July 23, 2011, The New York Times, Mark Bittman OPINION

WHAT will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits? The need is indisputable, since heart disease, diabetes and cancer are all in large part caused by the Standard American Diet. (Yes, it’s SAD.)

Though experts increasingly recommend a diet high in plants and low in animal products and processed foods, ours is quite the opposite, and there’s little disagreement that changing it could improve our health and save tens of millions of lives.

And — not inconsequential during the current struggle over deficits and spending — a sane diet could save tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs.

Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. And whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn’t matter, because the fixes are not really their problem. Their mission is not public health but profit, so they’ll continue to sell the health-damaging food that’s most profitable, until the market or another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good and establishing a bold national fix.

Rather than subsidizing the production of unhealthful foods, we should turn the tables and tax things like soda, French fries, doughnuts and hyperprocessed snacks. The resulting income should be earmarked for a program that encourages a sound diet for Americans by making healthy food more affordable and widely available.

The average American consumes 44.7 gallons of soft drinks annually. (Although that includes diet sodas, it does not include noncarbonated sweetened beverages, which add up to at least 17 gallons a person per year.) Sweetened drinks could be taxed at 2 cents per ounce, so a six-pack of Pepsi would cost $1.44 more than it does now. An equivalent tax on fries might be 50 cents per serving; a quarter extra for a doughnut. (We have experts who can figure out how “bad” a food should be to qualify, and what the rate should be; right now they’re busy calculating ethanol subsidies. Diet sodas would not be taxed.)

Simply put: taxes would reduce consumption of unhealthful foods and generate billions of dollars annually. That money could be used to subsidize the purchase of staple foods like seasonal greens, vegetables, whole grains, dried legumes and fruit.

We could sell those staples cheap — let’s say for 50 cents a pound — and almost everywhere: drugstores, street corners, convenience stores, bodegas, supermarkets, liquor stores, even schools, libraries and other community centers.

This program would, of course, upset the processed food industry. Oh well. It would also bug those who might resent paying more for soda and chips and argue that their right to eat whatever they wanted was being breached. But public health is the role of the government, and our diet is right up there with any other public responsibility you can name, from water treatment to mass transit.

Some advocates for the poor say taxes like these are unfair because low-income people pay a higher percentage of their income for food and would find it more difficult to buy soda or junk. But since poor people suffer disproportionately from the cost of high-quality, fresh foods, subsidizing those foods would be particularly beneficial to them.

Right now it’s harder for many people to buy fruit than Froot Loops; chips and Coke are a common breakfast. And since the rate of diabetes continues to soar — one-third of all Americans either have diabetes or are pre-diabetic, most with Type 2 diabetes, the kind associated with bad eating habits — and because our health care bills are on the verge of becoming truly insurmountable, this is urgent for economic sanity as well as national health.

Justifying a Tax

At least 30 cities and states have considered taxes on soda or all sugar-sweetened beverages, and they’re a logical target: of the 278 additional calories Americans on average consumed per day between 1977 and 2001, more than 40 percent came from soda, “fruit” drinks, mixes like Kool-Aid and Crystal Light, and beverages like Red Bull, Gatorade and dubious offerings like Vitamin Water, which contains half as much sugar as Coke.

Some states already have taxes on soda — mostly low, ineffective sales taxes paid at the register. The current talk is of excise taxes, levied before purchase…

Read more of this post at Tax Soda, Subsidize Vegetables – NYTimes.com.

CSPI, July 15, 2010

Scientists Question Whether Federal Nutrition Assistance Funds Should Be Used to Buy Obesity-Promoting Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

Should Taxpayers Subsidize Soda? ~ Newsroom ~ News from CSPI ~ Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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 months ago contains 70 recommendations for turning around the national obesity epidemic. But it looks to current regulatory authority, more federal spending and research — and public persuasion. It pushes the more politically divisive options down the road to unspecified dates.

One in five U.S. children today is obese. Experts worry that’s straining the health care system and weakening the U.S. military. The task force’s primary stated goal is to bring the child obesity rate back to 1 in 20 by 2030, as it was in 1970.

First lady Michelle Obama, the public face of the administration’s “Let’s Move” anti-obesity campaign, said at an event unveiling the report that it creates “a very solid roadmap that we need to make these goals real, to solve this problem within a generation. Now we just need to follow through with the plan. We just need everyone to do their part.”

Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said the plan embodies the idea that regulation is “the last thing you want to do,” only after other means are exhausted. “You try to start by pushing soft regulation, by using your bully pulpit . . . by commending the companies that are really stepping up to the plate and sometimes shaming companies that aren’t doing enough.”

The task force raises the concept of taxing soda or junk food to reduce consumption. Various state and local governments have passed or are considering such taxes. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took care to underscore that, while worth studying, “there is no proposal for a federal tax” at this time. She said that for now the concept “may be a strategy others want to deploy.”

The recommendations released Tuesday address a nation in which the children most at risk statistically are African-American girls, Hispanic boys, Southerners and those born to women who smoke, have diabetes or are themselves overweight.

The task force aims to bring more fruit and vegetables into children’s diets at home and school while reducing sugar and fat intake, and increasing children’s access to safe places to walk and exercise.

The report also links the problem to marketing, genetics, possible environmental and possible chemical factors, school lunch programs, food prices and urban “food deserts.”

The private sector responded favorably to the tone of the report, which included input from a dozen agencies and more than 2,500 public comments.

“We look forward to strengthening the role of self-regulation as a way to improve the balance of foods and beverages advertised to kids,” Elaine D. Kolish, director of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, said in a statement. The initiative, launched in 2006 by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, includes 16 soda, fast food, candy and packaged-food manufacturers.

Among the findings and recommendations:

Babies who are breastfed for at least nine months are significantly less likely to become obese.

The government should expand research already under way into possible links between certain plastics and other chemicals and obesity.

The effectiveness of a junk food tax could depend on its severity. Studies of current state-levied soda taxes suggest they haven’t had much impact on adolescent or adult weight, but experts studying the impact of tobacco taxes think higher junk food tax rates could reduce consumption.

Entertainment companies should voluntarily limit licensing of popular characters to nutritious food and drinks.

Health insurance plans should cover prevention, assessment and care for obese children.

The government should spend more money and take a more hands-on role in putting healthier food in schools and get more fresh vegetables and fruits into poor urban areas.

The government should consider how targeted agricultural subsidies might improve fruit and vegetable affordability or consumption.

Schools should be sensitive to stigmas on children who receive subsidized meals.

The Agriculture Department should update its Food Pyramid to better educate consumers about healthy eating.

New limits on children’s programming may be worth considering, but children also get food cues from non-children’s programming, billboards, the Internet and other sources.

via National soda tax, regulation not part of Obama obesity plan | McClatchy.

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 at the thought of such a large serving.)

The next one said, “Any Size Soda, One Dollar.” (“Who would go in and order the petite size?” he said. “It’s just a signal to consume.”)

The third billboard trumpeted Utah’s first dedicated C-section wing with a slogan that might owe an apology to Garrison Keillor: “Where No C Is Average.” (“Presumably,” Dr. Daines said, “maternal obesity and diabetes are one of the reasons women are getting C-sections.”)

The fourth billboard said, “We Suck Fat. Smart Liposuction.”

“It kind of captures the whole thing,” Dr. Daines said, getting excited as he told the story in an interview in his Manhattan office. “We underprice this commodity that we overconsume — and I mean we, we all do it — we suffer the consequences, and then we try to buy our way back out of it, liposuction or something, bariatric surgery, some kind of pill for obesity.”

Which brings him to Gov. David A. Paterson’s proposed penny-an-ounce tax on sugared sodas.

Dr. Daines fits the part of the sin-tax crusader. Standing 6-foot-1, he is as lanky and folksy-sounding as Jimmy Stewart, a Spanish-speaking former Mormon missionary in Bolivia who practiced medicine in the South Bronx for 20 years.

Over the past few weeks, he has been traveling the state lobbying anyone who would listen about the scourge of obesity and championing the proposed excise tax as a possible cure that has the added benefit of plugging a giant hole in the state budget.

The state budget office estimates such a tax would raise $1 billion a year when fully in effect, and reduce consumption by 15 percent, an estimate based, Dr. Daines says, on industry price elasticity models. Earnings would go to stave off health services cuts, so the tax is supported by the health care workers’ union — 1199 S.E.I.U. — and the Greater New York Hospital Association.

Many have written off the soda tax as a lost cause, with neither the Senate nor the Assembly supporting it. Soda bottlers and many supermarkets and bodegas have mobilized to oppose the tax, saying it would cost jobs. Dr. Daines accuses politicians of caving to the soft-drink lobby, which makes regular campaign contributions.

“It scares the politicians away,” he said.

But he is gambling that the tax proposal might be revived during 11th-hour budget negotiations, when lawmakers are desperate.

Dr. Daines, meanwhile, has gone into polemical overdrive.

He dismisses as counterintuitive arguments by the soft-drink industry that the link between soda consumption and obesity has not been proved. “It’s obviously scientifically plausible that if you reduce consumption of excess calories, you reduce obesity,” he said.

He ridiculed what he called the “personal choice” argument that government should stay out of people’s kitchens, saying it was being promulgated by “AstroTurf false-flag operations” that are really supported by the soda industry.

“We know this elaborately with tobacco,” he said.

His passionate attacks on soda-tax opponents make one almost want to pity Nelson Eusebio, a supermarket owner in Queens who is chairman of New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes, a coalition that is fighting the tax. Mr. Eusebio called Dr. Daines “out of touch with reality.”

“When it comes to obesity, to attack a single industry as wholeheartedly as he has is creating a lot of confusion for the public,” Mr. Eusebio said. “It’s leading the public to think that if they stop drinking soda, they won’t be obese anymore. Soda may be a contributor to obesity, but it’s not the sole contributor.”

Dr. Daines hates the term “fat tax,” often used by supporters and opponents alike, because it sounds accusatory. He prefers the more anodyne “beverage tax.”

But diplomacy has not necessarily been his strong suit. After Staten Island lawmakers supported an antitax rally at the Coca-Cola sales and distribution center near the Goethals Bridge, Dr. Daines fired off a scolding press release that said, “Staten Island has the state’s second-highest obesity rate, as well as the second-highest consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.”

“I am concerned for the health of Staten Islanders,” he added. “Sixty-five percent of Staten Island residents are overweight or obese, and 35 percent of them drink one or more cans of sugar-sweetened beverages like soda every day.”

Dr. Daines urged Staten Islanders to support their local soft-drink workers by drinking Diet Coke (which would not be taxed), adding, “I hope they also drink nutritious low-fat milk.”

Waxing passionate the other day, he managed to make soda purveyors sound almost like drug dealers.

“I raised my kids on Park Avenue,” he said. “You can walk at least from 60th Street to 96th Street on Park Avenue. You won’t see a single soda billboard, you won’t see a single fast-food outlet, and I don’t think you could buy a soda. Basically, a child raised in that corridor has a soda-free day after school.”

But walk 30 blocks north to Harlem, he said, and the picture is different. “This is cheap, it’s heavily advertised, it tastes really good,” he said. “And then we plunge kids into that environment, and we say, if you have a problem, you lack self-control.”

Mr. Eusebio, the tax opponent, recommended that Dr. Daines devote his time to promoting a “holistic diet” and educating young people about the benefits of exercise.

“Educating people helps them more than taxing them,” Mr. Eusebio said. “If taxation was a form of diet, New Yorkers would be the healthiest people on the planet because we are the most overtaxed people on the planet.”

New York Health Official Champions the Soda Tax – NYTimes.com.

Los Angeles Times,

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 staff reviewing funding options never embraced the idea even after President Obama expressed interest last summer. A key congressional committee, after initially seeming receptive, ended up refusing to consider it. Several minority advocacy groups, including some committed to fighting obesity, lined up against the tax after years of receiving financial support from the industry.

There is no sign that First Lady Michelle Obama will mention taxes Tuesday when she unveils her new healthy-eating initiative, which had input from fast food and soft drink representatives.

Meanwhile, beverage lobbyists attacked some of the country’s most distinguished nutrition scientists, accusing them of bias and distorting available evidence. The beverage industry also financed research that reached conclusions favorable to its position.

No one underestimated the difficulty of getting new taxes approved, but Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Lakewood), a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said, “We thought we had a chance to punch through.”

That was before the industry unlimbered its guns.

Target lawmakers

From the beginning, fast food and beverage company executives were uneasy about President Obama. He and his wife were known advocates of healthy eating. The executives were also concerned that the promised Obama healthcare initiative might include taxes or other incentives to reduce consumption of fast food and high-calorie beverages.

Coupled with similar initiatives in such states as California, the industry faced the possibility of a full-scale national debate on sweetened soft drinks and their effect on health — and the nation’s ever-higher medical bill.

Another alarm sounded last May, when the Senate Finance Committee heard testimony from public health advocates who proposed using a soda tax to help finance healthcare legislation.

Analysts at Yale University have calculated that a penny-an-ounce tax would induce a 23% drop in consumption, and the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a smaller tax could raise $50 billion over 10 years. Although the extent to which such a tax might drive down obesity rates is scientifically unclear, nutrition experts argue that it would, at the least, improve health by discouraging consumption of sodas, which have no nutritional value but are packed with calories.

A few weeks later, soda tax advocates in the House Ways and Means Committee reported initially favorable responses from colleagues during closed-door meetings. And in July, President Obama told a Men’s Health magazine reporter that such a tax was an “idea that we should be exploring.”

Sanchez, who was recently diagnosed with gestational diabetes, was one of the committee members who pushed for consideration of the idea. She told a closed-door meeting of committee Democrats that it would be a political winner: “We are on the moral high ground here,” she said. “We can improve health outcomes and get more revenue.”

At the beginning, several other Democrats expressed support, including six-term Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey and freshman Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz of Pennsylvania, the daughter of a dentist.

Beverage lobbyists immediately went to work, enlisting other industries to help pressure members of Ways and Means.

“The industries in our coalition realized that this is a slippery slope, that once government reaches into the grocery cart, your business could be next,” said Kevin Keane, senior vice president, public affairs, for the American Beverage Assn.

The coalition, operating under the name Americans Against Food Taxes, included the soft drink makers, their suppliers, and such mass-marketers as McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza.

Using the argument that higher food and drink taxes would unfairly burden the poor, the coalition recruited a bevy of Latino groups, among them the Hispanic Alliance for Prosperity Institute, the National Hispana Leadership Institute and the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Public health analysts were surprised to find that the list included the National Hispanic Medical Assn., which represents 36,000 Latino doctors and focuses on health issues, such as obesity-related diabetes, that hit Latino youth especially hard.

via Beverage industry douses tax on soft drinks – latimes.com.

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 300 and 600 calories a day from the diet of an average American or Mexican and almost as much from the intake of many Europeans, he says.

“Depending on the country you live in, we now have between 10 and 25 percent of all calories consumed in sugary or caloric beverages,” Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, told Reuters during a visit to Europe.

“This change has been phenomenal, particularly in the past 25 years. Its not the sole cause of the global obesity problem, but its the thing we can change with the least affect on peoples food intake.”

Data on weight gain and rising obesity levels leave little room for doubt that fat is threatening to overwhelm health care systems and government health budgets around the world.

A report released on Wednesday said one in three American adults is obese, while a 2008 study by Popkin on China suggested obesity levels there are also rising rapidly, with more than a quarter of the population overweight or obese.

The number of people with diabetes – one of the major chronic diseases caused by excess weight – is already reaching epidemic levels, with an estimated 180 million people suffering from it around the world.

Diabetes cases are forecast to triple in the United States in the next 25 years to 44 million with the costs of caring for them rising to $336 billion a year.

Popkin reckons there are now around 25 countries where more than half of adults are overweight or obese and in many rich countries as well as some middle-income nations like South Africa, Mexico and Egypt, the rate is between 60 and 70 percent.

The World Health Organization said in October that being overweight has now overtaken being underweight among the worlds leading causes of death.

Popkin, who has studied diet in many countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the United States say the shift away from water to sugary drinks could be responsible for between a third and two thirds of the weight gain in the past 30 years.

“The obesity and weight issue is now bearing heavily on us and our health care costs,” he said. “And its getting worse.”

But Popkin says efforts to tackle rising weight levels are focused too much on promoting exercise and healthier eating, and ignore the huge impact of calorie-laden drinks like juices, alcohol, fizzy soda and high fat, sugary milkshakes.

“Activity is not the solution – you cant run off a Coke or an ice-cream cone or candy bar very easily – it takes a lot of exercise to offset an extra hundred calories,” he said.

The nutrition expert says the basic problem is that when people shift from drinking water or unsweetened tea and coffee to sugary drinks and juices, they dont cut their food intake.

But since the biological mechanisms controlling thirst and hunger are separate, he says reducing calories by changing peoples drinking tastes – rather than chasing elusive ways to cut their eating – is a viable way of fighting fat.

Popkin acknowledges it would take time – probably a decade – to change the worlds tastes away from sugary drinks, but he said policy makers should look at tobacco as an example and use taxes as their weapon.

Ever higher taxes on smoking and policies to ban smoking in public paces are helping cut tobacco use in Europe – and studies show a positive effect on cancer rates.

“Id like a system where sugary drinks were taxed the most, diet drinks less and water not at all,” Popkin said. “If that tax added even 15 or 20 percent to the cost, it would have a significant effect on weaning society off sugary drinks.”

via Tax sugary drinks to fight the flab, says expert | 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 proposal, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Much as taxes on tobacco products are routine at both state and federal levels because they generate revenue and they confer a public health benefit with respect to smoking rates, we believe that taxes on beverages that help drive the obesity epidemic should and will become routine.”

They said studies have shown taxes could cut consumption just enough — by about 1 gram of sugar per ounce.

“A tax of one cent per ounce of beverage would increase the cost of a 20-ounce soft drink by 15 to 20 percent.” They estimate that would lead to a 10 percent drop in consumption, or enough to affect weight.

* Cent tax per ounce could cut consumption by 10 percent

* Cutting caloric intake could lower obesity levels

* Industry groups say soda taxes don’t work

“A consumer who drinks a conventional soft drink (20 ounces or 591 millilitres) every day and switches to a beverage below this threshold would consume approximately 174 fewer calories each day,” they wrote.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in December that a tax of three cents on every 12-ounce (355-millilitre) can of soda could raise $50 billion over 10 years.

Brownell called for such a tax in April along with Farley’s predecessor, Dr. Thomas Frieden, who became director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in June.

“Currently, 33 states have sales taxes on soft drinks (mean tax rate 5.2 percent), but the taxes are too small to affect consumption and the revenues are not earmarked for programs related to health,” Brownell, Farley and the others wrote.

OBESITY SURGING

They noted that people are drinking more sweet drinks and the obesity rate is surging. “In Mexico, intake of sugar-sweetened drinks doubled between 1999 and 2006 in all age groups,” they wrote.

“Reducing caloric intake by 1 percent to 2 percent per year would have a marked impact on health in all age groups.”

via Tax soft drinks to fight obesity, U.S. experts say | Deals | Regulatory News | Reuters .

Discussion in The Washington Post on whether soda tax is fair.

As I reported in April, Yale professor Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, and Thomas Frieden, health commissioner for the city of New York, have renewed their push for a soda tax as a means of curbing obesity.

In this week’s “Eat, Drink and Be Healthy” column, Brownell reiterates his belief that a soda tax would dramatically reduce soda consumption. He’s among the many experts who are convinced that over-consumption of sugared beverages, including sodas, sports drinks and fruit juices containing sugar or high fructose corn syrup, is one of the leading causes of overweight and obesity in America. Brownell suggests that revenue generated by the tax be used to support subsidies for farmers growing healthful foods, making good-for-you meals more accessible.

If that sounds reasonable to you, take a moment to hear what Adam Drewnowski has to say. Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington, believes taxing soda fails to target obesity’s true causes — and is unfair to boot.

Drewnowski notes that soda consumption patterns in the general population correlate not just with obesity but with poverty, and that in focusing on the soda-obesity connection we fail to address other conditions associated with poverty, from sedentary lifestyles and television viewing to unemployment and “general hopelessness,” that contribute to weight gain.

“We should be looking at those things,” Drewnowski says. “That’s my complaint — why aren’t we?” Addressing these issues would attack obesity at its core, he believes.

Drewnowski calls “callous” the contention by soda-tax proponents that soda consumption is “not necessary for life.”

“Neither is a Park Avenue apartment,” he scoffs.

A soda tax would disproportionately affect those who can least afford it, Drewnowski says. It’s also punitive and threatens to make less accessible one of the few small pleasures many poor people can enjoy.

Drewnowski fears that current public-health messages about healthful foods promote expensive foods that seem out of reach to people with little money. “In reality, many people’s food choices are extremely limited,” Drewnowski says. “To a large extent, they eat what they can afford…The less money you have, the less inclined you are to want to spend it on wholesome food,” says Drewnowski, who’s been working to raise awareness of foods that are at once nutrient-rich and inexpensive. He favors helping people understand that humble, and relatively inexpensive, foods such as potatoes, beans, eggs and milk can form the basis of a satisfying and nutritious diet.

But in the end, Drewnowski suggests, we shouldn’t be dictating what low-income people eat or don’t eat. “There’s an overt classism,” he says, in regarding the “undeserving poor. They shouldn’t have so much fun. They’re lazy. They should eat lentils instead of French fries.”

via Is a Soda Tax Fair? – The Checkup – .