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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

#91

Post by caskstrength »

cycomanic wrote: post #72
caskstrength wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Directly taken from the article: >But the researchers didn’t stop there. They also wanted to know if shoppers might be getting sugar from other foods instead—a possibility that soda tax opponents have argued would become commonplace. Were Seattle residents simply swapping out Mountain Dew for candy bars? To find out, the researchers also analyzed sales data for untaxed drinks like flavored milk, sweets—which the team…

Well, technically that is what OP asked and I just chimed in to defend it as a valid question. So did the community became less overweight overall? (otherwise what is the point)

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

#92

Post by seanmcdirmid »

renewiltord wrote: post #43
ArtDev wrote: post #31

Wait, people still drink soda?

No. No one drinks soda. Coca Cola Corporation’s revenue of 40 billion dollars a year is entirely fabricated. It is the next Enron. When you see a person drinking a soda, try touching them. They are a hologram, an attempt by a fading company to convince people of their relevance. Having substituted all soda with clear water, humanity has entered a new era of peace and prosperity. War is a thing of the past now that Ma…

Coke Zero is a thing, it’s what I get my kid when he wants a very occasional pop. I tried some, it mostly tastes like the coke I remember.

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

#93

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Gigachad wrote: post #84
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #9

How's coffee sales doing? With coffee you can add as much sugar as you want without increasing the price!

You wouldn’t want to put sugar in coffee.

I believe you mean "One shouldn't want" because I do want.

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

#94

Post by seanmcdirmid »

roenxi wrote: post #54
tsimionescu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with this sort of strategy is that we make laws by voting, and so it assumes that we can determine what is healthy by popular vote. This isn't true and it is very easily corrupted if the option is open. Well, we don't really know of any better option for taking collective decisions of high impact. The public and their representatives are informed of the science (and for nutrition information, it's reall…

> What alternative is there? You could let people who think soda is unhealthy avoid it, and people who don't care buy it from the soda makers. Maybe set up some official nutritional advice [0]. There doesn't have to be a centralised determination on whether soda is to be encouraged or discouraged. [0] https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/the-austral...

This is what already happens. Richer people who are more informed and mindful about their health have been decreasing sugar consumption for awhile now. However, city and state budgets are still heavily affects because the poorer people who more heavily use public services aren’t in that bucket and have much higher obesity rates as a result. They have less access to education and are more likely to ignore advice from their doctor (if they have seen one recently at all).

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

#95

Post by derbOac »

TheDong wrote: post #36
silisili wrote: post #4

I'm...skeptical. Mostly that in a city where houses stretch into the millions now, people forego a can of Coke over a 20 cent price increase. Soda consumption has been on a long decline since the late aughts. I even noticed as much anecdotally - often when dining out I would be the only one or maybe one of two to order a soda at all. I'm completely willing to be proven wrong, but the data set is much too small to con…

> Why not include the top x cities, instead of just one 200 miles away? Because it rains a lot in both? You can find the source here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100856 To quote from it: > Portland, OR, was selected as the comparison site for Seattle, WA, based on Mahalanobis distance matching to evaluate the four largest municipalities in each of Washington and Oregon as potential comparison sites [etc] They…

The comparison site seems suspicious to me. Why not use multiple comparisons? Why wasn't the study pre-registered (was it)?

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

#96

Post by derbOac »

inglor_cz wrote: post #79
Nursie wrote: post #68

> 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?

Because 55.88% of voters (1,721,487 people) voted for it. Note that the initiative banned "local government entities from imposing any new tax, fee, or other assessment on grocery items" in general, not just from sugary drinks. I guess people did not want more expensive groceries. This may in the future be compensated by more expensive healthcare, but such is the human species. Short term gain > long term loss.

Just for some perspective, in some states there is zero tax on any food because it is seen as essential.

The problem is there are a lot of assumptions being made about the choice to buy a soda in any given situation. Someone in my family, for example, has type 1 diabetes, and occasionally (not usually; they control it well) needs something sugary for weird situations to regulate their blood sugar.

On average the state might gain from some policy, but is it always in the best position to understand what is in the best interests of the individual?

I guess I've never understood the focus on sugary beverages in particular. Why not candy? Pastries? Sugary cereal? Seems arbitrary and capricious to me.

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

#97

Post by sdze »

RankingMember wrote: post #18
sdze wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard sweeteners are actively used in piglet farms as fattener.

Got any source on that? Would be curious to read about it if true.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11597823.pdf

it is a german diploma thesis.

8.2 ff.

Basically they say that piglets prefer sweet taste and regular sugar is too expensive. So they can feed bitter tasting junk sweetened artificially.

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

#98

Post by hugh-avherald »

silisili wrote: post #4

I'm...skeptical. Mostly that in a city where houses stretch into the millions now, people forego a can of Coke over a 20 cent price increase. Soda consumption has been on a long decline since the late aughts. I even noticed as much anecdotally - often when dining out I would be the only one or maybe one of two to order a soda at all. I'm completely willing to be proven wrong, but the data set is much too small to con…

> I'm...skeptical. Mostly that in a city where houses stretch into the millions now, people forego a can of Coke over a 20 cent price increase.

How can this possibly be your argument? Are you suggesting that prices have no effect on consumption when there are high prices in a completely different market? Your default hypothesis has to be that higher prices lead to lower consumption.

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

#99

Post by netizen-936824 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #61
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.

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 compl…

People get angry and down vote when they don't like what you have to say, rather than making a point why you may be wrong.
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