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

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

#61

Post by inglor_cz »

cycomanic wrote: post #48
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…

To be honest your post sounds like it's coming straight out of the sugar industry PR book. 1. Increase burden of scientific evidence/cast scientific evidence in doubt by saying it's not conclusive enough 2. Assert that reducing sugar is not working because people will just get their calorie input otherwise. 3. Blame fat/daemonize fat, that's what the sugar industry has done very successfully over the last decades.

Neither OP nor a sugar industry shill, but it may well be possible that we need to cut down on zero calorie soda as well.

Even though zero calorie soda does not directly contain any energy, it may mess up our feelings of hunger and make us more hungry. [0] So far, scientific studies indicate that people who switch from sugary soda to zero calorie drinks do not lose weight [1].

Feelings of hunger and satiety are complicated, driven by hormones and only somewhat correlated with total energy intake.

[0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/medical-myths-all-...

[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/zero-weight-loss-from-ze...

Edit: downvoted for what? Linking to Harvard health blog? If zero calorie soda had a slimming effect, we would have seen it a long ago, it is not exactly a new invention.

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

#63

Post by renw0rp »

caskstrength wrote: post #59
cycomanic wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest your post sounds like it's coming straight out of the sugar industry PR book. 1. Increase burden of scientific evidence/cast scientific evidence in doubt by saying it's not conclusive enough 2. Assert that reducing sugar is not working because people will just get their calorie input otherwise. 3. Blame fat/daemonize fat, that's what the sugar industry has done very successfully over the last decades.

I don't drink sugary "soda" drinks at all, so I don't have a horse in the race, but I think it is a valid question to ask whether the tax really decreased sugar consumption or people just bought bunch of cookies instead.

Or what are the effects of artificial sweeteners...

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

#64

Post by harles »

I can’t help but find this situation incredibly ironic. How much tax money do we spend propping up corn and the corn syrup used to make these sodas only to tax and try to discourage their sale? I wholeheartedly support this tax, but it’s an incredibly bizarre contradiction.

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

#65

Post by NumberCruncher »

> The data set itself—gathered by marketing insight firm Nielsen—was huge, representing 45 percent of all food store sales in the city

This means that in the 5 households Nielsen used as a "representative sample of Seattle's population" one person got so overweight that he can't leave his flat any more and therefore he started buying his daily dose of soda online instead of buying it in his favourite store. Soda consumption drops by 20%. At least this is what Nielsen says. But hey, who am I to judge decades of financially successful quackery...

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

#66

Post by SilasX »

cycomanic wrote: post #48
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…

To be honest your post sounds like it's coming straight out of the sugar industry PR book. 1. Increase burden of scientific evidence/cast scientific evidence in doubt by saying it's not conclusive enough 2. Assert that reducing sugar is not working because people will just get their calorie input otherwise. 3. Blame fat/daemonize fat, that's what the sugar industry has done very successfully over the last decades.

Yes, and sometimes fools say the sky is blue. That doesn’t make it red.

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

#67

Post by t-writescode »

dlp211 wrote: post #35
gyc wrote: post #14

Did they also study whether total sugar sales rose in the cities next to Seattle? I can imagine that some price sensitive soda drinkers just drove to the nearest store outside of Seattle to buy their sodas.

This makes zero sense. A gallon of gas is about $4.00, the idea that someone would spend all that gas money to avoid a tax of 1.75 cents/oz just doesn't pass the sniff test.

You know people go to Oregon to avoid sales takes on various purchases, right? That’s 2-4 hours from Seattle depending on traffic.

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

#68

Post by Nursie »

> And that’s exactly what happened in Washington shortly after Seattle passed its soda tax: In November of that same year, soda companies campaigned successfully for the passage of a ballot initiative banning all future fees on sugary drinks across the state.

Wow, this is nakedly self interested and a law purely for the industry at the expense of democracy, how on earth can that be allowed to happen?

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

#69

Post by zaji »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #25
misja111 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

I wouldn't be surprised if the alternatives that the citizens of Seattle are choosing are juices, fruit punches, iced teas, and other non-water beverages that are hardly better for you than soda.

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

#70

Post by inglor_cz »

bertjk wrote: post #40
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…

> One way around this knotty issue is to take the money from this tax and use it for public services that disproportionally benefit the populations from whom it is generated. (I have no idea what the tax revenues in Seattle are used for.) And now you've created a bureaucracy that can only maintain its existence if sugary drinks continue to sell well.

Or if the sin tax is gradually expanded to cover almost everything in the grocery store.
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