Sugar tax in the UK

IrRevd wrote: »

fr33sia12 wrote: »

As a child in the UK I never drank sugary drinks and still don't as an adult. I still became obese. It had nothing to do with sugary drinks.
We pay tax on cigarettes and alcohol, people still buy them.
It won't change a thing.

Actually high taxation has significantly reduced the level of smokers in the UK.

Actually an integrated set of measures, of which punitive tax is one, have contributed. I'd like to see the profiling and association with various initiatives to see which ones have affected in what ways.

Specifically the availability of vaping appears to have made a big difference, but I'm conscious that the tobacco industry is more supportive of taxation than anything else. That in itself should indicate that punitive measures may not make a big difference in isolation.

paperpudding wrote: »

This thread was about sugar tax in UK.
Also was nearly 3 years old until Gustava revived it with links to business promotions.
Have flagged same.

I am glad to have zapped it. I read almost a page before realizing it's a zombie thread, so it felt good to zap the spam that bumped it to the top.

Now I'm wondering how many more people in the UK have trimmed down due to the soda tax... hmmm.

neugebauer52 wrote: »

A brilliant way to make extra money for the coffers, but will government use it for those disadvantaged / aged / sick / education / healthcare? And if you are hooked on sugar, you will find the money for your daily dose - like any other drug or alcohol.

It doesn't matter. The tax is designed to make sugar more expensive, which will reduce sugar consumption. They could set the money on fire and it will still achieve that goal.

NorthCascades wrote: »

I don't know why it's impossible to have a level headed conversation on this topic. ☹️

I have my own pet hypothesis that it is hard to have a detachment because food is viewed as a moral issue on some level. Much of our moral disgust seems to be much the same pathways used for gustatory disgust, just rewired under evolution to handle social dilemmas. I think this makes disagreements around food, even the aesthetic parts, hard to separate from disagreements about moral issues.

For this particular issue, there's definitely a false equivalence between a food tax and a tobacco tax that raises its own moral concerns. It is easy to say taxes disincentivize something like smoking and be okay with using that tool because for health, it looks rather clear that zero smoking is ideal, so discouragement is always a good. It's a bit foggier about food - while we can agree there is such a thing as too much food, and too much sugar, we also have the area where we know too little food is even worse - starvation kills much faster than over consumption - indeed I don't think we even have a true antonym for starvation that includes the idea of it leading to death. So there's going to be more push-back on something restricting food affordability, particularly when there are still people who go malnourished from poverty.

magnusthenerd wrote: »

NorthCascades wrote: »

I don't know why it's impossible to have a level headed conversation on this topic. ☹️

I have my own pet hypothesis that it is hard to have a detachment because food is viewed as a moral issue on some level. Much of our moral disgust seems to be much the same pathways used for gustatory disgust, just rewired under evolution to handle social dilemmas. I think this makes disagreements around food, even the aesthetic parts, hard to separate from disagreements about moral issues.

I saw a TED Talk years ago about the 7 dimensions of morality. It was social science, the guy was talking about practices and feelings that are almost universal across humans.

One was a reverence for cleanliness and purity. You can see a lot of manifestations of this in the world, the guy suggested that we evolved this attitude template because there are invisibly small things in the world that can make us sick or worse, and you get a lot of them through ways that are often considered unclean.

If this is all true about humans, it doesn't seem like a stretch to go from you can see germs but they can get you, to some foods are dangerous.

How many lives have been saved by soda?

paperpudding wrote: »

I dont think the malourishment/poverty argument applies here - all foods are not going to be more expensive just high sugar foods like soft drinks

Here in Australia (apologies if I already said this 3 years ago, too lazy to scroll back)- we effectively have a high sugar foods tax - because GST (equivalent of UK VAT) does not apply to essential foods and services.

Things like soft drinks are not included in the essential foods criteria hence do have GST applied to them.

We have something similar in some places too, but it's reasonably confusing. And prices also just vary so much based on where one purchases things. I recall when we had our ill-fated experiment with a soda tax people were making a thing in the media comparing the cost of a soda to a beer at the local 7-11. Not only does beer vary a huge amount in cost, but if one buys a single soda at a 7-11, it is going to be much more expensive per oz than if one buys soda at a regular grocery store in a 6 or 12-pack, and of course there are places that are cheaper still. Not saying that does or does not support the tax (I am neutral until good studies are done), but it shows that people aren't actually buying based on a relatively small (in absolute $1, not percentage) difference in many cases.

Anyway, I would like for there to be studies, using the fact that some places have instituted taxes (or not exempted some products from tax breaks applying to other foods).

NorthCascades wrote: »

lemurcat2 wrote: »

NorthCascades wrote: »

I don't know why it's impossible to have a level headed conversation on this topic. ☹️

It's an interesting question.

I mean, a seatbelt can potentially be used as a murder weapon, to choke somebody like with piano wire. In practice, that doesn't happen enough to make seatbelts a bad idea. Things that don't happen shouldn't get equal weight to things that happen commonly.

While very true, I've seen nothing to indicate that the sugar tax made an impact on the obesity rate in the UK. I've seen claims that are supposed to be based on studies showing that calorie intake from soft drinks alone decreased by a few thousand calories on average per year. But if people get less calories from soda but still consume the calories..... what was accomplished overall?

I don't know of any lives saved by soda... or steak. But both can be consumed in moderation within a healthy diet.

NorthCascades wrote: »

Alcohol can be consumed in moderation within a healthy diet, that isn't an argument that we shouldn't tax it. I use gasoline in moderation and pay tax on that, too, which isn't a logical contradiction, or the end of the world.

But unlike alcohol, which they knew would increase tax revenue and not change drinking habits much, the sugar tax didn't even raise tax revenues much.

So what does having such a thing accomplish?

robertw486 wrote: »

NorthCascades wrote: »

lemurcat2 wrote: »

NorthCascades wrote: »

I don't know why it's impossible to have a level headed conversation on this topic. ☹️

It's an interesting question.

I mean, a seatbelt can potentially be used as a murder weapon, to choke somebody like with piano wire. In practice, that doesn't happen enough to make seatbelts a bad idea. Things that don't happen shouldn't get equal weight to things that happen commonly.

While very true, I've seen nothing to indicate that the sugar tax made an impact on the obesity rate in the UK. I've seen claims that are supposed to be based on studies showing that calorie intake from soft drinks alone decreased by a few thousand calories on average per year. But if people get less calories from soda but still consume the calories..... what was accomplished overall?

I don't know of any lives saved by soda... or steak. But both can be consumed in moderation within a healthy diet.

Have there been studies released about the effect of the tax one way or the other? That's the question, and it will be hard to analyze given confounding factors, so the fact that lots of different places try these things is useful -- more studies can be done and other places can take them into account in deciding what to try.

I am not convinced any particular sugar tax is helpful, but I am interested in what the results are, and I have not seen anything reported regarding this one.