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Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

You're hungry, so you eat something. When you run low on food, you go to the supermarket. Soda has increased in price, so you spend your soda money on something else. The next time you're hungry, that's what's in your kitchen.

This is only better if the thing you replace the soda with is better for you than the soda. Without any data on what that is, you don't know if that's true.

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Eating sugar makes your body/mind crave more sugar though… regardless of consumed calories.

You don't even know that the replacement thing isn't still sugar. People can't spend their soda money on candy?

What if they spend it on cigarettes?

Quote from start if thread said "total sugar sales are down by almost 20 percent, driven largely by falling soda purchases", so at least we know they didn't buy candy with the money.

We know they didn't buy only candy with the money.

Maybe they bought candy and cigarettes.

That's a cool theory, do you have any data to back it up or is this just an unfounded assertion?

This is literally the thing the person who started this thread is asking for:

> This isn't the right definition of success. The first minimal requirement for this to be a successful initiative is that the community lost weight overall. Or even gained weight, but more slowly than other communities.

not for the price of even large amounts of soda for the same consumed time period

You can't have it both ways, if stopping candy leads to cigarette money then cigarettes are healthy because anyone who smokes has less money for heroin.

That's not having it both ways. It's the problem with having incomplete data.

But if cigarettes are the thing preventing people from buying heroin with the money you deterred them from using to buy soda, that doesn't mean that the soda money is going someplace better than it was before your law, it only implies that "well then we just need a higher tax on cigarettes" wouldn't be a beneficial solution.

Evidence? I use sugar as an energy source. The more energy I use (or plan to use) the more sugar I need. That's a biological necessity, not a craving.

They're talking about refined sugar, which your body does not "need", other carbohydrates can be turned into sugar by your body just fine.

That argument relies on the assumption that we only eat/consume if we need energy. Thank you you have just solved obesity, because nobody eats more than the energy they need!

It's not that simple, sadly, if it was my job would be way easier. Yes, your cells (usually) run on glucose but that glucose can be produced from a variety of dietary sources including sugar (sucrose, fructose, etc), other carbohydrates, and fats.

Reduced dietary sugar (particularly the added sugars) is an amazing public health outcome.

I wouldn't be surprised if the alternatives that the citizens of Seattle are choosing are juices, fruit punches, iced teas, and other non-water beverages that are hardly better for you than soda.

I had to look this up and you're right: the "sugary drink tax" excludes fruit juice.

Also, Starbucks is exempt.

Drinking soda doesn't make you full, though. If you are hungry and drink soda, you will eat something anyway. Probably the same amount, if not more (soda may actually provoke feelings of hunger).

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