CSPI, July 15, 2010
Scientists Question Whether Federal Nutrition Assistance Funds Should Be Used to Buy Obesity-Promoting Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

WASHINGTON—The soft drink industry receives a $4 billion subsidy from taxpayers each year, according to aneditorial published today in the American Journal of Public Health.
According to the paper, that’s about how much carbonated soda is purchased with money from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), the program formerly known as Food Stamps. And that total doesn’t include non-carbonated soft drinks. Considering that the overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is helping fuel an epidemic of obesity that …

McClatchy Newspapers, May 11, 2010
The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity issued a blueprint Tuesday that’s thick with ideas but doesn’t put the hammer down yet on taxpayers or private industry.
A national soda tax? Worth further study, but not this year. New regulatory authority over food marketing to children, or changes to agricultural subsidies to make fresh fruit and vegetables cheaper? Possibilities down the road, but why not first encourage more voluntary steps by the private sector?
The 124-page report from the task force that President Barack Obama created three …

The New York Times, ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS, April 4, 2010
New York State’s health commissioner would be the first to admit he has soft drinks on the brain.
The commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, was recently driving down Interstate 15 in Utah, his home state, when he came across four billboards in a row that beamed a subliminal message at him, and not the one the advertisers intended.
The first billboard said, “44 Ounce Soda, 99 Cents.” (“This is a carbonated beverage, meant to be consumed in your car,” he said, marveling …

The New York Times,  March 15, Roni Caryn Rabin
New research provides evidence that proposed taxes on soft drinks may make young people healthier.

The study, which collected food intake data from 12,123 young adults for 20 years, found that with every 10 percent increase in the price of a two-liter bottle, people consumed 7 percent fewer calories from soda. They also took in fewer calories over all.

When people faced an even larger increase — $1 for a two-liter bottle of soda, comparable to a proposed tax in Philadelphia — they consumed …

Los Angeles Times, Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger, February 7, 2010
Employing a broad-based lobbying effort, the soft drink industry has smothered a plan to tax sugared beverages — a plan advocates said would have reduced obesity and helped finance healthcare reform.
Only months ago, public health advocates thought the tax would be a natural for congressional Democrats looking for revenue to fund expanded health insurance coverage. The soaring costs of treating ailments related to excess weight — including diabetes and heart disease — added urgency to the issue.
But the White House …

LONDON Reuters – If Barry Popkin had his way, sugary drinks would be taxed like cigarettes, and the levy would go up and up until societies were weaned off them and stopped piling on weight.
HEALTH
A nutrition expert who has advised the U.S. government and health policy makers around the world, Popkin says the epidemic of obesity and weight gain sweeping the globe could be slowed dramatically if people revised the mantra “you are what you eat” to include “you are what you drink.”
Reviving a taste for water could cut between …

September 16, 2009. Reuters.
More U.S. health experts called for taxing sweetened soft drinks on Wednesday, saying such taxes could fight obesity and be used to fund public health efforts.
New York City health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley, nutritionist Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, Kelly Brownell, an obesity expert at Yale University in Connecticut and others said the current taxes do not go far enough.
“We propose an excise tax of one percent per ounce for any beverages that have any added caloric sweetener,” they wrote in their …

AFP September 8, 2009
President Barack Obama hinted he could support a “sin tax” on fizzy drinks to help lower high rates of US obesity, but admitted it would be an uphill battle against corporate and economic interests.
“I actually think it’s an idea that we should be exploring,” Obama said in the forthcoming issue of Men’s Health, regarding potential taxes levied on soft drinks such as colas and other sugar-filled products.
“There’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that’s been done about obesity shows that …