What started as a “penny-per-ounce tax on soda” to delay major service cuts to education and health care has positive implications for our fight against obesity, as Bloomberg and subsequent research has suggested.
A NYTimes.com Health Research article has some evidence in favor of these assumptions. According to a recent study of over 20 years of food intake data taken from 12,123 young adults, “with every 10 percent increase in the price of a two-liter bottle, people consumed seven percent fewer calories from soda.” With an even larger increase of $1 for a two-liter bottle of soda, subjects consumed 124 fewer calories a day. A drop in weight of more than two pounds and a lowered risk for pre-diabetes is associated with this decreased soda intake.
The economic principle behind this makes sense – “You always know that if you reduce the cost or increase the cost of something, consumption of that item will change,” says Dr. Barry M. Popkin, an obesity specialist at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina. “What we don’t know is whether you will buy something equally bad or worse. In this case, we found that people would get healthier.”
I am still concerned that this tax will just lead people to purchase the next cheapest sugary drink and not necessarily something healthiest. From an economic standpoint, this seems to be a great plan to get money to where it needs to be without compromising the most important things in our society. Soda is absolutely something we can all live without and if this tax at least makes people purchase less of it turning them in favor of low-fat milk, orange juice or unsweetened teas, this could be a great thing.
Read some articles on the soda tax here and here.
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