Have the Soda Tax Wars Just Begun?

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“For the loser now will be later to win.” — Bob Dylan

A few months ago I posted a column here about an initiative on the Richmond, California ballot that would place a surtax on sugary beverages. After the election results came in, I entered the following item in Lab Notes:

“Measures on the ballots of two California cities which would have placed surtaxes on sugar-sweetened sodas and other beverages were solidly defeated, thanks largely to heavy opposition by the beverage industry. In Richmond, for example, the industry spent some $2.5 million in a “No on N” campaign with billboards, glossy direct mail pieces, newspaper ads and even radio spots on major Bay Area stations, focused on a city with a population of 106,000. This had the desired effect, as the measure was trounced by a vote of 16,494 to 8,154. The measure would have taxed sugary drinks a penny per ounce. In all, the anti-soda-tax campaign cost around $25 per Richmond resident, or slightly more than $150 per No vote. A similar measure in El Monte, in Southern California, met the same fate. ”

The sugar and beverage industries may be feeling fairly good about themselves right now, but what they bought with their money might have been more of a reprieve than a victory. That’s because with each passing day, the evidence that they are peddling something downright hazardous to our health grows and accumulates. Here is but a sample.

• Our enormously costly national obesity epidemic is largely traceable to our historically high consumption of high-calorie sweeteners, almost half of which come in the form of sugary beverages.
• Such beverages have become the single largest source of calories in our diet, constituting 7 percent of our total average calorie intake, and closer to 15 percent among teenage boys.
• Two recent studies found that doing nothing but limiting an obese or overweight child’s sugary drink intake will reduce or halt the kid’s weight gain.
• A simple 12-ounce can of Coke packs the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar. The popular 32-ounce Big Gulp is, sweetener-wise, a kind of liquid sheet cake. And for those persons hoping to develop the popular snowman physique, there is that liquid Pearl Harbor, the 64-ounce Double Gulp.
• Soft drinks originally came in 8-ounce containers. The stunning increase in beverage size over the years uncannily parallels the increase in our own size as a population.
• Sugar-sweetened drinks have been directly linked to weight gain in children and adults. Adults who drink more than one sugary soda per day are 27 percent more likely to be overweight or obese, thus boosting their risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, osteoarthritis, and gallstones. Studies have also linked sugary sodas to liver damage.
• Sugary drinks increase the amount of acid in your mouth, which eats away at your tooth enamel for a good 20 minutes per drink, thus inviting tooth decay.
• Drinking one or more sugary drinks per day may double the drinker’s chances of developing Type 2 diabetes.
• A study that followed women for four years found that those who began drinking more sugary beverages also began increasing their calorie intake from other foods. The study authors concluded that the high-calorie sugary drinks actually induced a hunger for more calories.
• Health and nutrition experts are increasingly taking seriously the possibility that sugar may be clinically addictive and sugary drinks a kind of gateway drug, which would explain why obesity rates climb even though consumption of sugary soft drinks has declined: the drinkers merely shift from sodas to equally sugary energy or sports drinks, or to sugary solid foods such as candy or pastries.

This is a lot of damning evidence, and it cost the industry a pretty mega-penny to drown it out. The question may be whether they can continue to do so. New York Times food writer Mark Bittman noted that although the measures went down in flames, outvoted by a good 2 or 3 to 1, the sugar industry spent a tidy $3.5 million to defeat them, while the pro-tax supporters spent a paltry $107,000. That’s a 33-to-1 spending ratio, and while it got the desired result, the victory may have been pyrrhic, or even temporary. As Bittman observed, “A quarter of those who voted in El Monte and a third of those who voted in Richmond would voluntarily impose new taxes on themselves to protect their children and themselves from sugar-sweetened beverages. I find that downright encouraging.”

He may be a pie-eyed optimist, but he’s not alone. The people behind the Richmond measure have set as their goal getting 14 California cities to put similar proposals on the ballot in 2014, the idea being to so wear down the beverage industry and drain both its energy and finances that it throws in the towel and lets the public decide, without an avalanche of anti-tax campaigning, election by election. Already, officials in a half-dozen Northern California cities or counties are considering just such soda tax measures.

The industry’s PR people insist that soda taxes will only hurt local merchants as soda customers merely purchase the stuff in adjacent towns, and that the taxes therefore wouldn’t reduce consumption to any appreciable degree. Right. That’s why they coughed up $3.5 mill to quash them. The fact is, the industry knows full well that if enough consumer/voters connect the dots — soda taxes mean less soda consumption means fewer health problems means lower health care costs — the idea could spread until there are no more adjacent tax-free towns.

Richmond and El Monte were much more likely the first shots in this battle than the last ones. We’ll see how long the industry’s ammo holds out.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

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Have the Soda Tax Wars Just Begun? is a post from: CalorieLab - Health News & Information Blog

Source: http://calorielab.com/news/2012/12/11/have-the-soda-tax-wars-just-begun/

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