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With almost 700,000 of 1.3 million NHS staff being overweight or obese, this means more than half of them have a body mass index of 25 or over.

Therefore, officials have realised drastic action needs to be taken to curtail an increasing problem that looks to sweep across the health service.

One of the first things that could go is sugar. The NHS is contemplating forbidding the sale of all sugary drinks – which would include lattes, smoothies and fruit juices. They believe this will help to curb obesity and make healthcare workers “practice what they preach”.

Alternatively, the health service is also arguing that that vendors should be force to pay a levy in order to be able to sell such drinks on NHS premises. The levy would come into force in 2017 and would be an additional scheme to the Government’s plan to introduce a new tax onto the soft drinks industry.

Taxes put onto vendors would mean they would be paying a 25p levy on each drink, or fees equivalent to 20% of all sales.

A spokeswoman says the levy would cover the “full range” of sugar sweetened drinks including fruit juices, sweetened milk-based drinks and sweetened coffees, with proceeds then being used for extending staff health and wellbeing programmes.

Full story: http://www.medical-specialists.co.uk/news/