The public health lobby recently renewed its push for “sugar tax” on soft drinks, arguing it would help reduce obesity. “A tax on sugar sweetened beverages should be introduced as a matter of priority,” the Australian Medical Association (AMA) stated early in January. The doctor’s lobby group — fresh from their self-serving win in preventing Australians from buying codeine-based medication — argued that food producers and retailers are contributing to “overweight and obesity with associated health problems” and if those industries profess any commitment to nutrition, the “credibility of these statements is undermined by their lack of engagement around evidence-based interventions”.
The AMA has been cheered on by significant sections of the media, with Fairfax and the ABC providing positive coverage for a tax and suggesting any lack of interest from politicians — the government was quick to rule out a sugar tax — as the sinister product of the toxic lobbying power of Big Soda.
Problem is, it’s the AMA and the public health industry — a powerful, taxpayer-funded industry in its own right operating from academia and government health bodies — that refuses to engage with the evidence.
[Sugar tax unhelpful and unnecessary but try telling the nanny statists]
Let’s take Mexico, for example. It’s compulsory for journalists to mention Mexico when advocating a sugar tax, but the hard evidence from that country, which introduced a sugar tax on both beverages and foods in 2014, is that sugar taxes simply don’t work. Advocates of a sugar tax claim it produced a 6% decrease in soft drink purchases. Problematically, however, that conclusion is based on a survey of households and an assumed level of growth of soft drink purchases against which the survey results were assessed. In contrast, actual revenue data from the soft drink tax available from the Mexican finance ministry (available here) shows that sales only dipped by a negligible amount in the first year and then resumed climbing.
But even if sales did drop 6% in Mexico, and that drop was sustained, it hasn’t had any impact on obesity or diseases like diabetes in Mexico: both rose between 2012 and 2016 despite the 2014 imposition of the tax. That’s at odds with the ludicrously optimistic predictions of sugar tax proponents that it would save tens of thousands of lives and curb diabetes by 200,000 cases.
[Getting a sugar rush from controlling the poor]
While the public health industry might want to ignore the failure of the Mexican tax, it’s worth investigating just why it is that the sugar tax failed. One clue is provided by the Californian city of Berkeley: that city imposed a soft drink tax in 2015. Ostensibly, it was a win for nanny statists: the tax saw a 6 kilocalorie decline in soft drink consumption a day per capita. But intake of calories from untaxed beverages like milk and smoothies increased by nearly 32 kilocalories per capita. That is, the good citizens of Berkeley were consuming 25.5 kilocalories more from beverages, because to the extent they reduced soft drink consumption, they substituted other drinks, including some with greater calories.
Nanny statists appear to assume that once they increase the cost of soft drinks, consumers will obediently shift to water or diet drinks. While some do, it seems many more simply shift to untaxed drinks with high calorie content. That’s why there is no evidence from anywhere in the world that sugar taxes actually achieve public health benefits.
NEXT: We’re fat because we consume too much sugar? Not so fast, sweetie.
Right, Bernard. The nanny state shouldn’t stop people consuming sugary drinks or at least make them at least pay extra for it but should continue to provide affordable healthcare for these people.
If they don’t want to live in the ‘nanny state’ they can sign a declaration and give up their rights to healthcare. They can thus enjoy all the subsequent benefits of true ‘freedom’.
If I don’t like regressive sin taxes I should be made stateless?
No. But you should be rendered stateless for making ad absurdum arguments.
Thanks Mr ‘if you don’t like one tax you should have your rights taken away’.
“But even if sales did drop 6% in Mexico, and that drop was sustained, it hasn’t had any impact on obesity or diseases like diabetes in Mexico: both rose between 2012 and 2016 despite the 2014 imposition of the tax.”
Leaving aside the fact 2012-2014 logically wouldn’t have been impacted by the 2014 tax, that’s not how obesity or diabetes works. Obesity is a shit of a thing to treat. Once you’re obese, you’re body does everything it can to keep you obese. You have a similar mechanism with diabetes. I don’t think anyone would expect to see a sudden drop-off in obesity or diabetes rates. Give it 10 years and take another look. Two years does not a longitudinal study make.
However, there’s plenty of solid evidence that price increases are effective in reducing a similar societal ‘ill’ (for want of a better word) — smoking. I’m surprised there’s no comparison with tobacco price increases and how that impacts smoking rates.
Here’s some examples:
“There was strong evidence that raising cigarette prices through increased taxes is a more effective tobacco control policy measure for reducing smoking behavior among youth, young adults, and persons of low socioeconomic status, compared to the general population.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/
“Conclusions: Pricing and price related promotions are among the most important marketing tools employed by tobacco companies. Future tobacco control efforts that aim to raise prices and limit price related marketing efforts are likely to be important in achieving reductions in tobacco use and the public health toll caused by tobacco.”
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/11/suppl_1/i62
“A fundamental principle of economics is that of the downward sloping demand curve. Many have argued that tobacco use is an exception to this law and that addictive consumption was not conducive to standard economic analysis (e.g. Elster, 1979; Winston, 1980). However, substantial economic research clearly demonstrates that the demands for cigarettes and other tobacco products respond to changes in prices and other factors.”
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3321/cac18ca085687d46cc4fd87df18986118efe.pdf
Rubbish Bernard, you certainly have no grasp of the science of sugar. Milk has calories, but it doesn’t have a Glycaemic Index anything like sugar, so unless the milk has heaps of added sugar. There are inidigenous societies who have lived on high fat, high protein diets successfully and without obesity. There is not one who has high sugar. Sugar was great when you put it in your coffee or tea, even in fruit preserves because they were used sparingly. Now it is in drinks we drink all the time. You 2014 data from Mexico is based on bullshit of the same order as the IPA’s education ravings. It would take a few years for benefits to really show up, just like the Gonski funding. You take a measure look for five minutes and say “Oh didn’t work”. I do agree about the codeine though. It was the only pain killer I can take that works. Panadol is useless and I cannot take aspirin or ibuprofen. Codeine has a benefit to people, large amounts of sucrose and fructose do not.
Broadly I would agree with the article. Sugar is bad, but you would have to tax it at tobacco levels to induce significant change and I cannot see any government doing that. On the other hand, governments need revenue. Maybe dressing it up as a health initiative might make it a more acceptable tax.
I would quibble that not all calories are equal and the effects of sugar come from more than just its biochemical energy. For instance: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/24/robert-lustig-sugar-poison
The problem with sucrose is that it is half fructose which is metabolised by the body directly to fat. That is a major difference with the calories in milk and smoothies. One of the major concerns about obesity in the USA is the universal use of high frustose corn syrup in most convenience food.