You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Write about the following topic:
Many manufactured food and drink products contain high levels of sugar, which causes many health problems. Sugary products should be made more expensive to encourage people to consume less sugar. Do you agree or disagree?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer 1: [Agreement]
Sugar is undoubtedly one of the most harmful food ingredients when consumed more than recommended potion – which is often the case in our daily diet. To reduce the sugar-rich food and drinks intake, many recommend making them more expensive, and I believe that such sugar-packed products should be expensive to promote public health.
Despite the common myth of the health benefits of sugar, scientists and nutritionists suggest that they are addictive, and are slow poison. Fast foods and sugary foods and drinks like soft drinks, desserts, ice-creams, and sodas come cheap and are ready to be consumed without any effort. This is why they have become so popular, and from children to the elderly, everyone loves those sugary foods and drinks. But these are known to cause serious diseases like diabetes and heart diseases and are connected to obesity. Since they are linked to so many unexpected health diseases and deaths, the authority should impose taxes, directly and indirectly, on those sugary items to make them unaffordable by mass people and in the process improve public health.
Moreover, people often opt for food and drinks that are cheap and easily available. And if we only look at the departmental stores around us, we can notice that we have sugary items all around us, and they are affordable. So to restrict sugar intake, their prices should be increased via direct and indirect taxes. If they are made more expensive, people will reduce their consumption and go for more healthy alternatives. For instance, if a healthy meal costs $5 while a sugary junk meal $10, most people will go for the cheaper and better option. It will gradually but surely improve public health and reduce medical care expenses both for the government and ordinary citizens.
To conclude, imposing higher taxes on sugary items will bring about many benefits and reduce the cost of healthcare. It is therefore expected that the authority will take steps to make sugar-packed items expensive.
Sample Answer 2: [Disagreement]
Sugary foods and drinks are detrimental to health, so many suggest increasing their price to dissuade many people from purchasing and intaking them. But, I will have to disagree with this opinion. This essay explains the reasons behind my opinion.
To begin with, even if the authority suddenly increases the prices of all sugary products, we will still notice that many people are still buying those products as usual. They will be buying them either because they are just too much “addicted” to those sugary products, or a high price does not really curtail their abilities to buy such expensive products. It will, however, negatively affect the prices of the necessary food items, and poor people will suffer to a great extent because it is not only “sugar” that is needed to make sugary products, but rather several other raw materials, such as flour, milk, egg, oil and etc. And that means that if the governments want to increase the price of sugary products, they will not only have to impose a higher tax exclusively on sugar but also on the other raw materials.
Another problem with taking such a decision is that some manufacturers of these sugary products would still try to sell them illegally to their existing customers at a lower price, through some “back channels” or secretly, in order to keep their businesses, because a higher price of their products would almost inevitably push many of their regular customers away from buying their products.
A far better solution to this problem would be to make people aware of the consequences of eating and drinking sugary items. When mass people are aware of the issues, they would spontaneously reject sugary items without creating any pressure on the market.
In conclusion, we need to run awareness campaigns to inform people about the negative aspects of eating and drinking sugary items. When they are made aware, it will bring positive results while price hikes on sugary items would make things only worse.