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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