New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well • Hacker News Board

Re: New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well

#21

Post by misja111 » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:13 AM UTC

ellyagg wrote: post #7

Armed with three years of grocery shopping data, researchers found that total sugar sales are down by almost 20 percent, driven largely by falling soda purchases. This isn't the right definition of success. The first minimal requirement for this to be a successful initiative is that the community lost weight overall. Or even gained weight, but more slowly than other communities. If they could prove that it would be a…

>> It is exceedingly likely that people just ate more fat instead of sugar..

Why do you believe this is so likely? To be honest I don't see the connection. People notice in the supermarket that their favorite soft drink became more expensive, and decide to switch to eating an extra hamburger instead?

Re: New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well

#22

Post by matsemann » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:15 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #10

This tax does not apply to diet sodas, [1] which have been shown to prompt food cravings, especially in women and obese people. [2] So it's possible that people just substituted from regular to diet soda, and still eat just as much. 1: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/washington/articles/... 2: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/10/07/1044010...

If they still eat as much, at least they don't get the additional sugary calories from the soda. So a big win, wouldn't you say?

Re: New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well

#23

Post by causi » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:17 AM UTC

thesz wrote: post #17

gnicholas wrote: post #10

This tax does not apply to diet sodas, [1] which have been shown to prompt food cravings, especially in women and obese people. [2] So it's possible that people just substituted from regular to diet soda, and still eat just as much. 1: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/washington/articles/... 2: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/10/07/1044010...

Artificial sweeteners also prompt insulin rise and promote insulin resistance: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014832/ So, yes, if it is not water, with or without CO2, it should be ingested with caution.

Sparkling water is also a concern for dental health. Carbonation becomes carbonic acid.

Re: New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well

#24

Post by anilakar » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:18 AM UTC

Every time someone vocally claims that a well-targeted tax won't reduce the effect of something harmful, one can be pretty sure it will - those people would not be complaining unless it directly hit their wallets.

Re: New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well

#25

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:19 AM UTC

misja111 wrote: post #21

ellyagg wrote: post #7

Armed with three years of grocery shopping data, researchers found that total sugar sales are down by almost 20 percent, driven largely by falling soda purchases. This isn't the right definition of success. The first minimal requirement for this to be a successful initiative is that the community lost weight overall. Or even gained weight, but more slowly than other communities. If they could prove that it would be a…

>> It is exceedingly likely that people just ate more fat instead of sugar.. Why do you believe this is so likely? To be honest I don't see the connection. People notice in the supermarket that their favorite soft drink became more expensive, and decide to switch to eating an extra hamburger instead?

You're hungry, so you eat something. When you run low on food, you go to the supermarket. Soda has increased in price, so you spend your soda money on something else. The next time you're hungry, that's what's in your kitchen.

This is only better if the thing you replace the soda with is better for you than the soda. Without any data on what that is, you don't know if that's true.

Re: New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well

#26

Post by eagsalazar2 » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:19 AM UTC

ellyagg wrote: post #7

Armed with three years of grocery shopping data, researchers found that total sugar sales are down by almost 20 percent, driven largely by falling soda purchases. This isn't the right definition of success. The first minimal requirement for this to be a successful initiative is that the community lost weight overall. Or even gained weight, but more slowly than other communities. If they could prove that it would be a…

"exceedingly likely"? Are you taking the "right" thing from these "equivocal" studies? Sounds like you too are mainly expressing your personal and unsubstantiated beliefs. Anyway, it would be pretty weird if decreasing consumption of sugary liquids on average increased the consumption of solid fats. I could see if you were a person doing hard daily labor you'd need to get crazy amounts of calories from somewhere, but you seem to have a theory that there is a caloric balance people will naturally maintain one way or the other, even when they are obese because of excessive consumption. If you know of a study that does show that consumption of fats increases when sugary drink consumption decreases, OMG, that would be really interesting, please share a link since I've only heard of studies suggesting exactly the opposite.

Re: New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well

#27

Post by gnicholas » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:19 AM UTC

idontwantthis wrote: post #13

gnicholas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible the decrease is driven largely by spending habits of low-income families: > Last year, researchers at the University of Washington found that low-income families in particular saw a significant decrease in soda consumption following the implementation of the tax. The findings were based on a survey of residents, meaning that it relied on self-reporting, which is less accurate than sales data. This leads…

> It's possible the decrease is driven largely by spending habits of low-income families: Which I think, isn't really caused by their low-income, but by their greater preference for soda. Demand changes at the margin, so a $.20 increase is a $.20 increase to everyone. It depends how much you value the soda in the first place.

The price elasticity of demand (i.e., the amount someone changes purchasing decisions based on price changes) depend in part on how much of your budget the item takes up. For wealthy people, soda is a rounding error on a rounding error. For lower income folks, soda could be a small but noticeable percentage of their budget. So 20¢ is not 20¢ to everyone.

For my part, I know that teenager-me would have absolutely noticed this price increase, but adult me would not.

Re: New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well

#28

Post by throwawaysea » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:21 AM UTC

The causation here seems very vague and hard to establish as confidently as this article tries. But even if the causation was there, I don’t know if I would count this as “working well”. People can’t access a product they want to access because of an artificial burden imposed on them. That doesn’t feel like the system is “working well”. It feels more like the system is restricting the agency and self determination of those with less money.

Re: New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well

#29

Post by gnicholas » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:21 AM UTC

causi wrote: post #23

thesz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artificial sweeteners also prompt insulin rise and promote insulin resistance: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014832/ So, yes, if it is not water, with or without CO2, it should be ingested with caution.

Sparkling water is also a concern for dental health. Carbonation becomes carbonic acid.

I have a sodastream and use it daily, and I've read articles going both ways on this. It seems that carbonated pure water is not nearly as bad as soda for teeth, but that perhaps it's not that great (especially for kids). Have you seen definitive guidance on this? Does carbonating less make a difference? Using a straw? I've heard that drinking plain water after is a good idea, but don't know if that's grounded in science.

Re: New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well

#30

Post by chii » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 7:21 AM UTC

ellyagg wrote: post #7

Armed with three years of grocery shopping data, researchers found that total sugar sales are down by almost 20 percent, driven largely by falling soda purchases. This isn't the right definition of success. The first minimal requirement for this to be a successful initiative is that the community lost weight overall. Or even gained weight, but more slowly than other communities. If they could prove that it would be a…

so if people being fat is the problem, why not target it at the root - a fat tax?

i'm jesting of course, but the modern tax system tend to be both a revenue generator, while also being a behaviour modifier, often to the detriment of each of those objectives. I think root cause targeting, rather than try to "incentivize" at the edges, is more effective a social policy.