UK Soda Tax Coming April 6th 2018

[Herbie]

Any citizen who is for taxing things as a way of controlling its use is sickening.

 

[thomas00]

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 2016despite 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.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2018/02/05/the-government-is-right-sugar-tax-is-rotten-policy/


Australia is next in the firing line. The anti sugar brigade are zealots.

 

[Atman]

Evil: Sugar, saturated fat, salt, cholesterol
Good: Unsaturated fat, soy, fish oil, raw/half cooked vegetables, full grain

It is literally the exact opposite.
Has there ever been something healthy which was pushed in the mainstream media and academia in the last 20-30 years?
There can't be just immediate ,economic motives behind it. Otherwise you would expect the topics to be rather 50/50 correct/incorrect.

I can't wait for the cholesterol tax on beef and eggs.
******* clown world....

 

[Sativa]

Btw - the outcome of this British Sugar tax - fairly meek!
The irony that they tax sugar, yet pufa roams free, vegan is promoted even by mainstream news outlets!

Pure fruit juices are exempt as they do not carry added sugar, while drinks with a high milk content are also be exempt due to their calcium content.

Products such as cakes, biscuits and other foods are not covered by the tax, although a separate initiative is encouraging manufacturers to reduce the sugar content of those items voluntarily.

Originally, the Treasury forecast it would raise more than £500m a year, but that has now been reduced to £240m because some manufacturers have reduced the sugar content in their products.

Link: Sugar tax on soft drinks raises £154m