sugar-sweetened beverage tax

Another day, another study that shows soda taxes work to reduce the consumption of beverages associated with costly chronic diseases in children and adults. This time it’s a study on Mexico’s sugar-sweetened beverage tax, which went into effect at the start of 2014 and tacked on 1 peso per liter of sugary drink. Published this month in the journal Health Affairs, the study found that purchases of sugary drinks subject to the new tax went down more than 5 percent in 2014 and nearly 10 percent in 2015. At the same time, purchases of untaxed drinks went up by slightly more than 2 percent. The…

On the question of whether a soda tax can actually reduce the amount of sugary drinks people consume, a new study finds the resounding answer is “yes.” In November 2014, Berkeley, California, voters passed the nation’s first tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in an effort to reduce their impact as a major contributor to chronic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. The small tax was just a penny-per-ounce on sodas, energy and sports drinks, fruit-flavored drinks, and sweetened water, coffee and teas. But according to researchers, that small tax is already having a big impact. In a study…

Earlier this month, the DC City Council passed the Healthy Schools Act, which will raise nutritional standards for school meals, increase the amount of physical and health education students receive, create school gardens, and do all kinds of other commendable things. The difficult part is that it'll cost $6.5 million annually, and we're in the middle of a budget crunch. Councilmember Mary Cheh has proposed a funding mechanism that has the potential to not only raise money but to fight obesity at the same time: a one-cent-per-ounce excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. (The beverages are…