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Sugar consumption massively increased after government decided to manipulate science and our food supply. This, of course, was a significant contributor to our current obesity epidemic.

The government, along with the food manufacturers they're in bed with, profited greatly off this shift while Americans were busy eating themselves into disastrous health.

Now, the government is positioning itself as the savior of a problem it had a major hand in creating by insisting it can curb all of this sugar consumption through targeted taxation. Namely, soda taxes (for now).

If that's not a racket, I don't know what is.

Of course, for now, this taxation is limited to individual states. But, we know the federal government is highly interested in having its hand in the pot as well. It may not be long before they go after a cut of the action.

These recent developments make it extremely important for consumers to understand what's going on and why all of this targeted taxation, currently aimed at sugar, is a horrible idea.

1) Let's get something straight: Government is incentivized to make sure you continue consuming soda and sugary drinks.

Right off the bat, you must understand that government does not want to end soda or sugary drink consumption. From an economic standpoint, government wants to make sure you continue consuming sugary drinks on a regular basis, as that's the only way they can continue to collect this new tax revenue.

If you aren't already aware, government cares a hell of a lot more about tax revenue than they do about you or your health. So, what they will do is have economists calculate the perfect tax rate that allows for your continued consumption while maximizing the revenue they collect.

Sure, they will tell you that they care greatly about you and your health, but that's just marketing-speak. They will tell you that they are going after the big bad food manufacturers, but behind closed doors they're all smoking cigars together and planning the next round of subsidies and anti-competition regulations that allow Big Food to continue their global expansion. If you believe otherwise, you've been fooled.

Government is masterful at creating scenarios where everyone wins but you, while making you feel like they're on your team. I detailed precisely why they don't care about you in Playing Politics With Food: Why Consumers Are Losing.

2) Soda taxes are unlikely to change behavior.

The official narrative is that the government cares greatly about you and your health and must tax you to save you from yourself. That's just marketing-speak though. They know that soda taxes and sugar taxes are unlikely to curb consumption to any significant degree.

How do they know this? Well, they can look at the data regarding other similar taxes, such as cigarette taxes (the benefits of cigarette taxes are routinely misstated).

While the conventional wisdom is that cigarette taxes reduce adult smoking and in doing so serve an important public health function, the actual evidence to support this conclusion is relatively sparse...Overall, estimates indicate that the association between cigarette taxes and either smoking participation or the average number of daily cigarettes consumed is negative, small, and not usually statistically significant...Our analysis of the association between cigarette taxes and adult cigarette use suggests that adult smoking is largely unaffected by taxes. At best, cigarette tax increases may have a small negative association with cigarette consumption, although it is difficult to distinguish the effect from zero. source

As I mentioned in point one, though, government doesn't care what happens to consumption as long as they maximize revenue intake. So, they're not incentivized to look at past data to see if their policies actually work. They're just banking on you taking their word for it.

3) These taxes may lead to unintended consequences.

Being that sugar is a drug for many people, it's plausible that people on a fixed income may simply shift their spending away from other foods so they can continue consuming their medication in the form of sugary drinks.

If someone was trying to be healthier by buying organic produce, for example, they can simply return to purchasing conventional produce and immediately offset the cost they're going to pay in sugary drink taxes. Or, perhaps they shift consumption away from meats and whole foods and more toward cheaper cereal grains and food products.

In effect, a tax that was supposedly designed to save consumers from themselves would lead instead to consumers making even more destructive choices.

4) Even if it does change behavior for some, it's a wash. Soda isn't the sole reason for obesity (nor is sugar).

Let's say the taxes do work and soda consumption drops. That's not going to solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic we're facing. It also doesn't mean people won't just shift consumption away from sugary beverages and toward other sugary items that don't carry the tax.

If someone switches from Mountain Dew to milkshakes, what then? I'm hard pressed to believe that the government hasn't already considered this as a possibility, so that leads me back to point #1. They don't care as long as they succeed with their revenue grab on soda.

6) It's unethical. It's extortion. It's anti-liberty. It's anti-human-rights. And the government doesn't deserve a penny more of your money.

Human beings have an innate human right to consume whatever they please. Soda taxes make a claim on the property and/or the bodies of other human beings, which is a violation of that human right.

If a soda tax succeeds in barring someone from consuming sugary drinks, it means the claim on their body (their behavior) was successful and thus, a violation of their human rights. If a person pays the soda tax, it means the claim on that person's property was successful and thus, a violation of their human rights.

Some may argue that it's not a violation of human rights if a person "chooses" to pay the tax. But, this is clearly not a "choice." A "choice" is something done willfully. If you're coerced into doing something, it wasn't a choice. It would only be a choice if the person willingly donated money to some fund when purchasing sugary drinks.

Taxation is not choice, it's extortion.

7) This type of thinking can easily turn against you. One minute it's soda tax and the next minute they're taxing red meat because they still believe their own faulty "science."

By far, this is the most important point. Anyone who looks objectively at the history of United States food policy can clearly see that the government either:

1. Has no idea what they're doing.

2. Knows exactly what they're doing and is nefariously manipulating the public.

Again, if you haven't listened to The Secret History of the USDA Food Pyramid I would encourage you to do so. It clearly lays out a good chunk of this manipulation.

At any point in time, based on the historical behavior of the U.S. government, we could see new or increased taxes on such things as:

1. Dairy products, especially full fat dairy products.

2. Red meat.

3. Wild game & hunting.

4. Anything product containing saturated fat.

5. Any product containing some arbitrary number of calories deemed inappropriate.

Soda taxes set a precedent and give the government permission and authority to start deciding what foods we should and shouldn't be eating. It should go without saying that this is an absurdly dangerous precedent.
What are your thoughts on soda taxes and other "vice" or "sin" taxes? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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7 Reasons Why Soda Taxes Are a Horrible Idea - Rebooted Body

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Sugar consumption massively increased after government decided to manipulate science and our food supply. This, of course, was a significant contributor to our current obesity epidemic. The government, along with the food manufacturers they're in bed with, profited greatly off this shift while Americans were busy eating themselves into disastrous health.

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Sugar - we all love it. It tastes delicious, makes up the treats that we have on birthdays and holidays, and kicks in our endorphins.

Unfortunately, it also causes health problems. Diabetes. Heart disease. Obesity. All scary things to deal with.

That's why, last October, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for countries to specifically tax sugary drinks. Their hope is that higher cost will load to lower consumption, which will in turn reduce obesity and its related diseases.

WHO believes that a 20% increase in the cost of sodas and related sugar-laden drinks, would lead to a 20% reduction in their consumption. In other words, if sodas costs more, people will drink them less. And, theoretically, if people drink less sodas, they will be less likely to be overweight.

In case you're one of the few who doesn't know how much of a problem obesity is, consider the following United States statistics from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases:

More than 2 in 3 adults are considered to be overweight or obese.

More than 1 in 3 adults are considered to be obese.

More than 1 in 20 adults are considered to have extreme obesity.

About one-third of children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered to be overweight or obese.

More than 1 in 6 children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered to be obese.

Those numbers are staggering.
A Tax on Sodas is a Type of "Sin Tax"

What WHO is asking for - a tax on sugary drinks - is something known as a sin tax. A sin tax is just what it sounds like: A tax on something that's bad for you. The logic behind a sin tax is twofold:

1. Reduce use of the unhealthy items by increasing the associated cost, and

2. Use the funds raised by the tax to fund public health programs, from education initiatives to research to health care.

The idea isn't new. As Americans, we already pay sin taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. Specifically, this is in the form of an excise tax, not a sales tax. An excise tax is often rolled into the cost of the item you're buying, so sometimes you might not be aware of it. But in states where liquor is taxed, every bottle has an excise tax applied and included in the cost. Same with a pack of cigarettes. And, lots of times, sales tax is then applied as well.

On the surface, a sin tax sounds great. Let's raise the prices of things people shouldn't consume (or shouldn't over-consume) and everyone wins. But the opposition has excellent arguments too. The first is that sin taxes unnecessary hurt the poor, who are less able to afford them, while well-to-do citizens really aren't hit that hard. The second is that it encourages black markets, where people buy and sell products illegally in order to avoid taxes.

As every fan of the TV show Moonshiners knows.

A Little Background on Soda Taxes

Many of us already pay regular sales tax on soda and other sugary drinks. A Bridging the Gap report in 2014 found that 34 states and the District of Columbia tax soda sold in stores, while 39 states and D.C. tax soda sold by vending machines. That tax averages a bit over 5%. In many cases that sales tax is higher than the sales tax applied to food items. The idea is that food is necessary to live, but a Pepsi is not, so it gets taxed higher.

Legislation to add a specific tax to sugary drinks is fairly new, but the idea is not. Way back as far is 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proposed the idea, although for different reasons. His justification was the need to increase revenues due to import changes related to World War I. History buffs will enjoy this scan of the front page of the Hawaiian Gazette newspaper from September 1, 1914. (The article about soft drink taxes is at the very bottom, halfway across the page.) The proposal also included beer and patent medicines.

Modern efforts truly got started in 2014, when Berkeley, California passed the nation's first soda tax law. A similar initiative was on the ballot that same year in San Francisco, but it was defeated there.

Berkeley's tax amounts to 1 cent on every ounce. So a 12-ounce can of Sprite costs an additional 12 cents in taxes. The measure is considered successful. The tax officially took effect in March, 2015, and since then, the city has seen a reduction in soda consumption greater than one-fifth.

2016 saw new efforts, as 4 cities and one county approved a similar tax during the November elections. The first of those to go into effect is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Philadelphia Soda Tax

On the first day of the 2017 new year, Philadelphia's new Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax took effect. The law had been approved on June 16, 2016, as a new amendment to Title 19 of The Philadelphia Code. Many people were not fans, and took to social media to complain. Here's one tweet showing one such reaction:

From a Facebook post, the Philadelphia sugary drink tax implemented today damn, between that & Pennsylvania gas tax no wonder folk revolted pic.twitter.com/ZUtmufCyQn
- SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) January 2, 2017

At one-and-a-half cents per ounce, it's higher than Berkeley's tax. To use the same example I used before, a 12-ounce can of Sprite now costs an additional 18 cents in tax. While most of us can probably find that in our couch cushions, a better illustration of the costs comes on things like cases of soda or multi-packs of Gatorade:

@johnkim @SalenaZito Alchohol taxed at 10% per drink. "Soda" tax is per ounce. It's crazy. Check out new price of Gatorade in Philly... pic.twitter.com/cKrE4p6CXZ
- Jamie Slonis (@JamieSlonisCG) January 2, 2017

Notice that second example isn't a soda. While we're calling this a soda tax, and the real name is the "Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax", it's a bit broader than that. It applies to soda, artificially-sweetened diet soda, energy drinks, juice, and even milk substitutes and tea. Even the syrup used in fountain drink machines is taxed.

Technically, this isn't a sales tax, and it's not quite the same as an excise tax, either. It's a tax on the distribution of these products. That means that the distributor charges it to the retailers (stores, vending machine operators, etc) and remits it to the city. The retailers aren't required to collect it, and it's not paid directly by consumers either. In fact, the tax doesn't truly have to be passed along to consumers, but of course, it is.

The up side is that the revenue is going to be used for things we all like: community schools, parks and recreation centers, libraries, and the city's pre-kindergarten programs. While these aren't directly related to the "sin" involved in drinking a sugar-bolstered beverage, they are still pretty good things that most of us really like.

Still, many consumers don't care for the tax. As this article by Fox News points out, the soda tax in Philly is 24 times more expensive than the state's tax on beer. Fink's Hoagies ("King of Gourmet Hoagies") in the northeast part of the city has even stopped serving sodas at its shop. This article at the Philly Voice has a great photo of their sign informing customers of the change, which calls the tax a "blatant robbery of hard working Philadephia taxpayers' money".

Of course, Big Soda is against it too. The tax will certainly cut into their revenues, if the drop in consumption seen in Berkeley also happens in Philadelphia. The American Beverage Association, which is the largest US trade association for soft drink bottlers, has funded considerable lobby attempts to sway legislators. There's also an industry group called Americans Against Food Taxes, who paid for national ads and lobbied to oppose these kinds of taxes. This group is backed by companies such as Welch's (juice), PepsiCo (soda), McDonald's, and Burger King, as well as organizations including the American Beverage Association and the Corn Refiners Association. Obviously we're talking big politics here.

And that leads to legal matters. The law is currently tied up in court, as the beverage industry and others fight it.

Measures Also Enacted in Locations in California, Colorado, and Illinois

Philadelphia is only the first of several new soda taxes to take effect. Last year, voters in Oakland, San Francisco and Albany, all cities in the Bay area of California, passed similar measures. Boulder, Colorado did too. But the largest one (in terms of affected population) that will take effect is Cook County, Illinois - the county that includes Chicago. Here are the details.

San Francisco, CA - Prop V passed with over 61% of the vote on 11/8/16. It will add a 1-cent per ounce tax on sodas. The tax takes effect on January 1, 2018.

Oakland, CA - Measure HH passed with over 60% of the vote on 11/8/16. It will add a 1-cent per ounce tax on sodas. The tax takes effect on July 1, 2017.

Albany, CA - Prop O1 passed with over 70% of the vote on 11/8/16. It will add a 1-cent per ounce tax on sodas. The tax takes effect on January 1, 2017

Boulder, CO - Measure 2H passed with 54% of the vote on 11/8/16. It will add a 2-cent per ounce tax on sodas. The tax takes effect on July 1, 2017

Cook County, IL - Passed by a 9-8 vote of the Board of Commissioners on 11/10/16. It will add a 1-cent per ounce tax on sodas. The tax takes effect on July 1, 2017.

Internationally, other countries are doing the same thing. Mexico already has a soda tax, and the United Kingdom has approved one, but it's not yet in effect.

The jury is still out on how much this will help or hurt our society. What also remains to be seen is whether states themselves will eventually impose such taxes, rather than individual cities and counties.

Filed Under: Tax Legislation

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The Great Soda Tax Debate - Pros and Cons of Taxing Soft Drinks

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Sugar - we all love it. It tastes delicious, makes up the treats that we have on birthdays and holidays, and kicks in our endorphins. Unfortunately, it also causes health problems. Diabetes. Heart disease. Obesity. All scary things to deal with. That's why, last October, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for countries to specifically tax sugary drinks.

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Soda taxes are being sold as a fix for some pretty big problems: everything from obesity to education funding, and everywhere from San Francisco to Philadelphia to West Virginia. Could these sin taxes really deliver on these promises? Or are proponents glossing over key flaws of these proposals?

Our research has generally concluded that soda taxes are narrow, punitive taxes that are a budget risk not likely to solve America's health issues. They're a misguided attempt at solving a multifaceted health problem and will introduce many unintended fiscal consequences.

Soda Taxes Are Regressive

First, let's remember that these taxes are regressive. My colleague Scott Drenkard wrote in 2012 that a 10 percent soda tax could burden high-income families by $24.29, while poor families would be harmed nearly twice that amount at $47.38.

Proponents sometimes justify this feature of the tax by arguing that it is fine to overtax low-income individuals, as revenue from this tax goes to government services that are enjoyed more by those same low-income individuals. This is poor reasoning, though. If this argument were valid, it could be used to justify any regressive tax imaginable, as government spending as a whole is progressive, benefiting lower-income individuals more than high-income individuals as a percent of their income.

Using Taxes to Play Caloric Whack-a-mole

While we certainly defer to the judgment of health professionals on the best nutritional choices to make, health experts aren't unanimous in the belief that soda taxes will make a significant dent in improving health outcomes. A recent study by University of Massachusetts researchers explains the problems with an overly simplistic model of taxation vs. caloric consumption:

Proponents of soda taxes often reference the success of cigarette taxes in decreasing cigarette use. However, cigarettes and soda differ in a number of ways. First, cigarette taxes increase prices significantly, a tactic that may be unjustifiable for soft drinks given that, unlike cigarette use, moderate soda consumption is considered safe. Second, the many available soda substitutes may render soda taxes ineffective, in that consumers will replace highly-taxed beverages with low-tax alternatives with the same health consequences.

If soda becomes too expensive for their liking, consumers may choose to consume another potentially unhealthy drink in its place. According to a 2012 Cornell University study, soda taxes prompted many consumers to switch to beer, while another study suggests that consumers may replace soda with other high-calorie options.

Philadelphia, which recently enacted a soda tax, is starting to find this out. Their 1.5-cents per ounce sugar-sweetened beverage tax doesn't sound like much, until you realize that the effective tax rate is about 20 times higher than the excise tax for alcohol. Suffice to say, that led to some sticker shock after the tax went into effect. Thanks to Philly's new tax, at $9.03, a 12-pack of flavored sports drink is more expensive than a 12-pack of beer ($7.99).

This myopic focus with beverages also ignores another aspect of the obesity crisis: food. Most calories come in solid form. Does this mean we should tax every bad calorie someone consumes? Should there be a tax on all-you-can-eat buffets? Maybe a tax on simple carbohydrates of all types, but tax credits for vegetables. It is quickly apparent that the tax code isn't built to do all of this, nor should it.

A Shrinking, Regressive Tax Base for Education

Besides being depicted as a way to improve public health, soda taxes are also now being looked at as a way to shore up state and local budgets and expand important services such as education. Although it might be more politically expedient to tax a demonized product like soda to pay for popular services, this represents bad fiscal policy. Ideally, public services should be funded by taxes with a broad base and low rate. Soda taxes are the opposite, subjecting a narrow tax base to very high tax rates.

Policymakers should also be aware that soda consumption has already been steadily declining. Enacting a tax on a product with this consumption pattern might result in a temporary spike in revenue, but will soon be followed by a revenue decline as consumers continue shifting their spending habits. Policymakers will face a budget gap from expanding services with a narrowing tax base that doesn't fill the void.

Economic Consequences

What's also been lost in the soda tax kerfuffle is the potential job losses, as we're starting to see in Philadelphia. Retailers, distributors, and restaurants are all bound to be affected, either through smaller profit margins or reduced sales. One beverage company, Pepsi, announced layoffs related to the Philadelphia tax.

At the end of the day, soda taxes are a regressive tax on a product that's probably fine in moderation. These taxes likely won't fund what's being promised, won't resolve the obesity problem, and will hurt workers and consumers. Based on the mounting evidence, fans of the soda tax might want to take a step back and consider what's best in the long-term, not just the short-term political gains.

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The Case Against Soda Taxes - Tax Foundation

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Soda taxes are being sold as a fix for some pretty big problems: everything from obesity to education funding, and everywhere from San Francisco to Philadelphia to West Virginia. Could these sin taxes really deliver on these promises? Or are proponents glossing over key flaws of these proposals?

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San Francisco is the latest municipality that wants to fight the battle of the bulge by taxing sugary drinks. Here's why it doesn't work.

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In today's Econundrum, Maddie Oatman argues in favor of taxing soda. She points out the scary amounts of calories that people consume in the form of sweetened beverages-and the mounting evidence that sugar, like alcohol and tobacco, is addictive. Oatman speaks to an economist who has crunched the numbers and believes that a penny-per-ounce soda tax (like the one proposed in Richmond, California) could actually be enough to persuade consumers to quit their Big Gulp habits. The revenue from such a tax could also be used to pay for health care and education.

But as Oatman also points out, the idea of a soda tax is nothing if not divisive. Which means it should make for a fun debate. We're lucky to have two experts to facilitate a conversation on the subject and answer reader questions: nutritionist and author Marion Nestle, whose new book is called Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics, and MoJo food and ag blogger Tom Philpott. Got a question for Nestle and Philpott? Leave it in the comments section, tweet it at @Econundrums, or email it to econundrums@motherjones.com. We'll be updating this post with more questions and answers as they come in.
Jump to the latest answers from our experts: To get things rolling, we asked Nestle and Philpott: Is soda really what's making us fat, anyway?
Marion Nestle: Excess calories are what make people fat. Consuming more calories than are expended in body functions and activity. The calories can come from anywhere, but the calories from sugar sweetened beverages differ in two ways from food calories: They have no nutrients to accompany their sugars (the calories are "empty"), and they are in liquid form. We are seeing increasing evidence that the body does not regulate liquid calories as well as it regulates calories that are absorbed more slowly from foods. That's why the Center for Science in the Public Interest calls sugary drinks "liquid candy," and why advice saying "don't drink your calories" makes such good sense.

Tom Philpott: I agree with Marion, with a possible caveat. First, there's strong circumstantial evidence that added sweeteners play a big role in the obesity problem. US obesity rates were pretty stable until about 1980, when they began to rise rapidly. The CDC tells us ( PDF) they doubled between 1980 and 2000. Perhaps not coincidentally, per capita sweetener consumption began to rise dramatically over that same period-USDA figures tell us that we took in about 120 pounds of sweeteners per person per year in 1980, and by 1999 we were ingesting 151 pounds. That's a 25 percent jump.

Driving this surge was the rise of cheap high-fructose corn syrup, used heavily by the beverage industry beginning in the early 1980s, the consumption of which went from 19 pounds annually per capita in 1980 to more than 60 pounds by 1999. Since then, under pressure from health worries, sweetener consumption has come down; the latest figures, from 2010, indicate that we're taking in 131 pounds of total sweetener (of which 49 pounds are HFCS). Still, that's 8 percent more total sweeteners than we consumed in 1980 (which I remember as a pretty sugar-soaked time).

And USDA figures are averages-some people avoid added sweeteners, while others are still swilling sugary soft drinks like it's 1999. As for Marion's empty-calories analysis, The New York Times Magazine journalist Gary Taubes has marshaled considerable evidence that isolated sweeteners-conventional sugar and HFCS alike-are not just empty calories, but are downright toxic. According to Taubes and the science he cites, these substances are metabolized in a way that gives rise to excess fat and insulin resistance. I certainly don't have the scientific chops to evaluate Taubes, but his analysis is compelling.

What are the geopolitics associated with US corn and the beverage industry? Assuming a soda tax were passed here and people lessened their consumption, would it be more likely that the excess be shifted to overseas markets or would it, over time, help reduce demand for cheap corn inputs? -Madison W.
Tom Philpott: Ok, a wonky question deserves a wonky answer-with a chart and number crunching! Excellent question, Madison. Short answer: some of the drop in US high-fructose corn syrup demand caused by a soda tax might be shifted overseas, but the effect will likely be limited. Here's why.

As I wrote in my last post, US consumers are already consuming less HFCS-from about 60 pounds annually per capita in 1999 to 49 pounds in 2010. That's an 18 percent drop. But according to the National Corn Growers Association's 2012 annual corn-market report ( PDF), the amount of US corn going into HFCS went from 542 million bushels in 2001 to 520 million bushels in 2010. That's a less than 4 percent drop. So US HFCS producers are clearly churning out more product than US consumers are consuming. Where's the excess going? This USDA document has answers.

US high-fructose corn syrup exports rose from 145,308 metric tons in 2004 to 1.28 million metric tons in 2011. In other words, HFCS exports have risen by a factor of nearly nine since 2004-a period over which our own domestic consumption of the swwet stuff was falling. The great bulk of that explosive growth can be accounted for by Mexico, whose protective tariffs against HFCS imports were dismantled in 2008 as part of NAFTA negotiations. Mexico's imports of US HFCS went from 6,591 metric tons in 2004 to 837,845 metric tons last year-a 127-fold leap. Mexico now accounts for 65 percent of our HFCS exports. So, yes, the HFCS industry has shown it can respond to falling domestic demand by muscling into foreign markets.

However, despite its ubiquity and export power, high-fructose corn syrup only takes up 4.1 percent of the US corn crop, according to the National Corn Growers Association:

The real action for corn lies in livestock feed and ethanol. The chart tells us that 27.3 percent of corn goes to ethanol and 36.3 percent goes to feed. Then there's the 12.2 percent that "reenters the feed market as DDGS." That refers to dried distillers grains, which are a byproduct of ethanol production and used as livestock feed. All told, three-quarters of US corn is going to feed and ethanol. That's a lot of corn, especially when you consider that the US corn crop accounts for 36 percent of the corn grown on planet Earth.

So say a soda tax made our HFCS consumption drop by half. I think that would be a considered a great success by the tax's proponents. What would happen to the corn market? The HFCS industry would no doubt try to maintain production levels and send more sweetener to Mexico and other foreign markets. But I think there's a larger force at play drawing excess US corn in another direction: east to China. There, appetite for meat is rising ( PDF), policymakers are pushing a transition to industrial-scale US-style livestock production, and demand for feed corn imports is booming. The US currently exports 13 percent of its corn, and I expect that number to rise as long as China maintains growth in meat demand.
There's a lot of evidence that all calories are not alike when it comes to obesity and diabetes. Carbohydrates (not just sugars, but also grain-based foods such as bread, potatoes, pasta, etc.) cause our body to release insulin when they are digested. The insulin cycle triggers our body to store carbs in fat cells. When we eat meat and most other vegetables, we don't trigger the insulin cycle, and are less likely to store fat. Soda and chips are particularly bad for us, as concerns obesity and diabetes. We need to find a way to signal this to Americans, and counter-balance the advertising of food processors. A tax is one good way to do that. -JR
So, to answer your question, Madison, there will likely be some ongoing moderate shift in excess HFCS going to foreign markets, tempered by a growing flow of corn to China. And there is no stopping ongoing demand for cheap corn inputs.

Why not tax/ban OJ? Lots of "addictive sugar." -Anthony F.

Marion Nestle: I couldn't agree more that most people would be a lot healthier if they ate less sugar, and my co-author and I discuss the reasons for that, and why we think that the role of insulin is only part of the story of weight gain, in our book, Why Calories Count. Most studies of the effects of diets of varying composition on weight gain and loss do not control for or measure calorie intake. Instead, they rely on self-reports of calorie intake, which usually underestimate the true values. In the one study we were able to find in which investigators actually measured the calories given to hospitalized obese patients, they found no difference in the rate of weight loss when patients were given diets of widely varying protein, fat, and carbohydrate composition. We were unable to find controlled studies of the effects of varying diet composition on weight gain that measured-as opposed to estimating-calories consumed.
I think it would make better sense to tax sugar across the board. ALL sugar, not just what's in the many brands of soda. -Rennyrij
In diets that do not contain excess calories, the effects of sugars or rapidly absorbable carbohydrate on insulin levels are attenuated. Robert Lustig, for example, explains that diets that contain less than 50 grams of fructose-containing sugars a day are well tolerated by the body and do not induce excessive insulin. For people who consume 2000 calories a day, 50 grams of sugars represents about 10 percent of calorie intake (50 grams x 4 calorie per gram)-a level that public health authorities have recommended as an upper limit for decades. People gain weight because they take in more calories than they expend in basal metabolism and activity. Not overeating sugars is an excellent way to manage calorie intake. We discuss these issues and more, and explain our understanding of the science, in Why Calories Count.

Marion Nestle: Soft drinks are an easy target for "eat less" strategies because they contain sugars and, therefore, calories, but nothing else of nutritional value. In contrast, fruit juices contain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and, sometimes, fiber. Once you get past soft drinks as a target for tax strategies, you are on a nutritional slippery slope. With that said, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limits on juices for kids to, if I remember correctly, 12 ounces per day maximum. When I was a kid, we had special glasses for juice that contained 6 ounces. Then, Coca-Cola advertised a 16-ounce soft drink as big enough to serve 3. With all sugary drinks, the issue is portion size. No nutritionist worries about 6 or 8 ounces of any sugary drink. The bigger the drink, the more sugars it contains-and the more calories.

Tom Philpott: Rennyrij raises a good point. Why not an added-sweetener tax at the wholesale level, instead of a retail soda tax? There's an adage in economics that "if you want less of something, tax it." Oatman shows that a huge portion of sweetener consumption is tied to beverages. But sweeteners are in everything-Hellman's mayo, Skippy peanut butter, Kraft Ranch dressing, all have added sugar. In this doc ( PDF) available in its web site, McDonald's lists ingredients on dozens of menu items. The phrase "high fructose corn syrup" appears 51 times-it's in just about every bread and sauce item the company sells, from Big Mac bun to the muffin in the Egg McMuffin to Big Mac sauce. It's the first ingredient listed in Chipotle BBQ Sauce. Meanwhile, the word "sugar" appears in the document 226 times. Some items, including the pickle relish that goes into Big Mac sauce, has sugar and HFCS. Some have even more sweeteners. Check out the ingredients for "cilantro lime glaze," three of the first four of which are sweeteners-in addition to the sweet blast from orange juice concentrate:

Water, corn syrup solids, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, distilled vinegar, olive oil, soybean oil, freeze-dried orange juice concentrate, cilantro, salt, freeze-dried lime juice concentrate, xanthan gum, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservatives), garlic powder, propylene glycol alginate, spice, onion powder, citric acid
Could one of the authors please address the amount of tax dollars that the corn/ag industry receives in tax breaks or 'handouts' and how that stimulates the amount of cheaply available HFCS and other processed corn products or sweeteners? -arc64
Why are companies tarting up everything from peanut butter to burger buns with caloric sweetener? Because processed sugars are a cheap way for corporations to create appealing flavors. An across-the-board added-sweetener tax would force companies to reconsider that strategy. If high enough, it could end the plague sugary-sweet items that are meant to be savory, like hamburger buns. And it would be a de facto soda tax, because soda companies would see higher costs for their soda production, which they would then pass on to consumers.

Of course, just as a sweetener tax would broader than a soda tax, opposition to it would be broader, too. It would likely include the processed food industry, sweetener-addicted fast-food companies like McDonald's, in addition to the soda giants, the corn-refining industry, Big Sugar, etc. Those are powerful industries with plenty of cash to spend on lobbying-meaning that at the national level, the idea has zero chance of passing. But that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

Marion Nestle: The Environmental Working Group has a nice summary of the amount of taxpayer dollars invested in corn subsidies. It was $3.5 billion in 2010. Subsidies make it cheaper to grow corn, encourage overproduction of corn, and permit corn to be sold more cheaply than other commodities. Overproduction stimulates development of uses for corn in feed and corn products like HFCS.

Tom Philpott: Arc64, a lot of people argue that crop subsidies are the root cause of the obesity problem. Take away the subsidies, the argument goes, and high-fructose corn syrup will become expensive, and people will consume much less of it. It's easy to see why people think this way. Until 2007, the global market was flooded with corn, prices were dirt cheap, and US farmers sold it at below the cost of production. The government paid them subsidies to make up the difference. Thus tax payers were essentially underwriting the overproduction of corn. The real winners in this game were the corn buyers, including high-fructose corn syrup makers like Archer Daniels Midland. According to Tufts researchers Tim Wise and Alice Harvie in this 2009 paper, the HFCS industry pocketed $2.2 billion in savings from access to below-cost corn between 1997 and 2005. Soda bottlers, too, benefited-to the tune of $873 million between 1997 and 2005-from access to HFCS made from corn sold at below the cost of production. Those are major taxpayer-funded windfalls to powerful industries.

But then in 2006, the price of corn began to surge. The driver was another government program-the federal ethanol mandate, signed into law by George W. Bush. New rules required gasoline mixers to add ever-increasing amounts of corn ethanol into the US gas supply. Corn prices surged, and corn subsidies fell (because some of the subsidy programs are tied to price, kicking in when prices drop below production costs). Pricier corn, lower subsidies-that should have made Big Gulps and other sweet stuff significantly more expensive, right? Trouble is, it didn't affect prices much. Why? Wise and Harvie have an answer:

For sweetener-intensive sectors like soft drinks or baked goods, the share of sweeteners in the unit price of retail food is small, and it has fallen dramatically since 1975 as retail foods have become more highly processed. Today, HFCS represents just 3.5 percent of the total cost of soft drink manufacturing as measured by the value of shipments. Meanwhile, the corn content of HFCS represents only 1.6% of this value.

In other words, fluctuations in the price of corn just don't have a huge impact on the final price of a Big Gulp. Companies like Coca-Cola can pay more for HFCS without having to raise consumer prices more very much.

So how do we get thee corporations to use less HFCS and other sweeteners-or make consumers think twice about buying highly sweetened products? This is where the soda tax proponents have a powerful argument. Higher corn prices don't change the retail price of Coke much, but a soda tax can.

I should add that federal farm policy is an extremely complicated beast. Subsidies are the symptom of a policy gone bad, not the main problem in and of themselves. I teased these issues out in some length in a three-part series on farm policy back in 2007.

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In today's Econundrum, Maddie Oatman argues in favor of taxing soda. She points out the scary amounts of calories that people consume in the form of sweetened beverages-and the mounting evidence that sugar, like alcohol and tobacco, is addictive.

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It's no secret that soda is unhealthy, with calories emptier than your average Bachelorette contestant. After all, the first ingredient after carbonated water is sugar! And cities are starting to treat it like the health scourge it is: A soda tax in Philly has already reduced sales by as much as 50% in just six weeks.

Yet one-third of Americans report having at least one sugar-sweetened beverage every day, according to the CDC. It's no surprise that one-third of adults are also considered to be obese.

Even if you're not a regular soda drinker, you may think the occasional splurge is harmless. But is it? The combination of sugar, chemicals and carbonation required to make your favorite fizzy beverage can wreak havoc on more than just your waistline. Researchers at Eat This, Not That! dove into the studies, and their findings will shock you. Here's what drinking soda really does to your body, and to discover even more stomach-slimming tips, don't miss these 55 Best Ways to Boost Your Metabolism!

One of the most obvious side effects of drinking soda is the risk of weight gain, thanks to the influx of calories and sugar. A 12-ounce can of soda contains around 150 calories and up to 40 grams of sugar. Drinking one a day means ingesting more than 130,000 extra calories a year, or 15 pounds of added fat! But it's more than just the extra calories per soft drink that's packing on the pounds; soda has been found to lead to uniquely weight gain. A study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that drinks containing high-fructose corn syrup (which is in a lot of sodas), are linked to obesity. Fructose is absorbed in the body differently than other sugars, the study assesses, which affects insulin levels and metabolism, and can lead to weight gain.

And it's not just the full-calorie options; diet soda can also cause people to pack on the pounds, according to a 2015 study published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study showed that over nine years, people who drank diet soda gained almost three times as much belly fat as those who didn't drink diet soda. Researchers have theorized that the consumption of artificial sweeteners leads to more sugar cravings, and therefore causes people to eat more calories than they normally would. If you want to improve your health and melt the fat that matters most, don't miss these 50 Ways to Lose 10 Pounds-Fast.

Drinking soda causes your blood sugar to spike, and sends your pancreas into overdrive producing insulin to metabolize all that sugar. So it's no surprise a study in the American Heart Association journal Circulation found that consuming sugar-sweetened beverages, like soda, was linked to the onset of type 2 diabetes. And this correlation was independent of obesity's impact on developing type 2 diabetes. The researchers of the study recommended a decrease in sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, and we couldn't agree more.

Sure, the weight gain and cancer risk from soda may age you, but drinking it affects your body on a cellular level. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco found that people who drank more sugar-sweetened beverages had shorter ends of their chromosomes, known as telomeres. When telomeres are shorter, cells can't regenerate as quickly, meaning a more rapid aging of the body. This can lead to diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer, and (unsurprisingly) a shorter lifespan-a steep price to pay for a regular soda habit.

Turns out, that whole drinking-soda-gives-you-pimples theory isn't just an old wives' tale. A study published in Clinics in Dermatology found that eating foods high in sugar with high glycemic loads can mess with insulin levels, and lead to the formation of acne. So drinking full-calorie soda, which has some of the highest glyemic loads of any food or drink, can be a culprit for breakouts.

And diet soda isn't much better. Even though it's calorie and sugar-free, diet soda is very acidic, which means it lowers your pH levels and causes a dull, lifeless complexion. So if you're a regular diet soda drinker, you can kiss radiant skin goodbye.

Drinking soda regularly doesn't just give you less energy; it also slows down your swimmers. The Rochester Young Men's Study, which examined 189 healthy young men at the University of Rochester, found that participants who drank more sugar-sweetened beverages, including soda, experienced lower sperm motility.

Soda has been linked to poor kidney function according to a study out of Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan. Researchers studied 8,000 participants who all had normal kidney function at the beginning of the study, split into one group who drank no soda, one who had one a day, and another who had two a day. Not surprisingly, the group who drank two sodas a day had a much higher chance of developing proteinuria, a condition in which protein isn't properly filtered by the kidneys and a sign of chronic kidney disease. Scary stuff.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in adults in America, accounting for 610,000 lives a year, according to the CDC. Although people typically associate poor heart health with bad habits like smoking and not working out, drinking soda should also be on the top of that list. Having one 12-ounce soda a day raises your risk of a heart attack by 20%, according to a study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. The researchers found the correlation to be independent of obesity and weight gain alone, and believe soda's inflammatory properties play a role. Sugary beverages have also been linked to higher levels of triglycerides and low levels of HDL, or good cholesterol, which all lead to poor heart function. Speaking of keeping a healthy heart, read up on these 40 Habits That Make You Sick and Fat!

No surprise here: All of the sugar consumed by drinking soda is horrible for your pearly whites. Couple that with the acidity of carbonated beverages that destroy tooth enamel, and you have a dentist's nightmare. Soda leeches calcium from your teeth and leads to dental erosion, according to a study published in the International Journal of Dentistry. Aside from severe tooth decay, darker-colored sodas like colas can also stain the surface of your teeth. That's nothing to smile about.

About 1 in 12 (or 25 million) Americans suffer from asthma, a lung condition that's usually considered a genetic disease triggered by allergens such as pollen and mold. But sugar-sweetened beverages can also lead to the onset of asthma, according to a study out of Australia. Researchers found that high levels of soft drink consumption was associated with an increased risk of asthma or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD). So take a deep breath... and put down the soft drink.

Sticks and stones may break your bones... and soda's just as bad. Even though your bones naturally become more brittle as you age, drinking soda can exacerbate this problem. Certain soft drinks make your bones weaker, according to a study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study found that women who drank cola and diet cola daily had lower bone density in their hips. Although the study didn't find a correlation between non-cola carbonated beverages and bone density, it did note a lower calcium-to-phosphorus ratio. So laying off the soda is important for staying strong in old age.

Drinking soda doesn't just affect your body; your brain is at risk, too. A study out of UCLA found that consuming high levels of fructose, such as the added sugars in soda (hello, high-fructose corn syrup!) alters hundreds of cells in the brain. The scariest part is these are genes linked to serious diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and ADHD. Although a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acid was found to reverse the damaging effects of fructose, it's best to lay off the sugar-sweetened beverages in the first place.

Diet soda was also found to have adverse effects on the cerebellum of rats, according to a study published in African Health Sciences. Although what negatively affects rats might not necessarily have the same consequences in humans, it's an alarming enough of a correlation to make us want to ditch diet soda along with the full-calorie stuff.

Think just a couple sodas a week won't do any harm? Think again. People who drank two or more soft drinks a week had a significantly higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer compared to those who didn't drink them, a study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention found. Of the 60,524 participants, those who drank juice instead of soda didn't carry the same risk of pancreatic cancer, even though juice also contains a lot of sugar. Soda was found to be uniquely dangerous for the pancreas, which is one more reason to kick your pop habit for good. Take control of your health by also avoiding these 50 Unhealthiest Foods on the Planet.

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13 Things That Happen to Your Body When You Drink Soda | Eat This Not That

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It's no secret that soda is unhealthy, with calories emptier than your average Bachelorette contestant. After all, the first ingredient after carbonated water is sugar! And cities are starting to treat it like the health scourge it is: A soda tax in Philly has already reduced sales by as much as 50% in just six weeks.

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https://www.sharecare.com/health/non-alcoholic-drinking/can-soda-cause-gain-weight

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A SODA Tax - Will it Change Anything?
by Roberta R. Friedman, ScM

To view a PDF version of this article, click here.

"Rethink Your Drink!"
"Don't Drink Yourself Fat!"

These are the catchy titles of public health campaigns being waged around the country in an effort to convince people to go soda-free, reduce the amount of empty calories from sugar they consume and help them shed some pounds. The campaigns have brought the issue of sugary drinks and how much they contribute to weight gain into the national spotlight and have certainly made people more aware of the issue. But, is education enough to change our drinking habits and help the country lose weight? Many public health advocates think not, and are encouraging state legislators to give consumers a nudge by taxing sugary drinks.

The idea is simple: raise the prices of sugary beverages and people will buy and drink fewer of them, reduce their calorie intake and lose weight; use the revenue raised to pay for obesity prevention programs, and you have a win-win situation. It worked with tobacco, so why not sugary drinks? Some worry, however, that tobacco and beverages are two different animals. We do not need to smoke, but we do need to eat food, and soda is food-right? How do we know that people will actually drink fewer sugary beverages because of a tax? Why tax beverages and not some other unhealthy food? Will a tax change anything?

Let's consider the details.

Why tax these drinks?
Sugary drinks are the single biggest source of "added" sugars in our diet today, that is, sugars that do not occur naturally in foods. For example, 100 percent fruit juice naturally contains fructose (fruit sugar), but drinks like fruitades have extra sugars (such as high fructose corn syrup) added to them. There is too much added sugar in our diets. According to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, more than half of it comes from drinking sodas, fruit drinks, sports drinks and other sugary beverages (see graph to the right).

These drinks have very little, if any, healthy ingredients in them and now there is strong scientific evidence that they are linked to weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases. Scientists think people gain weight because drinking high-calorie beverages does not make them feel full (but eating something high-calorie does). This means that drinking 240 calories in a 20-ounce soda will not keep you from eating 240 fewer calories. All those extra calories, day-after-day, begin to add up and turn into weight gain.

How would a tax on sugary drinks work to reduce obesity?
When the price of certain food products increases, if the products are considered necessities, people will buy them anyway. Milk and eggs are examples. But, if the price goes up on foods that are not considered necessities, such as sugary drinks, people will buy fewer of them. Economists have determined that if the price of sugary drinks goes up 10 percent, consumption will go down by about 10-12 percent. This would reduce the number of calories from sugary beverages people drink each day, and may help with weight-loss. A tax of a penny-per-ounce, which is written into most of the bills introduced in state legislatures, would raise the cost of the average sugary drink by about 15-20 percent. This would be more than enough to reduce the amount that people buy.

In order for the tax to work, people need to see that the price of sugary drinks has gone up, which means the kind of tax is important. It should be an excise tax (an indirect tax charged on the sale of a particular good), not a sales tax. You may live in one of the 34 states (and Washington, DC) that already have sales taxes on sugary drinks. You pay sales taxes at the checkout line, but you may not be aware that you are paying extra for a sugary drink unless you look at your cash register receipt, and by then it is too late! With excise taxes - the kind being proposed now - the manufacturers or distributors of the drinks pay the taxes. They pass on that cost to you, the consumer, by raising prices. If the shelf price of the sugary drink you regularly buy goes up, you may think twice about buying it.

The other way a tax would work to reduce obesity is if the revenue collected is spent on obesity prevention programs. This is called "earmarking" the funds. Almost all of the tax bills introduced in state legislatures in 2011 included earmarks. Some states would use the money to set up children's health promotion funds, or nutrition education programs in schools or communities. One would use the revenue to build and maintain new state parks, or improve existing ones. The money could also be used to help schools sell more nutritious foods for breakfast and lunch; to help people on the food stamp plan, called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), buy more fresh fruits and vegetables; or to allow communities to build more places where people can exercise.

What sugary drinks would be taxed?
The tax would apply to any beverage that has "added caloric sweeteners" in it. This includes:

The "caloric sweeteners" include sugar, high fructose corn syrup and fruit concentrates - anything with calories. The beverages that would not be taxed include diet drinks, infant formula, nutritional supplements (such as weight-reduction drinks) or drinks with milk in them.

Will a sugary drink tax change anything?
Experts in healthcare, public health and economics are confident that a tax will reduce consumption and help to lower obesity and overweight rates in the United States. Without any real-life tests, it is hard to say how big the impact will be, but they are sure of one thing: as state budgets get tighter, fewer dollars will be spent on important public health measures, such as obesity prevention.

At the same time, as rates of obesity and overweight continue to climb, more and more healthcare dollars are being used to treat obesity and overweight, and the chronic diseases that often come with them. Preventing obesity when we can, rather than paying for its consequences, makes good economic and public health sense. A sugary drink tax may help.

About the Author:
Roberta R. Friedman, ScM, is the director of public policy at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. She educates federal, state and local policy makers and public health organizations about the science supporting food and nutrition policies that have the potential to create real change.

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Obesity Action Coalition " A Soda Tax - Will it Change Anything?

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A SODA Tax - Will it Change Anything? by Roberta R. Friedman, ScM To view a PDF version of this article, click here . "Rethink Your Drink!" "Don't Drink Yourself Fat!"

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https://padlet.com/tiffanydutcher/eoc8v02w77i7

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Do Taxes really work?

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A new study finds the Berkeley, California soda tax is causing declines in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages.

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10 reasons why the sugar tax is a terrible idea | Coffee House

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It will hit Consumers: The tax is designed to be levied on soft drinks companies, based on the volume of sugar-sweetened drinks they import of export. But the independent economic forecaster, the...