City-based soda pop taxes don’t effectively reduce sugar consumption

Drinks like iced teas or watered down fruit drink or 'vitamin water' around that level were common in australia, but one by one are going from being the less cloyingly sweet options to being the most via other sweeteners. Usually one ariund the 5% sugar range will get extremely popular because it is actually slightly different, then get bought out or price dumped out of existence by coca cola followed by being focuse grouped into being exactly the same as all the others and falling into obscurity.

There's usually one or two items on the muesli/nut/cake bar shelf, but you have to read the nutrition info for half of them every time to find it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame: “Aspartame is an artificial non-saccharide sweetener 200 times sweeter than sucrose”

⇒ I expect they would like to see something like “39 REAL”, respectively “40 ARTIFICIAL” on the label.

Of course there’s a can of worms in that there are multiple ‘real’ sugars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar) and producers will try to talk down that 200, but I think that’s solvable.

What’s less solvable is that producers will talk down the unit size used to compute the amount of sugar, just as they do with the unit size used to compute the number of calories.

Alternatively, this could be shown as a sweetness rating with “x% artificial” added, or just as a sweetness rating alongside the existing ‘calories’ rating.

Put a 11g/100g or whatever it works out to on both of them (or some closeish but standardized ratio for the asparteme if it doesn't work out exact).

It's also about competition. Global business operates isn a highly competitive market where capital gains tax rates will be closely compared. But taxing soda when it's between ten brands by Coke/Pepsi vs Water. People aren't going to water for just 10c more (or w/e the tax is).

I'd imagine with illegal addictive drugs when prices increase 10-20% it won't stop buyers since they are already making a guilty-pleasure/poor choice so a slightly worse one isn't much of a bigger deal.

Some product and service categories operate under different dynamics than most things.

Imagine trying to get people to give up Cream and sugary syrups with a dash of espresso -- Wait they aren't taxing THAT drink.

Sure, but having to travel has a cost in both time and money, which is equivalent to a tax, even if it raises no additional direct income for that city.

> The article talks about why: it does reduce the consumption of soda pop, but people substitute the sugar intake by consuming other sugary foods. They also travel to neighboring towns without the tax.

It's also entirely inconsistent; in Boulder they tax the normal stuff like coke and sprite but will exempt for San Peligrino but then also tax Oceanspray juice. Personally, I've always thought it was a lot like the pervasive green-washing that takes place there as an additional stream of revenue in already bloated bureaucratic system.

I only ever drank kombucha or Water from the SafewayKingsoopers/WF etc... in town anyhow so it never really affected me; but when I think of just how obtuse it is I start to realize how it's a targeted tax on those with poor diets with no real discernible metric for success, it's merely there to self-perpetuate a bad system as poorer people will continue to eat poorly with less expendable income to buy better products as a result of the tax.

The US is obese, and despite Boulder being the time the most healthiest city in the US most of when I lived there it was still clear to see how the economic divide play out where it's most clearest: grocery stores. And it was clear that it was heavily biased to those with larger wages who could fit in 4-5 day workouts per week and the occasional hike and eating from organic sourced restaurants.

If we had a universal healthcare system I would totally be in favour of this, despite being in the lower income level most of time there (boot-strapping founder) I was still on the 'healthiest' demographic but without a clear actionable plan to a desirable end this is one of those 'road to hell are paved with good intention' scenarios.

This study is flawed in that it didn’t account for purchase increases outside the survey area.

In Chicago the tax was ineffective as there were many close municipalities without the tax - in addition to grey market stores that didn’t charge the tax - allowing buyers to easily avoid paying it.

Correct.

Further, while I support a sugar tax, on public health grounds, I'd much rather we stop subsidizing sugar production (esp HFCS).

But ending subsidies for corn, sugar beets, etc. is still a non-starter. Because Electoral College and US Senate.

So we're stuck with virtual signaling our displeasure towards harmful agricultural policies with impotent measures like soda taxes.

Meanwhile, like this OC suggests, we absolutely should be investing and subsidizing in healthy drinking water. It's CRAZY that people in places like Flint MI and Jackson MS cannot safely consume their own tap water.

Production is usually not within the jurisdiction of cities (as they are produced elsewhere and shipped there usually), so cities are limited in what they can do. As to busybody, excess sugar consumption is a public health problems that governments should intervene on, as I believe it is right for them to do in areas like tobacco.

> (Or let people eat whatever they want and stop being a busybody.)

These are massive corporations targeting individuals. If you look at obesity rates people are clearly on the losing side here.

In the case of the US you cant easily tax sugar production.

The bulk of US sugar comes from "HFCS" (high fructose corn syrup) which is HEAVILY subsidized in the first place.

So taxing something you are subsidizing makes zero sense.

Remove the subsidy and the price of corn will go up, and with it the price of HFCS.

> Another possible albeit silly argument is why not tax sugars in fruit?

Because total sugars and added sugars are not the same thing. It makes more sense to tax added sugars because they are clearly worse, and it strains Medicare/Medicaid budgets.

> If the tax is associated directly with sugar in some manner than diet sodas won't be taxed.

Running with this idea, there'll eventually be a federal conversion table where any given chemical would be translated to their mass in sugar. From there, tax calculation's simply:

sum((sugar_conversion_lookup[ingredient] * mass) for ingredient in product) * tax_per_gram_of_sugar

If these results are correct, I expect it's from terrible lobbyist-butchered implementations like that, where a good substitute product (e.g. sugar free soda) is taxed equally much, or a worse substitute product (e.g milkshakes) avoids the tax.

"Fat Shaming" is being mean to someone and humiliating them with the intention of harming them or for entertainment.

Raising their insurance rates to correlate with their free-will choices is another matter.

Am I being "speeder shamed" if my insurance company raises my rates for getting speeding tickets?