Why Tax Just Soda? Why Not Tax Sugar?
11/05/2014
By Tyler Durden
University of California
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
A recent revenue-enhancement fad in local government is to levy a tax on soft drinks. The tax is marketed to voters as a means of reducing soda consumption, which is presumed to be a contributor to the explosive rise in Type II diabetes, and more broadly, metabolic syndrome or diabesity.
While the intake of sugar/high fructose and sweetened beverages is certainly detrimental to health (see links below), it seems taxing sodas is more a topical excuse for skimming a new revenue stream than a meaningful way to reduce obesity/diabesity.
I have covered America’s declining health and fitness and the dramatic impact of high-sugar diets for many years:
This Nation’s Devolution from Quality to Convenience (January 4, 2010)
The American Diet: Self-Destruction Never Tasted So Good (November 21, 2012)
The Obesity Puzzle (December 5, 2012)
Please view this documentary on the science of sugar consumption:
Sugar: the Bitter Truth (1 hr 29 minutes; University of California TV)
So here’s the obvious question for proponents of sugary sodas: why tax only sodas? If sugar is the addictive culprit, then why not tax everything that has sugar as an ingredient?
That list would include most of what many Americans consume on a daily basis:
— sweetened coffee drinks
— sweetened ice teas
— sweetened “sports drinks”
— doughnuts, pastries, cakes, pies, etc.
— milk shakes
— sweetened salad dressings
— ice cream, frozen yogurt, whipped cream, etc.
— sweetened cold cereals
— sweetened yogurts
— sweetened fruit cups, canned fruits, etc.
— sweetened breads, rolls, rice puddings, etc.
This is just a partial listing; the full list of foods containing sugar or equivalents includes a vast array of packaged and fast foods–the mainstays of the typical convenience-basedderealized American diet.
Here is an advert for a typical sugar-bomb “fake-food” in the American diet which I have “re-realized”: (for more on derealization, see I Dig Dirt: The Remedy for Derealization July 23, 2011)
Here is a chart showing the extraordinary rise in consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in the U.S.:
The impact of empty sugar calories and the addictive qualities of sugar can be seen in these maps of obesity prevalence by state, from 1985 to 2008. Note how the maps track the rise in HFCS:
Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Obesity Trends 1985-2013 (map shown is from 2008)
Clearly, obesity has exploded into a pandemic in just a single generation, and the correlation to the astounding increase in sugar consumption is self-evident.
But hey, local governments: why stop at sugar? How about taxing red meat, refined carbohydrates and all the other bad things we consume? The negative impact of a diet heavy with factory-raised red meat and heavily refined carbohydrates is well-documented; why pick on soda, when virtually everything in the packaged-food/fast-food diet is also detrimental to health?
And why stop at taxing unhealthy food? Why not tax unhealthy lifestyles? Those who don’t eat their broccoli and aren’t fit should be taxed; after all, it isn’t just eating too much sugar that’s the problem; it’s lack of exercise that burns off those empty calories.
The absurdity of taxing us to health is obvious – as is the unlimited greed and avarice of local government for more tax revenues, by any means available. Eat sugar, go to jail. The local Gulag would love it.
26 June 2014
By James Gallagher
Health editor, BBC News website
People need to more than halve their intake of added sugar to tackle the obesity crisis, according to scientific advice for the government in England.
A draft report by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) says sugar added to food or naturally present in fruit juice and honey should account for 5% of energy intake.
Many fail to meet the old 10% target.
The sugar industry said “demonising one ingredient” would not “solve the obesity epidemic”.
The body reviewed 600 scientific studies on the evidence of carbohydrates – including sugar – on health to develop the new recommendations.
One 330ml can of fizzy pop would take a typical adult up to the proposed 5% daily allowance, without factoring in sugar from any other source.
Prof Ian MacDonald, chairman of the SACN working group on carbohydrates, said: “The evidence that we have analysed shows quite clearly that high free sugars intake in adults is associated with increased energy intake and obesity.
“There is also an association between sugar-sweetened beverages and type-2 diabetes.
“In children there is clear demonstration that sugar-sweetened beverages are associated with obesity.
“By reducing it to 5% you would reduce the risk of all of those things, the challenge will be to get there.”
The target of 5% of energy intake from free sugars amounts to 25g for women (five to six teaspoons) and 35g (seven to eight teaspoons) for men, based on the average diet.
Read More
By Helen BriggsBBC News
5 March 2014
People will be advised to halve the amount of sugar in their diet, under new World Health Organization guidance.
The recommended sugar intake will stay at below 10% of total calorie intake a day, with 5% the target, says the WHO.
The suggested limits apply to all sugars added to food, as well as sugar naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit concentrates.
UK campaigners say it is a “tragedy” that the WHO has taken 10 years to think about changing its advice.
The recommendation that sugar should account for no more than 10% of the calories in the diet, was passed in 2002.
It works out at about 50g a day for an adult of normal weight, said the WHO.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
It is a tragedy that it has taken 10 years for the WHO to think about changing their recommendation on sugar”
Katharine JennerAction for Sugar
However, a number of experts now think 10% is too high, amid rising obesity levels around the world.
Announcing the new draft measures, the WHO said in a statement: “WHO’s current recommendation, from 2002, is that sugars should make up less than 10% of total energy intake per day.
“The new draft guideline also proposes that sugars should be less than 10% of total energy intake per day.
“It further suggests that a reduction to below 5% of total energy intake per day would have additional benefits.”
Dr Francesco Branca, WHO’s nutrition director, told a news conference that the 10% target was a “strong recommendation” while the 5% target was “conditional”, based on current evidence.
“We should aim for 5% if we can,” he added.
The plans will now go for public consultation, with firm recommendations expected this summer.
Public Health England said its scientific advisory committee on nutrition was reviewing evidence on sugar in the UK diet.
Director of Nutrition and Diet, Alison Tedstone, said: “Our surveys show that the UK population should reduce their sugar intake as average intake for adults is 11.6% and for children is 15.2%, which is above the current UK recommendation of 10%. “
Campaign group, Action for Sugar, said it was pressing for 5% to become the firm recommendation.
Nutritionist, Katharine Jenner, said: “It is a tragedy that it has taken 10 years for the WHO to think about changing their recommendation on sugar, which will have had
The WHO guidelines are based on a review of scientific evidence on the health impact of sugar, including damage to teeth and the effect on obesity.
The obesity study, published last year in the BMJ, found while sugar did not directly cause obesity, those who consumed a lot of it, particularly in sweetened drinks, tended to put on weight as sugary food did not make them feel full.
A review of the link between sugar intake and tooth decay, carried out by UK researchers, found cases of tooth decay were lower when sugar made up less than 10% of daily calories.
Paula Moynihan, Professor of Nutrition and Oral Health at Newcastle University, said: “The less sugar you eat, the lower your risk of dental decay.”
Prof Tom Sanders of the School of Medicine, King’s College London, said a limit of 5% added sugar “would be very tough to meet”.
He added: “5% is untried and untested; 10% we can live with.”
Dr Nita Forouhi, of the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, said the 5% target was “ambitious, and challenging”.
On Tuesday a leading doctor called for a tax on sugar to help combat growing levels of obesity.
Dame Sally Davies, England’s Chief Medical Officer, told MPs: “We may need to move toward some kind of sugar tax, but I hope we don’t have to. “
Mar. 08 2014
ELIZABETH RENZETT, The Globe and Mail
How did everyone cope with the great sugar panic of ’14? Did you hurl your chocolate bars overboard, hoping to borrow a few more years from the Grim Reaper? Or did you reach for a May West or a Twinkie, thinking, “In for a penny, in for a pound cake”?
I responded to the new World Health Organization guidelines on sugar intake (optimally, only 5 per cent of your daily calories) by pointing a finger at my vanilla latte and whispering “J’accuse.” Breakfast, it turns out, is one of the more lethal times of day, which is not something they teach you in university. When I think about the risks I’ve taken in life (and there have been a few), I never expected to find “blueberry muffin” at the top of the list.
Sugar is the new Public Enemy No. 1, Al Capone in a porcelain bowl. The WHO’s draft guidelines note, quite reasonably, that excess sugar consumption can mean “an unhealthy diet, weight gain and increased risk of noncommunicable diseases.” But how little per day? Less than is contained in a can of pop. Never mind all the other sugar you consume in ready meals, condiments and cookies.
Last month, a U.S. study found that those who took a quarter or more of their daily calories in sugar tripled their risk of heart disease. An advocacy group called Action on Sugar has declared that “sugar is the new tobacco.”
I like to think of this particular argument as reductio ad tobaccum, considering how many foodstuffs have recently been declared as dangerous as a pack of Player’s. A couple of years ago, a Canadian study claimed that consuming egg yolks was as lethal as smoking, and then their natural platemate, bacon, got the same designation. Now, it’s protein. A new, widely circulated study from the journal Cell Metabolism claims that middle-aged people who ate a diet high in meat and dairy substantially increased their risk of developing cancer. “We provide convincing evidence that a high-protein diet – particularly if the proteins are derived from animals – is nearly as bad as smoking for your health,” one of the researchers, biologist Valter Longo, was quoted as saying.
You may wonder, as you scrape the cream cheese from your plate and replace it with a nice mound of parsley, if everything is as dangerous as smoking, why not just give in? What on earth are you supposed to put in your body? The information is deafening, a cacophony, and often contradictory. The best advice probably comes from Michael Pollan, author of many useful books on the politics of grub, who wrote: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
But that bit of quiet, sage wisdom doesn’t really stand a chance when pitted against headlines like Could Your Sausage Kill You?! (Yes, Daily Mail, it could, if it were made out of steel, sharpened, and stuck in your eye.) If people are confused about nutrition, it’s no wonder, considering that every few years a new lethal, payload comes barrelling down the highway: Cholesterol, trans fats, acrylamides. Is salt still bad for you? (Apparently not, according to a recent article in The Globe by Dr. John Sloan.) How about saturated fats? (Rehabilitated, I think.) In the great margarine-butter cage match, butter has wrestled its oily opponent to the ground and stands triumphant. That could all be flipped over tomorrow.
The danger is that the average person throws up her hands in despair. Let’s assume we’re all generally rational guardians of our families’ health: Our kids are vaccinated, we get the flu shot every year and only occasionally do we succumb to the siren song of the cigarette or the Hickory Stick. We drink in moderation (for Torontonians, a useful benchmark is “less than the mayor”). So how do we assess the various risks to our individual health when we’re looking at a menu and trying to remember which will kill us sooner, the feta or the onion rings?
Here, it’s useful to turn to David Spiegelhalter, the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, at Cambridge University, who not only has the best job title in the world but also some excellent insights into this kind of decision-making. First, you divide your risk potential into acute (rock falling toward your head) and chronic (repeated abuse of BLT). As Prof. Spiegelhalter said in a TEDx lecture, “A Spam fritter, unless you choke on it, is not going to kill you on the spot, but if you keep on stuffing them down your gob year after year, it’s not going to do you any good at all.”
Similarly, public-health warnings carrying dire advice about shortened lifespans often fall on shuttered ears because people think they’d rather have pleasure now than an extra year at the end when they’re “old and dribbly.” A better way to think of health risks, he says, is to imagine your life sped up, or consumed, by poor choices – to consider that a hamburger or two cigarettes can eat a half-hour of your life. (Although, Prof. Spiegelhalter points out, so does an episode of Friends. Pick your poison.)
Would I trade a half-hour for a May West? Probably not, but I would for a steak. Or are steaks good for us again? Somebody let me know when the jury’s in.
Jan. 29 2014
THERESA ALBERT
There is a new global campaign called Action on Sugar to reduce “hidden sugars” in food by pulling together international experts in obesity and labelling sugar as “the new tobacco.” This voluntary group of scientific, academic and medical obesity experts believe that reducing the sneaky sugar hidden within foods can help battle lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
Knowing that there are now more obese people in the world than there are starving must motivate some change. The apple cart is well and truly upset: A predictive study published in 2008 by Harvard and MIT researchers suggests that, if we continue the current numbers trend in North America, it is believed that 100 per cent of the population will be overweight or obese by 2050.
Action on Sugar is the same group that has effectively taken action on sodium (under the name Consensus Action on Salt and Health, or CASH). By keeping the topic in the media, lobbying governments and educating the public as well as working with food producers they have turned the tide on salt. You would be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t aware of the impact of sodium on their health.
This group’s goal is a 30-per-cent reduction in added sugars in packaged foods, which they believe will reduce calorie consumption by 70 to 100 calories per day. In theory, accomplishing this would create a calorie deficit sufficient for weight loss just by improving junk foods alone.
Will this solve the problem?
There is no doubt that we need everyone at the table. Manufacturers need to do their part and media need to continue to share truthful messages, but consumers must also take on a role. What we need to watch out for is how manufacturers spin this new initiative. “Reduced sugar” could provide the same debacle as the low-fat trend that made us collectively fatter. Foods sold as “low fat” often actually contain more calories overall, since the fat was replaced with other ingredients, including – you guessed it – sugar.
Some manufacturers would have you believe that a calorie is just a calorie no matter where it came from. However, there is evidence to the contrary in that how the body processes sugar calories is much more damaging than, say, a protein calorie. The sugar contained in fruit, with its vitamins, minerals, fibre and micronutrients intact, is broken down more slowly and causes much less impact on blood sugar, as well as liver processes. Dr. Robert Lustig, an obesity expert and neuroendocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, is doing some remarkable work around this topic. His work shows that a can of soda has the same impact on the liver as a shot of alcohol. Action on Sugar is looking at all manufactured foods and not just the traditional sugar-laden cookies and cakes. This is not the panacea by any stretch, but it is a remarkable start in the march toward health.
What you can do
It is simple for an individual to reduce their own calorie intake by 70 to 100 calories per day, as this action group is suggesting. That’s merely one cookie, one double-double, one glass of wine and perhaps choosing foods that are sugar-laden less frequently. Doing so prevents you from becoming the statistic affected by what excess sugar consumption leads to: liver disease, heart disease, obesity, inflammation and diabetes.
I’m all for pulling together to solve the problem. But expecting one group to do all the heavy lifting that needs to be done won’t work. The power, as always, is in your hands.
10 January 2014
Mark Wallace
Do you know that fizzy drinks and chocolate are bad for you? For that matter, do you know they are bad for you because they have lots of sugar in them? Of course you do – not least because both facts are blindingly obvious to all but the smallest child. And yet the latest batch of public health busybodies, Action on Sugar, think differently.
Launched on Thursday, the pressure group helpfully explained to the nation that sugar consumption is “linked to obesity”. Like all those with a need to nanny other adults, it intends to save us from the threat, whether we like it or not.
As the latest in a series of “action on” organisations, its formula is drearily predictable: regulation and taxes ought to be brought in – for our own good, of course. Never mind that the vast majority of packaged food is already labelled with nutritional information. Never mind that restaurant chains routinely publish the same information for their meals. No, if informed adults with the right to choose won’t do as the nannies want, they should have that choice removed.
The problems with this principle ought to be clear. If the issue is people failing to act responsibly, then it won’t be rectified by treating them like children. Add to that the unpleasant sight of privileged elites, trying to restrict the little luxuries people enjoy, and you have a policy which is both incoherent and vicious.
The idea is little better in practice. Denmark recently introduced a fat tax– and dropped it 15 months later following job losses, a rise in the cost of living and almost no impact on calorie consumption. As with so many moral crusades, the taxman was the only winner, raising more than expected. With the poor spending a higher proportion of their income on food than the rich, it would likely have hit those on low incomes hardest of all, thin or fat. In short, the meddlers had simply delivered another stealth tax.
There is one way in which Action on Sugar are correct. “Sugar is the new tobacco”, declared spokesman Simon Capewell. He may not have realised the truth in that statement. Sugar is indeed the new tobacco – in that it is simply the latest focus for those who refuse to let others live as they choose.
A few years ago, libertarians who warned that the advocates of punitive taxes and restrictions on smokers would only move on to bully others were dismissed as alarmists. And yet here we are, with another campaign aiming to extend taxation and regulation into another part of our lives – this time explicitly opposing free choice, rather than making a case about reducing passive harm.
It seems no aspect of our lives is off-limits. Ten years ago the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) found that more than 9,000 people a year were being injured in “trouser-related mishaps”. Should we now have Action on Trousers, to end this scourge? In fact, isn’t it deeply suspicious that RoSPA stopped releasing this data in 2004? Presumably the Big Trouser industry has them in its pocket. A trouser tax, would be self-evidently absurd and yet advocates of the very same principle are taken seriously because they tap into media themes of an obesity epidemic.
If you want to be thin, the key is rather obvious: eat less and move more. I, and many others, choose not to do so – or not as much as we ought. That may be frustrating for those who want to see everyone living a nutritionally optimal lifestyle, but our lives belong to us, not them. So why not leave us alone?
What the fructose?
October 23, 2013
The EU has approved a health claim for fructose, but with a health warning attached. Even Monty Python would struggle to make a believable sketch out of that.
The claim is that eating fructose leads to far less blood glucose than eating glucose or sucrose.
They did tests. They really did.
Sucrose is made up of half fructose and half glucose. Glucose is… well… glucose. Fructose doesn’t have any glucose in it.
If you swallow 50g of glucose, your blood glucose level will rise. Not only is there no need to test that, it has been demonstrated over and over again anyway. Usually in connection with sensible questions such as how much, how fast and for how long.
If you swallow 50g of sucrose, your blood glucose level will rise by roughly half as much as it did with the glucose. Again, sensible scientists of the past have already tested this for sensible reasons.
If you swallow 50g of fructose, the rise in blood glucose will not be zero because a bit of the fructose will get converted into glucose by various chemical and enzymatic means on the way down. The gut is a rough place for a small molecule. So it won’t be zero but it’ll be very small. Because it doesn’t have any damn glucose in it.
The alleged health benefits centre on not having increased blood sugar after eating. Is that a good thing? Most of your cells need glucose for energy. When you eat, your body rips the food apart and sends it around to all your cells so that bits of you don’t spontaneously die. Blood sugars are supposed to increase after eating. That’s how food gets from your gut to your fingers.
This reminds me of the ‘no safe level of salt’ shite that is convincing drones to die.
So the health benefit is dodgy to say the least,. What about the health warning?
Bear in mind that the reason the drones are scared of sugar is that they are told it will make them fat and give them diabetes. High levels of fructose can cause… insulin resistance. Diabetes. And a load of other things too.
Well, it’ll make a lot of money for insulin producers.
The EU think this fructose nonsense is not applicable to the general population, but specifically targets ‘sugar users’. Anyone out there live a completely sugar-free life?
No salt or sugar in your diet, people. You’ll be helping reduce the population.
– underdogsbiteupwards.wordpress.com/
Regulating Our Sugar Habit
February 26, 2012
By MARK BITTMAN, NY Times Online
When Ronda Storms, a Republican state senator in Florida, is accused of nanny-state-ism for her efforts on behalf of a sane diet, it’s worth noting. When she introduced a bill to prevent people in Florida from spending food stamps on unhealthy items like candy, chips and soda, she broke ranks: few of her party have taken on Big Food. And as someone who has called for the defunding of an educational Planned Parenthood program and banning library book displays supporting Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, she is hardly in her party’s left wing. Not surprisingly, she’s faced criticism from every corner: Democrats think she’s attacking poor people, and Republicans see Michelle Obama. Soon after Storms proposed the bill, she told me, “Coca-Cola and Kraft were in my office” hating it.
Yet she makes sense. “It’s just bad public policy to allow unfettered access to all kinds of food,” she told me over the phone. “Why should we cut all of these programs and continue to pay for people to use food stamps to buy potato chips, Oreos and Mountain Dew? The goal is to feed good food to hungry people.”
To some, dictating what recipients of benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program can eat seems unfair. But when the program began in 1939 it aimed both to feed the unemployed and to aid farm recovery. Participants received $1.50 in stamps for every cash dollar spent, 50 cents of which was designated for purchase of agricultural surplus. That’s already a directive on spending, but perhaps more important is that nearly three-quarters of a century ago almost the only thing you could buy — with or without regulation — was real food. Since then Big Food has moved our diet in the wrong direction, and now we have a surplus of empty calories.
The argument for limiting the use of food stamps to actual food is consistent with established policy. They’re already disallowed for tobacco, alcohol,vitamins, pet foods, household supplies and (with some exceptions) food meant to be eaten on premises. Payments have been based on the cost of a “nutritionally adequate diet.”
Let me state the obvious: there is no nutritional need for foods with added sugar.
All of this is part of the bigger question: How do we regulate the consumption of dangerous foods? As a nation, we’ve accepted the need to limit the marketing and availability of tobacco and alcohol. The first is dangerous in any quantity, and the second becomes dangerous when overconsumed.
And added sweeteners, experts increasingly argue, have more in common with these substances than with fruit. In a recent paper in Nature, Robert H. Lustig, Laura A. Schmidt and Claire D. Brindis remind us that for the first time, chronic diseases pose a greater health threat than infectious ones, and of the three main risk factors for chronic diseases — alcohol, tobacco and diet — two are regulated and one is not.
The authors specifically target “any sweetener containing the molecule fructose (which makes sugar sweet) that is added to food in processing” as the key problem in our current diet, and correlate the rise in consumption of sugar with a rise in disease, listing the many ways in which sugar’s effects on the body are similar to those of alcohol. Their contention is that sugar is hardly “an empty calorie,” but rather an actively harmful one: “Fructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic metabolic diseases.”
Added sugar is not the only dangerous food. But unlike animal products, for example, which we also overconsume, it has no benefits. Yet we down it at the rate of 150 pounds per person per year, and while scientists argue whether it is addictive in humans (it meets the criteria for addiction in animals), it is most certainly habit-forming. Lustig and his co-authors suggest that actions like imposing taxes on added sugar or establishing a minimum age for purchase of sodas (they mention 17 in their paper) would reduce consumption.
The question “Is this necessary?” is unavoidable. But as obesity and its consequences ravage our health care system, we struggle not only with our own diets but also with preventing our children from falling into the same traps. Last year a brigade of parents stood watch outside a corner store in North Philadelphia in an attempt to prevent their kids from buying junk food.
They’ve been called foot soldiers, but you might call them vigilantes. Vigilantism occurs when people believe the government isn’t doing its job. We need the government on our side. It must acknowledge the dangers caused by the most unhealthy aspects of our diet and figure out how to help us cope with them, because this is the biggest public health challenge facing the developed world.
Thirty-one refereed papers.
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Fifteen book chapters, technical notes and popular articles.
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Fears of the Old and the New, by H. K. Hillman – Acollection of previously published short stories.
Dark Thoughts and Demons, by H. K. Hillman – Acollection of short stories
Ghosthunting for the Sensible Investigator, by RomulusCrowe (two editions)
Nineteen short stories published since July 2003. (17 are in Fears of the Old and the New)
Forty-six articles on horror-writing between November 2003 and July 2010.
No link between sugar and obesity -sugar group
?
“Every major, comprehensive review of the total body of scientific literature continues to exonerate sugars intake as the causative factor in any lifestyle disease, including obesity,” Andrew Briscoe, president and chief executive of the Sugar Association, said at the annual meeting of the main U.S. industry group American Sugar Alliance.
