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Tax on Sugary Drinks Could Reduce Obesity Rates
Tax on Sugary Drinks Could Reduce Obesity Rates
Marcia Frellick
October 31, 2013
Taxing sugar-sweetened soft drinks at 20% would cut the number of obese adults in the United Kingdom by 180,000 (1.3%) and the numbers of overweight adults by 285,000 (0.9%), researchers report in a study published online October 31 in BMJ.
No tax has yet been levied on sugary drinks in the United Kingdom, but momentum to do so is gaining, said Peter Scarborough, DPhil, senior researcher with the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and one of the authors of the study.
"Sugary drink taxes are moving up the political agenda in the UK," he told Medscape Medical News. "There are health-related [nongovernmental organizations] calling for their introduction, including Sustain, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the UK Health Forum. The Liberal Democrats have debated their introduction at their national conference.... Increasingly, national governments are recognizing the health burden imposed by sugary drinks and that this burden could be reduced by measures to discourage consumption."
To calculate the effect of such a tax, Lead author Adam Briggs, MSc, an academic clinical fellow in public health from the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, and colleagues used surveys of food and drink purchases, the price of drinks, and body weight. They estimated that a 20% tax would be expected to raise £276 million ($US442 million) a year, which is about 8 pence per person per week, and would reduce consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks by nearly 15%.
If the tax rate were lowered to 10%, the authors estimate that the health benefit would drop by roughly half: 89,400 fewer obese people in the United Kingdom.
Britons aged 16 to 29 years, the major consumers of sugar-sweetened drinks, would be affected most, the authors note.
In an accompanying editorial, Jason Block, MD, assistant professor at Obesity Prevention Program, Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School/Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, said the UK researchers' work shows that a 20% tax on sugary drinks can work to curb obesity. He urges policymakers in other countries to implement the high tax as well.
In the United States, some attempts to do so have already been shot down. Two California cities, Richmond and El Monte, both failed last year to become the first American cities to pass a penny-per-ounce tax on the drinks.
New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg passed a ban on the sale of large sugary drinks, but the proposal was declared illegal by a state judge. The New York Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal.
The fight is very much alive in other locales. For example, in San Francisco this week, two members of the board of supervisors on Tuesday proposed asking voters in November 2014 to impose a tax of 2 cents per ounce on drinks with added sugar and at least 25 calories per ounce.
Mexico is also considering a tax. Its 32.8% obesity rate is the second-largest percentage among major countries (after Egypt), edging out the US rate of 31.8%, according to the 2013 State of Food and Agriculture Report. Mexico's lower house approved the soft drink tax of 1 peso (US$0.08) per liter and sent it on to the Senate for approval.
Reuters reported this afternoon that the Mexican Senate passed it as well, raising the odds that Mexico could lead the way in a global trend to tax sugary beverages.
The average Mexican consumes 43 gallons of soft drinks a year compared with 31 gallons per person in the United States, according to the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
The authors and editorialist have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
BMJ. Published online October 31, 2013.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/813606
Marcia Frellick
October 31, 2013
Taxing sugar-sweetened soft drinks at 20% would cut the number of obese adults in the United Kingdom by 180,000 (1.3%) and the numbers of overweight adults by 285,000 (0.9%), researchers report in a study published online October 31 in BMJ.
No tax has yet been levied on sugary drinks in the United Kingdom, but momentum to do so is gaining, said Peter Scarborough, DPhil, senior researcher with the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and one of the authors of the study.
"Sugary drink taxes are moving up the political agenda in the UK," he told Medscape Medical News. "There are health-related [nongovernmental organizations] calling for their introduction, including Sustain, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the UK Health Forum. The Liberal Democrats have debated their introduction at their national conference.... Increasingly, national governments are recognizing the health burden imposed by sugary drinks and that this burden could be reduced by measures to discourage consumption."
To calculate the effect of such a tax, Lead author Adam Briggs, MSc, an academic clinical fellow in public health from the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, and colleagues used surveys of food and drink purchases, the price of drinks, and body weight. They estimated that a 20% tax would be expected to raise £276 million ($US442 million) a year, which is about 8 pence per person per week, and would reduce consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks by nearly 15%.
If the tax rate were lowered to 10%, the authors estimate that the health benefit would drop by roughly half: 89,400 fewer obese people in the United Kingdom.
Britons aged 16 to 29 years, the major consumers of sugar-sweetened drinks, would be affected most, the authors note.
In an accompanying editorial, Jason Block, MD, assistant professor at Obesity Prevention Program, Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School/Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, said the UK researchers' work shows that a 20% tax on sugary drinks can work to curb obesity. He urges policymakers in other countries to implement the high tax as well.
In the United States, some attempts to do so have already been shot down. Two California cities, Richmond and El Monte, both failed last year to become the first American cities to pass a penny-per-ounce tax on the drinks.
New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg passed a ban on the sale of large sugary drinks, but the proposal was declared illegal by a state judge. The New York Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal.
The fight is very much alive in other locales. For example, in San Francisco this week, two members of the board of supervisors on Tuesday proposed asking voters in November 2014 to impose a tax of 2 cents per ounce on drinks with added sugar and at least 25 calories per ounce.
Mexico is also considering a tax. Its 32.8% obesity rate is the second-largest percentage among major countries (after Egypt), edging out the US rate of 31.8%, according to the 2013 State of Food and Agriculture Report. Mexico's lower house approved the soft drink tax of 1 peso (US$0.08) per liter and sent it on to the Senate for approval.
Reuters reported this afternoon that the Mexican Senate passed it as well, raising the odds that Mexico could lead the way in a global trend to tax sugary beverages.
The average Mexican consumes 43 gallons of soft drinks a year compared with 31 gallons per person in the United States, according to the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
The authors and editorialist have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
BMJ. Published online October 31, 2013.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/813606
LOL, I heard they are banning trans fats from foods now. Does anyone remember when they sold us the transfats because the saturated fats were so bad? Turns out that transfat is worse. go figure.
wowie, teko and I agree!!! This is a good day and I just might celebrate with a Dr. Pepper!
"And that would be a bad thing - necessarily?
Let's be honest - all that stuff is poison. Just because you like it shouldn't make it sacrosanct."
Sure it's all bad for you; tax it all, then give subsidies to the sugar industry and any other company that produces "bad for you" foods. That's what they did for tobacco companies, at the same time they started urging people to quit smoking.
"While there is speculation that something sugary like pop/soda would lead to obesity and obesity has many health concerns associated with it, where is the direct study?" I didn't have time to do a lot of searching, but there have been a lot of studies done that show sugar should be limited.
Here's an excerpt from one article I found:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/16/sugar-toxic-health-effects-sucrose-fructose_n_3599864.html
"It might be hard to swallow, but the fact is that many of our favorite desserts, snacks, cereals and especially our beloved sweet beverages inundate the body with far more sugar than it can efficiently metabolize."
All of that said, sugar is not the only contributor to health issues. What about all the fat that's often paired with sugar in our favorite treats? And what about salt, which is linked to high blood pressure, edema, etc.
One thing about soda --- if you can clean your battery cables with soda, imagine what it's probably doing to your stomach.
Nearly everything we eat is harmful, if we eat enough of it, so taxing sugary drinks is only a drop in the bucket towards taxing unhealthy foods, or ending obesity. It would be a never ending string of taxes, because they'd have to go after fat, salt, etc.
Let's be honest - all that stuff is poison. Just because you like it shouldn't make it sacrosanct."
Sure it's all bad for you; tax it all, then give subsidies to the sugar industry and any other company that produces "bad for you" foods. That's what they did for tobacco companies, at the same time they started urging people to quit smoking.
"While there is speculation that something sugary like pop/soda would lead to obesity and obesity has many health concerns associated with it, where is the direct study?" I didn't have time to do a lot of searching, but there have been a lot of studies done that show sugar should be limited.
Here's an excerpt from one article I found:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/16/sugar-toxic-health-effects-sucrose-fructose_n_3599864.html
"It might be hard to swallow, but the fact is that many of our favorite desserts, snacks, cereals and especially our beloved sweet beverages inundate the body with far more sugar than it can efficiently metabolize."
All of that said, sugar is not the only contributor to health issues. What about all the fat that's often paired with sugar in our favorite treats? And what about salt, which is linked to high blood pressure, edema, etc.
One thing about soda --- if you can clean your battery cables with soda, imagine what it's probably doing to your stomach.
Nearly everything we eat is harmful, if we eat enough of it, so taxing sugary drinks is only a drop in the bucket towards taxing unhealthy foods, or ending obesity. It would be a never ending string of taxes, because they'd have to go after fat, salt, etc.
BS. Just another excuse to make money. Greed! Thats it. Then down the road, they will come out and say OH! sugar is not as bad for you as we once thought!
Smoking, they decided it can kill you, but instead of doing away with it, they tax it. Drinking, same thing and if they every legalize pot? same thing. Its greed pure and simple.
They say you shouldnt eat red meat very often, is that next? Or butter?
Smoking, they decided it can kill you, but instead of doing away with it, they tax it. Drinking, same thing and if they every legalize pot? same thing. Its greed pure and simple.
They say you shouldnt eat red meat very often, is that next? Or butter?
Tax all simple carbohydrates and do not ever tax anything exercise related.
And let me say again---- there are a LOT of really skinny people that live on pop. Those diet drinks are 1 calorie for crying out loud! (I go for the 'real' thing myself.)
They can put a little tax on pop if they want to, fine by me.
But . . . the comparison of pop/soda to tobacco doesn't make sense to me. You can't take out an organ of the body that has been destroyed by pop like you can with tobacco. (the most impactful thing my sons have heard about the dangers smoking was actually something they saw--- images of black lungs.)
While there is speculation that something sugary like pop/soda would lead to obesity and obesity has many health concerns associated with it, where is the direct study? There is nothing to prove that pop/soda is bad for you. Nothing concrete whereas evidence is straight forward for tobacco. And the strong desire to cut down on tobacco use is for the whole community and not just the smoker. Second hand smoking, the ugly butts laying around, etc. Little old pop drinkers really don't bother anyone and I don't think second hand pop burps do any danger.
At my skinniest, I downed a good bit of pop. now, I have about one a day and drink water and tea otherwise with the exception of my morning coffee. But I love my one pop a day! Well worth a tax on it.
Anyway, I skip pop in the UK because they seem to have an aversion to ice and keeping drinks cold. Even milk. yuck. I like water room temp and that works in Europe.
Those are my deep thoughts on this article.
But . . . the comparison of pop/soda to tobacco doesn't make sense to me. You can't take out an organ of the body that has been destroyed by pop like you can with tobacco. (the most impactful thing my sons have heard about the dangers smoking was actually something they saw--- images of black lungs.)
While there is speculation that something sugary like pop/soda would lead to obesity and obesity has many health concerns associated with it, where is the direct study? There is nothing to prove that pop/soda is bad for you. Nothing concrete whereas evidence is straight forward for tobacco. And the strong desire to cut down on tobacco use is for the whole community and not just the smoker. Second hand smoking, the ugly butts laying around, etc. Little old pop drinkers really don't bother anyone and I don't think second hand pop burps do any danger.
At my skinniest, I downed a good bit of pop. now, I have about one a day and drink water and tea otherwise with the exception of my morning coffee. But I love my one pop a day! Well worth a tax on it.
Anyway, I skip pop in the UK because they seem to have an aversion to ice and keeping drinks cold. Even milk. yuck. I like water room temp and that works in Europe.
Those are my deep thoughts on this article.
We never had soda in our home when I was a kid growing up. I drank it sometimes when we went out for dinner but not having it much as a kid meant I still don't drink it much and while raising my children, I rarely bought it.
It boils down to parenting.
However, as a person who reads all labels before buying food items, it is not surprising that so much of the food out there can indeed be making people sick and contributing to the obesity problem.
It boils down to parenting.
However, as a person who reads all labels before buying food items, it is not surprising that so much of the food out there can indeed be making people sick and contributing to the obesity problem.
"If you start taxing sugary drinks, eventually, you'll have to tax the sugar we buy to bake with, bakery goods, candy, white breads and other processed foods, because they all do the same thing as sugar - just not quite as quickly."
And that would be a bad thing - necessarily?
Let's be honest - all that stuff is poison. Just because you like it shouldn't make it sacrosanct.
I don't recall seeing any real outrage when tobacco products were taxed heavily.
And that would be a bad thing - necessarily?
Let's be honest - all that stuff is poison. Just because you like it shouldn't make it sacrosanct.
I don't recall seeing any real outrage when tobacco products were taxed heavily.
Make sure to give me a few days noticed as to when you'll arrive--takes a few days for the yeast to do it's thing..but don't be late or it will be more beer than root! lol...:)
I like root beer a lot. But the Dr. is king.
SM - get his address, quickly.. before he changes his mind... lol Keep in mind, though that Dr Pepper is not the same as root beer.. nowhere nearly as good... lol
Proactive, if there is ever some type of disaster and I lose access to the Pepper, I'm coming to your house! Sounds like you could fix me up!
I agree that it's just another way to get more money from taxpayers. There are also a lot of other things contributing to obesity, diabetes and other related conditions. If you start taxing sugary drinks, eventually, you'll have to tax the sugar we buy to bake with, bakery goods, candy, white breads and other processed foods, because they all do the same thing as sugar - just not quite as quickly.
I agree with adgal that education is key. If you teach people how to shop, so they can get the most healthy foods on a lower budge, you'd make quite an accomplishment. I hear a lot of people say they can't afford to eat healthy... I find it less expensive to eat healthy than it is buying all the processed foods.
Proactive -- we used to do that when I was a kid
I agree with adgal that education is key. If you teach people how to shop, so they can get the most healthy foods on a lower budge, you'd make quite an accomplishment. I hear a lot of people say they can't afford to eat healthy... I find it less expensive to eat healthy than it is buying all the processed foods.
Proactive -- we used to do that when I was a kid
(lol)...There's always the old fashion way if you like root beer.
5lbs. of sugar,5 gals of water, yeast and a bottle of Hires root beer extract.
(Funny, the other day I found an old box of bottle caps and still have a hand press capper in the back hall!)
5lbs. of sugar,5 gals of water, yeast and a bottle of Hires root beer extract.
(Funny, the other day I found an old box of bottle caps and still have a hand press capper in the back hall!)
If soda were the only issue around obesity. Just a way to milk the tax payers out of another red cent if you ask me.
I'm not sure I want to live in a world where Dr. Pepper is viewed as a bad thing. Some days, the Dr. is the only thing that gets me through.
I still say the ultimate answer to issues like obesity and why it's important to try to lead a healthy lifestyle lies in education, not taxation. Much more can be done (my country included) on educating people on how to shop and eat healthy on a tight budget, and to educate on how important that really is. There is where you will find your long term solutions.
That's encouraging.
Can't argue with that..but
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323783704578245973076636056
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323783704578245973076636056
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