Two more articles about a sugar tax

New York’s health commissioner gets it. – From the New York Times, a profile of the New York health commissioner’s battle for sugar taxes.  Governor Paterson has proposed a tax of a cent per ounce, which “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.”  He gets that the neoliberal paean to individualism is a canard: “‘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.’”

Overconsumption as the metanarrative of America – Or, why we need a sugar tax and not a soda tax.  All sugar is empty calories, even something as innocuous as honey: “Study after study has shown that like experimental animals, people do not compensate for extra liquid calories by eating less food. Sugary drinks do little to curb the appetite, perhaps because they are metabolized so quickly.”  The article also points out that soda companies are really beverage conglomerates, e.g. Pepsi owns Sobe and Aquafina, Coke Odwalla and Dasani, so they won’t be too hurt by a tax on sugar.  Consumers will just buy their other beverages.  To recap: big business sees little change, the government gains revenue, and Americans become healthier.

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