New Haven Independent

Soda Tax Floated

by Abram Katz | September 22, 2009 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Health economists and a Yale diet expert propose taxing sugary soft drinks. Soda fans like Tasha Byrd and Ina Johnson consider the idea fizzy — and worry doughnuts are next.

The problem with taxing soda is where do healthful incentives end, said people enjoying a rare September sun at Lighthouse Park.

Several beach-goers were not aware of the potential legislation, contained in a New England Journal of Medicine article to be published Oct. 15th. An online version of the report was posted by the journal last week.

The article’s lead author is Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Brownell has long advocated methods for encouraging consumers to cut back on high-fructose corn syrup and increase their intake of fruit, vegetables and other more nutritious foods.

Brownell ultimately blames a “toxic” environment full of fast-food outlets for the bulging American waistline.

Brownell collaborated with the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Harvard, the University of Illinois in Chicago, and the surgeon general of Arkansas to compile statistics and recommendations.

In a chocolate-covered nutshell, Brownell et al. conclude that additional taxes on “sugar-sweetened beverages” is more than justified by the public health risks, and costs of, adult-onset diabetes, heart disease and other obesity-related problems.

A New Haven woman swinging two toddlers on the beach, and holding a can of Diet Coke, said she had not heard of the sugar tax idea, but that the measure would not affect her.

“It wouldn’t bother me. I already drink diet soda, iced tea and lemonade,” she said. “I think it’s the people’s choice. People should decide what they want to bring into their homes,” she said.

“If you start with sugary substance, where does it end?” asked Tasha Byrd (at right in photo at the top of this story), of West Haven, who had an impending cookout set up farther inland, near the pavilion.

“That’s my only issue,” Byrd said. After sugar in soda, there would be no way to stop the tax from expanding to include doughnuts, potato chips, pizza, hamburgers, fries, and the rest of the unhealthy American diet, she said.

“There’s already a tax on food,” added her friend Ina Johnson (at left in photo), also from West Haven. “Then you add another tax? You’d wind up spending 9.25 percent,” she estimated.

Brownell found that 33 states currently have a tax on soft drinks that averages about 5.2 percent. But that’s too low to sway behavior, the authors argue.

Meanwhile, people are gulping down ever growing quantities of soft drinks, which are mostly a mixture of water and sucrose, or sugar, a disaccharide consisting of two glucose molecules.

Mexico’s consumption of sugary soda doubled between 1999 and 2006 across all age groups, the researchers found. Between 1977 and 2002 the per capita intake of sweetened drinks doubled in the U.S. among all age groups.

Children and adults in the U.S. chug down around 175 calories a day from drinks spiked with extra sugar. Brownell and colleagues discounted studies conducted by the beverage industry showing no link between sugar intake and weight gain.

A meta-study of middle-school children over two years found that the risk of becoming obese increased 60 percent for every additional serving of a sugar-sweetened soft drink a day.

Over the years, scientists have determined that giving different age groups sugar-sweetened soft drinks does indeed lead to weight gain. A study in the United Kingdom found that students who drank a lower amount of carbonated, sugary soda, had a 7.7 percent lower risk of obesity than the group that slurped soda whenever they wanted to.

In the U.S. per capita intake of calories from sugar peaked for both children and adults in 2002 and has been in a slow decline up to 2006, when data collection ended.

The only remaining questions are how to define taxable beverages, the type of tax, and the rate, Brownell and crew write.

A one-cent per ounce tax on a 20-ounce bottle of soda sweetened with sugar, would increase the price of the product by 15 to 20 percent, the authors calculate.
A national once-cent per ounce tax would generate about $15 billion a year, not counting additional state taxes, Brownell figures.

All well and good, Tasha Byrd said, but such a tax would have the most affect those who can least afford it. “Traditionally, it’s cheaper and easier to get high-sugar food,” she said.

Which is why, Brownell and fellow researchers point out, there needs to be a financial disincentive.

“I don’t believe in a thing like that. People drink that stuff because they want to ,” said Gary Lemmon of Branford, who was tending a butterfly garden in the park with his wife.

“There’s already too much interference from the government,” he said.

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Posted by: robn | September 22, 2009 12:28 PM

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

Posted by: Resident | September 22, 2009 12:50 PM

Isn't the Rudd Center funded by the Rudd Foundation? Rudd owns wineries. Sooo...maybe we should all guzzle wine instead?? No sugar there...lol

Posted by: The Count | September 22, 2009 3:07 PM

...and I understand those same people are devising meters for our noses. Y'know what THAT means...

Posted by: Anna | September 22, 2009 6:36 PM

Seriously, though, obesity costs us, the taxpayers, a lot of money. Shouldn't people who put themselves at risk of it help defray the cost?

Posted by: City Hall Watch | September 22, 2009 10:51 PM

Do the fuzzy heads at Yale ever come up with a public policy idea that doesn't cost us money, put us at risk or limit our freedom? I think not. Perhaps these authors should take some time off to take a class on FREEDOM, personal choice and individual responsibility. How about starting there instead of this dark side of just ginning up the nanny state to cram some idea down our throat yet again.

Posted by: Ned | September 23, 2009 9:38 AM

The main difference between Europe and the USA...

Posted by: sjbj | September 23, 2009 11:22 AM

So, City Hall Watch, I guess YOU don't mind paying when folks exercise their "FREEDOM"? Do a little reading and discover what obesity costs US. I'm all for "FREEDOM". I just don't want to pay for others' bad choices.

Posted by: MORRIS COVE MOM | September 23, 2009 12:13 PM

I'm all for this, as I don't allow soda in my house except for my daughter's birthday. And even then, she can only have 1 glass.
I think that by increasing the tax on anything that will affect the bottom line of healthcare and then local and state taxes is smart.
I say tax soda, cigarettes, alcohol, furriers, and private planes. They are all luxuries that we can live without...or at least enjoy in moderation.

Posted by: City Hall Watch | September 23, 2009 3:53 PM

SJBJ:
First, saying that we all pay for somebody's obesity is one of those liberal myths used to justify the idea that punitive taxes will change behavior. It doesn't, and won't particularly with obesity because there are so many ways to get fat. Fast food, alcohol, chips, inactivity. You name it. The big evil is not soda - it's taxes. Look at the absolutely obscene tobacco tax - sure some people will quit or cut back every time it's raised. But the state counts on lots of people still smoking and wants them to continue to do so and they do. Or how about the bag tax that was going to drive us all to re-useable bags at the grocery store; or taxing us more on cans and bottles completely ignoring the fact that most of us won't and don't schlepp our nasty bottles back to the grocery store and choose to re-cycle them with the city or any of the other hair brained ideas for more taxes. Most of the time, it has to do with the money, not the behavior. Whenever anybody says it's not about the money, it's about the money.

Posted by: robn | September 23, 2009 5:27 PM

Its clear that soda should be banned everywhere. Combined with ordinary household items such as a few mentos, soda becomes a weapon of mass destruction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjbJELjLgZg&feature=related

Posted by: sjbj | September 24, 2009 9:45 AM

City Hall Watch:
From the CDC website (http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/causes/economics.html):
"National Estimated Cost of Obesity
According to a study of national costs attributed to both overweight (BMI 25?29.9) and obesity (BMI greater than 30), medical expenses accounted for 9.1 percent of total U.S. medical expenditures in 1998 and may have reached as high as $78.5 billion ($92.6 billion in 2002 dollars) (Finkelstein, Fiebelkorn, and Wang, 2003). Approximately half of these costs were paid by Medicaid and Medicare"
Half paid for by Medicaid and Medicare--tax dollars.

Look at the RESEARCH on the tobacco tax. Increasing that tax has changed behavior, especially among young people, who then don't grow up to be life long tobacco users and suffer the consequences--to their health and our pocketbooks. (http://www.cdc.gov/Features/SecondhandSmoke/ )

Posted by: James | September 24, 2009 1:16 PM

So, I'm OK with trying to influence behavior through economic disincentives. If you decide to live a sedentary life, be obese, and develop diabetes to the point that you have to wheel your elephantine ass around in a Hoverround, why in the world should I have to pay for it? And we, the taxpayers, do pay for other people's bad choices. But where do we draw the line? If soda, why not chocolate? If chocolate, why not red meat? If red meat, why not refined sugar, bleached flour, etc? Where do we stop telling people what to eat?

Can't we simply find some other way to make people accountable for their choices? If I want to feed my family nothing but Ring Dings and Sunny D, I should be able to. But when we all get fat and diabetic, I should expect that we will pay the consequences. Instead we provide people with disability checks, public aid, and government-sponsored medical care. So where are the consequences? How can we get the government out of behavior modification and people back into a world where they are held accountable for their choices?

Posted by: Patricia Lafayllve | September 27, 2009 2:45 PM

In my opinion, there are two bottom-line questions, here. One, is it fair/reasonable to expect our government to tell us what we can/cannot put into our bodies? Two, will taxing work as an incentive toward better health behavior patterns?

My answer to both of the questions is "no."

No, it is absolutely not fair for the government to impose any regulations which impact my body, or my choices regarding what to do with my body.

No, taxing as an incentive to change behavior patterns doesn't work to change the behavior. This is primarily because changing behavior is a cultural thing, and not a monetary one. "Here, you'll pay more if you want this" really boils down to people paying more to have what they want.

Sure, it makes more money for the government. Sure, we're supposed to trust the government to use that money effectively and on behalf of its citizens. Call me jaded - I'd love to believe that the money earned with the so-called "sin taxes" would be used to help fund health care, or education reform. I'm just enough of a cynic to doubt that.

Therefore, if the issue really is the consumption of fructose, let's look at ways to reduce the fructose levels in processed foods. While we're at it, maybe find ways to create healthy choices that are more affordable to start with. I'm a huge fan of the City Seed Farmers' Market programs, which take the various forms of payment used by those whose poverty levels require them - how much better is it for a hard-pressed family to be able to buy fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, and even meats over sodas, candy, and checmicals-inna-box processed foods?

Before we add another tax to our financial burdens, perhaps we should take a look at more culturally relevant ways to promote change in our eating habits.

Posted by: The Professor | September 28, 2009 9:05 AM

Patricia,

You say "No, it is absolutely not fair for the government to impose any regulations which impact my body, or my choices regarding what to do with my body." I think that government air quality laws impact your body. So do the clean water laws that make sure that the natural monopoly public utility company doesn't pump a bunch of lead and arsenic into your house. And as far as the government telling you what you can and can't put in your body, I think that most of us accept the legitimacy of, say, laws against buying Heroin. In the case of soda, however, the government isn't even trying to do that--it's trying to modify our behavior. We're all still free to drink soda, we just have to pay a little more in order to do it.

I agree with you that there are better ways to go about fixing the obesity problem, but there's no reason to take this perfectly good tool out of the box, especially if legislation is written in such a way as to guarantee that the money go to a worthy cause--for example, all Soda Tax revenue could go to fund SCHIP or Head Start.

I too am skeptical of government intervention. But I think that the laws of economics are on the side of the soda tax.

Soda Tax Floated

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