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shiruken OP t1_j60q51m wrote

Just to provide additional context, this "sugar tax" is imposed on the manufacturers of sugar-sweetened beverages as an incentive to reduce the amount of sugar in their products.

  • Drinks with ≥8 g sugar/100 mL are taxed at £0.24/L
  • Drinks with ≥5 to <8 g sugar/100 mL are taxed at £0.18/L
  • Drinks with <5 g sugar/100 mL are not taxed

Research published in 2021 showed that the levy did not impact the volume of soft drinks purchased but the amount of sugar in those drinks was 30 g lower per household per week (a 10% reduction).

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WTFwhatthehell t1_j62w3ki wrote

As a result a lot of drinks that used to be fully sugared, the manufacturers switched to a mix of sweeteners and sugar.

A friend who gets terrible migranes from the sweetners wasn''t very impressed because suddenly drinks that were formerly safe for her to drink got loaded down with sweetners.

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MagicPeacockSpider t1_j64apea wrote

Arguably, sugar in that concentration isn't safe for her either.

Someone who lives a lifestyle where they can legitimately healthily consume that much sugar and can't consume sweeteners does exist. And you might know them. But they'll be among a small number of edge cases.

This tax benefits a lot of people.

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WTFwhatthehell t1_j64f4mr wrote

>Arguably

No, it's not arguable at all.

People don't just keel over dead from drinking an occasional glass of coke.

There's 35 grams of sugar in a 330 ml can of coke.

There's about 29 grams of sugar in 330 ml of orange juice.

Plenty of people can consume an occasional glass of either coke or orange juice without any negative impact on their health at all.

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MagicPeacockSpider t1_j64jvni wrote

Actually the numbers on rising cases of diabetes disagree with you.

Any country that provides healthcare (Even the US, they spend more on socialised medicine than most countries.) Should tax things which are unhealthy. Tobacco, alcohol, refined sugar. The tax the manufacturers pay goes part way to paying for the treatment of those who consume the product and part way to reducing consumption.

The company profits and should have to pay externalities.

People don't tend to drink large quantities of orange juice because it's sickly.

Coke, with the bitterness of caffeine and carbonated water to balance out the sugar, is designed to be drunk in larger quantities.

But by all means limit the portion size of orange juice to 200-250ml, as is the norm and so the same with that 330ml can of coke.

Neither drink is suitable for you if you're thirsty, and if you want a treat a small portion is enough for the taste.

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WTFwhatthehell t1_j64mng7 wrote

People can drink a large glass of orange juice just fine, it's quite palatable.

There's more to diabetes than people drinking the occasional coke.

"The tax the manufacturers pay"

Every penny of the cost gets passed to consumers. It's a tax the customer pays.

Also, that's massively patriarchal and a huge slippery slope. I'll believe the UK parliament actually care about health the day they stop providing taxpayer-funded booze to members of parliament. The only people ever keen on these kinds of sin-taxes are people utterly convinced that they're better/wiser than others and they make sure they don't apply to themselves.

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MagicPeacockSpider t1_j64tej1 wrote

People drinking the occasional glass won't notice the tax. It's pennies.

The tax is well calibrated in this case to affect the ones most at risk of harm.

And manufacturers now sell both drinks for the same price and make more profit off a diet drink. What effect do you think that's going to have? More healthy options, more advertising of healthy options.

The fact diet coke and sugar coke cost the same in most cases is proof not all the cost is passed onto the customer. If it were they'd be undercut by a company willing to sell their diet drinks at a lower price than their sugar ones.

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WTFwhatthehell t1_j64veny wrote

> People drinking the occasional glass won't notice the tax. It's pennies.

Which would be a great argument if a lot of them didn't change their recepies to include a fraction of sweeteners. As mentioned, it does affect some people.

>And manufacturers now sell both drinks for the same price and make more profit off a diet drink.

Neatly removing the incentive for consumers to pick the low-sugar option. Utterly defeating the claimed point of the tax.

There's already plenty of store-brand drinks that sell for a tiny fraction of the price of most softdrinks and like 3 massive conglomerates that sell most of the popular brands between them.

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MagicPeacockSpider t1_j654pq8 wrote

As I said having a reaction to sweeteners makes you an edge case and they can easily find sugary drinks without sweeteners. If they don't like a recipe they shouldn't buy it.

Perhaps they have to check the label a bit more but frankly so should we all.

You can't have it both ways. If the price is the same and the manufacturer has more incentive to sell you a healthier untaxed product, or the price is different in which case the consumer has the incentive to buy the healthier product.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/620155/share-of-diet-soft-drinks-in-the-united-kingdom/

There is a question over if this trend needed the tax in order to continue or not, but the switch to diet drinks looks likely to happen regardless.

But the fact that regardless of whether the incentive lies with the consumer or the manufacturer the trend is in the right direction.

People have generally realised they aren't healthy and just like alcohol, we're consuming less.

You're moaning about a tiny tax that benefits society as a whole, actually being largely paid by those 3 conglomerates while prices remain the same. I genuinely don't understand your problem.

Either this tax is working, which is good. Or it's not but still gaining additional tax revenue from some multinationals, which is also good.

Or we could hail corporate, more obese children I guess. All so your friend doesn't have to check a label to avoid a migraine.

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WTFwhatthehell t1_j656h5v wrote

>"You're moaning about a tiny tax that benefits society as a whole, actually being largely paid by those 3 conglomerates while prices remain the same. I genuinely don't understand your problem."

The price did not remain the same.

Prices immediately shot up right after the tax was brought in, they merely went up on both types of drinks. The cost was passed on to consumers.

This is not hard to understand but you want to not understand it.

The trend in consumption existed before the tax and continued unaffected.

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SunglassesDan t1_j6156jt wrote

Seems like other factors involved beyond just the soda calories. A household level reduction of 6240 calories per year is less than 0.5 lbs/person/year.

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shiruken OP t1_j61cta5 wrote

Looking closer at the 2021 study, it seems these results were in line with predictions:

>Assuming a mean UK household size of 2.4 people, this is equivalent to a reduction in sugar consumption from SSBs of 12.5 g per person per week... A modelling study conducted before implementation of the SDIL found that if the levy achieved reformulation it could be expected to lead to a decrease in sugar consumption from SSBs of 7-38 g per person per week and that this would be associated with a reduction in the number of obese individuals in the UK of 0.2-0.9% and a reduction in incidence cases of type 2 diabetes of 0.8-4.4 per 1000 person years. The reduction in sugar from SSBs we report one year after implementation of the SDIL is within this range.

The authors of the current study point out their results are similar to those seen in Mexico:

>Second, the magnitude and pattern of associations in our results are consistent with recent findings from Mexico that report a modest reduction in overweight or obesity prevalence in adolescent girls (aged 10 to 18) with a 1.3-PP absolute decrease 2 years after a 10% SSB price increase (compared to a 1.6-PP absolute decrease observed in this study in 10- to 11-year-old girls 19 months after the levy was introduced) [38]. Moreover, similar to the findings of this study, no significant reductions in weight-related outcomes were observed in adolescent boys in Mexico. We note, however, that the tax implemented in Mexico is not directly comparable with the UK SDIL; in Mexico; the tax had a different design aimed at increasing the price to consumers resulting in 100% of the SSB tax being passed through to consumers, equating to a 14% increase in prices [49], and, importantly, the tax was included as a wider package of anti-obesity measures, which included charging 8% on high-energy foods [23]. We note the importance of the finding that the tax in Mexico was more effective in girls who were heavier. Similar analysis was not possible here because we only had access to repeated cross-sectional data, which cannot be linked over time.

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Orinoco123 t1_j6191dj wrote

You've applied the average evenly, not necessarily the case.

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RudeHero t1_j62flam wrote

You're assuming every family drinks the exact same amount of soda

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EdanE33 t1_j64yb2o wrote

I noticed that coca cola for example changed the packaging of coke zero to look like coke original so people would buy it thinking it was the original. Now I almost never see actual coke original unless it's in a fast food restaurant.

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Beta_Ray_Bill t1_j62nrmn wrote

They tried the sugary drink tax in Illinois years ago. Iirc everyone in Chicago just went to the suburbs to buy Soda. It actually ended up costing the city and repealed it before too awful long...

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HiddenStoat t1_j62pgqq wrote

Why would people drive miles out of their way to save a few cents? Surely the cost in gas and time would make that uneconomical?

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Beta_Ray_Bill t1_j62qj6w wrote

It wasn't just Chicago. It was the whole of Cook County. (My bad forgot to mention that). Last place I lived in Chicagoland I was moved out to the northwest. Just a few miles from Lake County, and Marb Reds were 55 cents cheaper.

Now imagine if your fam drinks soda, tea, Hi-c, Hawaiian Punch, Kool Aid, or any juice not exclusively fresh squeezed... Its a tax per ounce. Even on the kool-aid powder! Dole and Ocean Spray got hit too.

So many people stocked up outside of the County they took it back. Now you tell me.

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Gremlinintheengine t1_j64ijkj wrote

Yeah I live close to the TN/ GA border. We cross the line to buy groceries because sales tax is cheaper in GA. Houses are cheaper there too, but we won't move there because GA has an income tax that would make living a mile south way more expensive.

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shiruken OP t1_j648qz4 wrote

That was a direct tax on consumption though (i.e. the consumer was taxed). The UK's is a tax on the production of sugar-sweetened beverages as an incentive for manufacturers to reduce the amount of sugar in their products.

Also, there's evidence that Chicago's sugar tax actually worked. According to a study published in Annals of Internal Medicine, purchases of the taxed beverages decreased by 21%, even after accounting for cross-border shopping.

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ubermeisters t1_j617kue wrote

That doesn't make sense to me. The volume of soft drinks didn't change, but the amount of sugar per household did? so the tax made people buy beverages with less sugar? Those would still be taxed though right? something doesn't add up here, I'm not convinced this is correlative.

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shiruken OP t1_j619d72 wrote

The amount of soft drinks sold didn't change but the soft drinks now contained less sugar, hence the reduction in total sugar consumption. Beverage companies reduced the sugar content of their products to avoid the levy.

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ubermeisters t1_j619rtc wrote

so basically this is proof that the tax has done nothing other than convince companies to reduce soda sugar I guess? these are not the most promising results I've ever seen that's for sure. This is a rounding error at best.

Narrator: He didn't know what he thought he knew, ya know?

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shiruken OP t1_j61bm8k wrote

>the tax has done nothing other than convince companies to reduce soda sugar

Well, that was the goal of the program.

>This is a rounding error at best.

An 8% reduction works out to over 5,000 prevented cases of obesity among 10-11 year girls each year. It's strong evidence for an effective, if modest, public policy intervention.

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ubermeisters t1_j61pk3i wrote

yeah I definitely was under the impression that it was supposed to be affecting people's habits, since the people are the one paying the tax... shouldn't the companies pay the tax if this is geared towards changing the way they do business? I don't understand why consumers have to foot the bill to get a company to change? What happened to this world ugh

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shiruken OP t1_j61ua3q wrote

Companies are the ones paying the tax.

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ubermeisters t1_j623w5c wrote

Ok. well I'm officially going to renounce any claim to know what I'm talking about then, and I'm going to stop talking and go freshen up on this. embarrassing to think I knew such fundamental things about this soft drink tax, just to be wrong twice in a row.

Thanks stranger.

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spazzardnope t1_j62gqsm wrote

Why is Coke dearer for full fat than Diet or Zero though? Just something I’ve noticed but seems the consumer gets stuffed too.

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AftyOfTheUK t1_j61ml02 wrote

>so basically this is proof that the tax has done nothing other than convince companies to reduce soda sugar I guess

That was the intention of the tax... to reduce sugar in soda.

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