Slap a 20% Tax on Pop to Control Obesity Epidemic: This is Science, not Rhetoric

One day Nick Crocker went to buy some milk and bread at the local supermarket and came back home to write a million hit post in Medium about the irony of consumers being eyeblasted with aisles and aisles of big soda, big chocolate, chips, lollies, little soda and little chocolate before presented with a magazine rack choc-a-bloc with fitness magazines.

Like the millions who read that post with an insane title I too was impressed with the way he drove home his message about obesity. But Crocker didn’t offer much by the way of solutions except for a pricey membership to a behavioural change program. My thought was:

Obesity is an epidemic and how can you make meaningful change in people’s dietary habits by something as soft as a behavioural change program?

According to United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey more than one-third of adults and almost 17% of youth were obese in 2009–2010. (Meaning: obesity is an issue of epic proportions — half measures will not do) There was no change in the prevalence of obesity among adults or children from 2007–2008 to 2009–2010 (Meaning: Nothing has really worked, desperate situations call for hard measures)

So how about a 20 percent tax on sweetened beverages? Can it make an immediate impact?

Apparently, the answer is a resounding Yes if the results of an econometric and comparative risk assessment modelling study published recently in British Medical Journal is an indication. According to Adam D M Briggs and colleagues at the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group, Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, a 20% tax on sugar sweetened drinks was estimated to reduce the number of obese adults in the UK by 0.8 to 1.7% (110 000 to 247 000 people ) and the number who are overweight by 0.6% to 1.1% ( 201 000 to 364 000 people).

You can find the model used by Briggs and colleagues at the end of this article.

Why such an approach is a potential winner?

I know that readers of Medium would like to see evidence. Therefore I am listing the reasons pointed out by Briggs and colleagues with links to original citations.

1. Good evidence shows that regular consumption of sugar sweetened drinks is associated with ill health—principally, adverse weight gain, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and dental caries. (I know many of you might want to see the evidence — see the links here, here, here and here.
2. This evidence is complemented by laboratory studies that elucidate the mechanisms by which sugar sweetened drinks are likely to damage cardio-metabolic health (reference here)
3. As sugar sweetened drinks are weak appetite suppressants, a reduction in their consumption is likely to lead to a reduction in calorie intake, with people being unlikely to seek alternative sources of calories (references here and here).
4. Sugar sweetened drinks are non-necessities and contain no beneficial nutrients, so direct harm from reducing consumption will not occur.
5. Whereas taxes on unhealthy foods may be problematic because of concern about unintended substitution effects (for example, a tax on foods high in saturated fat may lead to a shift towards salty foods), the potential substitutes for sugar sweetened drinks (diet drinks, fruit juice, milk, water) are probably less harmful for health.
6. From a legislative perspective, sugar sweetened drinks can be clearly defined.

A 1% reduction in US translates to a cool three million one hundred thirty-nine thousand more healthy people.

What do you think?

P.S: Here is the model used by the authors of the BMJ study