinks – as the tax will just be passed onto consumers.
