The Daily Tar Heel
URL: http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2010/11/soda_tax_a_solution_to_a_big_problem
Current Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 02:35:02 -0400
Soda tax: A solution to a big problem
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Thanksgiving. It’s a time to celebrate the day our ancestors made peace with the American Indians. So how do we celebrate it? Like we celebrate any other national holiday — with a huge meal.
Beyond our nation’s borders, we are known as a country of fatties. When I was studying abroad in Argentina last fall, my host family thought they knew the answer to why so many Americans are fat — they eat too much peanut butter.
My host family may have been on the right track, since processed foods and beverages high in fat, like peanut butter, are so much cheaper than fresh produce. Eating or drinking large quantities of processed foods and beverages is one of the major causes of our nation’s obesity epidemic.
To find out about solutions to the obesity epidemic, I interviewed UNC distinguished professor Barry Popkin, who published a book in 2009 about obesity entitled “The World is Fat”.
In his book, Popkin makes a case for a “fat tax,” which would tax foods and beverages with high fat contents, discouraging consumers from purchasing them. He argues that taxing cigarettes and alcohol has lowered their consumption rates, and this strategy could work just as well to lower the consumption of fatty foods and beverages.
Popkin suggests the effort to tax fattening foods should be focused on sugar-sweetened beverages such as sodas and energy drinks, since there is a disconnect between what we drink and what we eat.
In other words, when we drink a high-fat beverage, we don’t feel full, so we eat a high-calorie meal to go with it. Thus, if high fat beverages were to be cut out of a person’s diet and replaced with low-calorie beverages such as water, their fat intake would be greatly reduced.
There is a consensus among scholars in the diabetes, nutrition, heart and cancer sectors that reducing a person’s intake of sugar-sweetened beverages would reduce their calorie intake, lowering their risk of diabetes and heart disease. In a cash-strapped economy, like ours, consumers are especially cost-conscious. Thus, a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages would be an effective way to reduce their consumption.
The major opposition for these findings is coming from — you guessed it — the companies that produce these beverages, like Pepsi and Coke, since higher prices would be bad for business.
But this week, the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit organization founded by former Senate majority leaders, came out with a deficit reduction plan that favors a soda tax.
The report estimates that the tax would raise more than $15 billion by 2015, plus the money it would save hospitals on obesity-related medical bills, such as treatments for diabetes and heart disease.
Until legislation can be passed requiring beverage companies to tax their sugar-sweetened products, other important and potentially effective methods — such as better nutrition education — are being introduced in health care centers. But it’s not enough.Ultimately, preventing and treating obesity will require a combination of better nutrition education and a soda tax (hey, at least it’s not a peanut butter tax!)
Sarah Dugan is a columnist from The Daily Tar Heel. She is a senior environmental health policy major from Asheville, NC. Contact her at sdugan@email.unc.edu.
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14 comments
“High Fat” beverages and “Fattening” beverages are far from the same thing. High Fat beverages contain fat, while fattening beverages cause increased fat deposits on the body. Soda is certainly fattening, but does not contain any fat at all.
the Sugar-beverage tax is a good idea though… Although if it is implemented, expect a rise in Diet soda consumption, and the effects of artificial sweeteners are likely to become more pronounced.
HFCS is the real problem here. It’s high carb, not high fat. Makes you produce too much insulin, which stores extra energy as fat. Eating fat does not make you fat!
There’s the relevant info, by the way:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/sc019
You know, Buzzkill, you can give constructive criticism without being a douche.
@ Buzzkill – seriously dude, chill the eff out. Did a soda tax kill your mom or something? Calm down and learn how to argue your point without making mean-spirited and unfounded attacks (the comment about “your damn host family”??) so you can sound like an intelligent human being instead of a moronic a-hole. I don’t disagree with everything you’re saying but the way you say it just makes me think it’s all BS.
You know, the sarcasm and cursing is deliberate invective. It was a stylistic choice and successfully got your attention That’s the point.
What she is advocating is the imposition of a tax—that is, money collected through threat of violence which is only justified in the executing the proper mandates of governance—so I employed harsh language to emphasize the incongruence of her argument. The problem she aims to solve is caused by individual choices and individual caloric intake which, no matter how distressing it may be, is not justification for brute force solutions like tax. That taxes don’t work anyway only helps my argument.
Further, I’m tired of every columnist citing their vaunted worldliness in order to argue for ideas that are largely anti-intellectual.
You may not like me or the way I argue but I’m correct and I know it. I am entitled to be pissed when my peers flippantly suggest the government employ violence because people drink too much Coke. Obviously, Sarah here is the only one who’s overreacting to soda.
Most importantly though, what I said is funny no matte how nasty it is. Go dry your tears.
Oh, I forgot to point this out:
For someone who’s so concerned that people can afford healthy food, she doesn’t say anything about eliminating sales tax on food in general. Really, all she does is advocate raising prices of the only things people can afford to eat. Does this make sense?
…and farm subsidies? Sugar taxes fall under this heading since they’re motivated by protectionism. Basically, the way government plays favorites with sectors of the food industry drives up prices of food—especially produce. This country could, if we chose, produce enough grain to feed millions but politics, subsidies, and taxes only respond to greed. There is no real desire in government to feed the needy or make healthy food affordable for the obese.
Sarah should know this since she’s about to graduate with a degree in environmental health policy but instead she blames obesity on inanimate objects and advocates government bullying of the obese.
I can’t emphasize enough how silly this column is. Taxing soda will not stop people who love it—arguably the ones who will gain the most weight from constant consumption—from purchasing it. The people who choose to cut back will most likely be the marginal consumers who rarely bought it anyway. The guy who buys one 2-liter per month might buy zero, but the guy who buys twenty will still probably buy fifteen. Not much difference in the long run.
A better idea would be to end the agriculture subsidies that make the least healthy foods the cheapest ones. The vast majority of those subsidies go to cereals, especially corn. You know, the same corn used to make the high-fructose corn syrup that is fattening up Americans. These cereals also go into all those unhealthy processed carbohydrates that we find in countless snack items and junk foods.
If you want to know why Americans are fat, ask yourself why something that’s processed and manufactured ends up cheaper than something straight from the farm.
Buzzkill is a hoss.
I have a stick in my butt guys hehehe
@Buzzkill – it’s not a stylistic choice to forsake intelligent argument in favor of off topic attacks, foul language, and idiotic vitriol. That’s just idiocy. As is claiming that you’re completely 100% unquestionably right. If you’re as right as you think you are, and as smart as you think you are, you should be able to get a point across without constantly belittling people. I think you’re the one who needs to dry your tears over whatever inferiority complex you’ve got and learn how to argue in a productive fashion, because, yes, you do have some valid points and some information to back it up. But “stylistically” choosing to be an ignorant blowhard just makes you become an ignorant blowhard. Next time you’d like to make a point to the community of the DTH, try making a calm, rational argument and then people might actually listen to you instead of blowing you off as a whack job.
@yikes-buzzkill pwned you it’s all good tho just stay calm and rational lol.. anyhow the article highlights one well known fact-soda is bad for your health, but taxing it is ridiculous, next thing you know they’ll ban sweet tea and the south will cease to exist!..or at least bojangles will :(
It is not the government’s responsibility to manage the population’s weight. The Soda Tax is yet another attempt to legislate opinion.
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