Fight ‘Big Soda’

[SecularMotion]

Calorie consumption from soda roughly tripled from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, accounting for about half the country’s total increase in calories. Soda also has zero nutritional value. It is sugar water — empty calories that don’t make people feel full.

Fortunately, the public has started to realize this, and soda consumption has fallen since the late ’90s. But it’s still far too high. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo remain major purveyors of obesity, tooth decay, diabetes, heart disease and other scourges that damage people’s health and raise medical costs.

Next month, three California cities — San Francisco, Oakland and Albany — will each vote on a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages, including soda. Philadelphia and Berkeley already have similar taxes.

And they work. Academic research has found that taxes reduce soda drinking, Margot Sanger-Katz of The Times reports. They do so without resorting to rules — such as the failed attempt to limit soda sizes in New York — that evoke a “nanny state” to many people. Often, the taxes don’t even pinch the budgets of low-income families, because they respond by drinking less soda.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/opinion/fight-big-soda.html

[radical noodle]

1. I only have one vice

and you want to tax it.

I don't drink coffee or tea, but I do drink soda (diet, but still) for the caffeine. No matter what the tax, I'll still buy it.

That doesn't mean I don't agree, but it does punish (or save, depending how you look at it) the poor while those who have more money will still buy it.

[Major Nikon]

3. Soda taxes have no hope of working

Even if soda taxes actually did work (and the evidence suggests they don't), all it would really accomplish is to move people to other types of sugary drinks.

All taxes should be based on income unless there's a compelling reason otherwise. Increasing the tax burden on the poor based on a stupid idea isn't progressive.

[Xolodno]

7. And the idea of taxing a narrow segment of an overall problem...

...is ridiculous as well.

Sugar and Corn Syrup are heavily in all junk foods. So why just pick on soda?

The tax should start at the source and cause, not the end of one of many products.

[Patiod]

4. Well, we need tax revenue, so why not tax stuff that's unhealthy?

You can still get it, but like cigarettes and alcohol, it gets taxed.

As a wine drinker, I'd rather see optional stuff taxed then stuff I can't live without, like food and shelter.

But hey - your vice is absolutely safer than mine!

[Major Nikon]

2. Junk science

Soda sales in Mexico are up, not down and the Mexican tax is far higher than what US cities are proposing in a country with people that have far less disposable income. If the goal is to reduce soda consumption, then the focus should be on strategies that actually work and not on strategies we already know will fail. If the goal is to increase revenue on the backs of those who can least afford it, then the Mexican soda tax has been a great success.

There is limited evidence that the sugar tax reduces consumption of heavily sugared products.[27] the one peso per liter tax raised significantly more revenue than expected indicating that consumption had not fallen as expected. The resulting fall in calorie consumption was described as "nothing compared to the drop in calories people needed to consume in order to not be obese".[28]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drinks_tax#Criticism

[demigoddess]

5. I gave up all soda a few years ago.

I have never felt better. Took up coffee and it doesn't have the bad stuff that soda does. I think the caffeine high is less with coffee and you don't have the high fructose syrup or the really bad fake sugar from the diet cola. Both of those will kill you.

[Taitertots]

6. I didn't know you support regressive taxation