IELTS Task 2 sample essay: Taxing Sugary Drinks and Unhealthy Food
OpinionHealth
The question
Governments should tax sugary drinks and unhealthy food to improve public health. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Try writing your own answer first, then compare. Reading a model before you write tends to make you copy it.
The plan
Position: Agree: a tax on sugary drinks works, but it should be part of a wider plan and fund healthier options.
- Price changes behaviour: when sugary drinks cost more, people buy fewer, and manufacturers cut sugar.
- The revenue can make healthy food cheaper, which answers the main objection that the tax hurts poorer families.
Model answer
284 wordsMany governments are considering taxes on sugary drinks and unhealthy food as a way to tackle rising obesity and diabetes. I agree with this policy, particularly for sugary drinks, provided the money raised is used to make healthy food more affordable.
The main argument for such a tax is that price shapes behaviour. Shoppers, and especially young people, are highly sensitive to cost, so when a can of fizzy drink becomes noticeably more expensive, many choose water or a smaller size instead. The effect on manufacturers can be even greater. Where taxes have been linked to sugar content, several large drinks companies reduced the sugar in their products to avoid the higher rate, which improved the diets of millions of consumers who never changed their shopping habits at all.
The strongest objection is that such taxes fall most heavily on poorer households, which spend a larger share of their income on food. This concern is reasonable, but it can be answered by how the revenue is spent. If the money funds free fruit in primary schools, cheaper healthy school meals or subsidies for fresh vegetables, the families who pay the most tax also gain the most from it. Treated this way, the policy shifts spending toward healthier food rather than simply raising prices.
A tax cannot solve the problem alone. Clear food labelling, limits on advertising to children and better facilities for exercise are also needed. However, among the tools available to governments, few are as cheap to introduce or as quick to show results.
In conclusion, taxing sugary drinks and unhealthy food is a justified and effective measure, as long as its revenue is used to make the healthy choice the affordable one.
Scored by the MyBandPrep checker on 7 October 2026. An estimate, not an examiner’s mark. How scoring works
Why it works
- Task Response
- A clear position with a condition, two developed arguments, and the main objection answered rather than ignored.
- Coherence and Cohesion
- Each paragraph has one job: the case, the objection and the answer, the limits. Reference words (“such a tax”, “this concern”, “treated this way”) carry the cohesion.
- Lexical Resource
- Precise collocations: “highly sensitive to cost”, “fall most heavily on”, “shifts spending toward”.
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy
- Accurate conditionals and relative clauses across a varied range of sentence lengths.
Phrases worth reusing
- price shapes behaviour
- highly sensitive to cost
- fall most heavily on poorer households
- make the healthy choice the affordable one
- few are as cheap to introduce
Compare: a band 6 version
236 wordsThe same question, answered the way many essays stuck at band 6 are. Read it, then the notes below.
Nowadays, many people are overweight and they have health problems such as diabetes. Some people believe that governments should put a tax on sugary drinks and unhealthy food. I totally agree with this opinion.
Firstly, sugary drinks and junk food are very bad for our health. They contain a lot of sugar and fat, and they make people gain weight. If the government puts a tax on these products, they will become more expensive and people will buy less of them. Moreover, this is especially good for children, because childrens drink a lot of sugary drinks and they cannot control theirselves.
Secondly, the government can get a lot of money from this tax. The government can use this money to build hospitals and pay doctors and nurses. This is very good for the country, because many hospital do not have enough money. Furthermore, if people are more healthy, they will not need to go to hospital so often, so the government will save money.
However, some people say that this tax is not fair for poor people, because they spend more of their money on food. This is true, but I think health is more important than money, and poor people can choose a healthy food instead.
In conclusion, I totally agree that governments should tax sugary drinks and unhealthy food, because it is good for people's health and it gives the government money for hospitals.
What holds it back
- Grammar and word-form errors: “childrens”, “theirselves”, “many hospital”, “more healthy”, “a healthy food”.
- The position is clear, but reasons are asserted, not explained: there is no evidence that a price rise changes what people buy.
- The objection about poorer families is raised and then dismissed in one line instead of being answered.
- Plain, repetitive vocabulary (“very bad”, “good”, “money” throughout) and mechanical linking.
- A generic opener (“Nowadays, many people are overweight”) and a conclusion that simply repeats the body.
Now write your own
Answer this question in 40 minutes and get an estimated band with the sentences to fix.