5 Myths We Need to Can About Soda Taxes - Why do politicians keep trying to tax your Coke?

Reason ^ | September 29, 2009 | Katherine Mangu-Ward

[neverdem]

Like bears to honey or zombies to brains, politicians find something irresistible about soda taxes. President Obama recently told Men's Health magazine that he thinks a "sin tax" on soda is "an idea that we should be exploring." San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom moved to impose a fee on stores for selling sugary drinks, only to admit that his plan was probably illegal. In December, New York Gov. David Paterson proposed a 18 percent tax on full-sugar soda to help cover a budget shortfall. After a public outcry, he claimed he was just raising awareness about childhood obesity. But he was also rehashing the same old myths about how taxing soda will save us all:

1. Sin taxes are for our own good.

The basic idea sounds reasonable enough. Why not have the government nudge citizens along the path to righteousness by making bad choices more expensive? But even the most avid proponents of sin taxes concede that none of the nickel-and-dime proposals on the table is large enough to discourage soda drinking. And they're not really intended to. Soda taxes, like most sin taxes, aren't primarily designed to reduce consumption-they're designed to raise revenue. Tap water is already virtually free. Adding a few cents in tax to a $1.29 soda bottle isn't going to send cost-conscious Coke-guzzlers swarming to the nearest water fountain. Forty states currently take a bite out of sales of soda or junk food-if anyone's addicted to soda, it's state legislatures. In the Men's Health interview, Obama focused on childhood obesity. But the Senate Finance Committee's interest in soda taxes at a hearing this spring wasn't about keeping American spawn slim; health-care reformers were salivating over the projected $24 billion in revenue that a 3-cent tax would generate over the next four years.

2. Soda is causing the obesity epidemic.

It's true that, on the whole, fat people drink more soda than skinny people. They also consume more calories overall and exercise less. So soda does help people pack on the pounds. But so does absolutely everything everyone eats. No news story about soda is complete without the scolding phrase "empty calories," yet soda consumption per capita has remained steady over the past two decades as obesity numbers have continued to rise. Weight gain is a function of calories in minus calories out. A food calorie is 4.2 kilojoules of energy, whether it comes from a bottle of orange juice, a latte or an ice-cold Coke. Cola calories are not uniquely "empty." They are not bleak, hollow shells of calories, staging tiny productions of "Waiting for Godot" in your love handles. A calorie is a calorie.

3. Soda taxes help everyone.

Even advocates of soda taxes admit that the costs will be borne disproportionately by the poor, who spend a larger percentage of their income on soda than other groups. Nonetheless, politicians continue the long tradition of taxing the wazoo out of a can of Coke while leaving upscale beverages and luxury foods sin-tax-free. Eight ounces of Naked's Mighty Mango juice ($3.79 a bottle at Whole Foods) contains slightly more sugar than the same serving of cola, while diet soft drinks have the same calorie count as water. But nationwide, fancy juices and venti mocha Frappuccinos remain almost completely untouched by sin surcharges, while a bodega bottle of Sprite brings down the wrath of the taxman. It's the silly, sugary equivalent of the distinction between the harsh sentencing guidelines for people caught with crack vs. the lenient sentencing for possessors of cocaine, its high-class cousin.

4. High-fructose corn syrup is extremely hazardous to your health.

It's the stuff that makes soda sticky sweet-and the reason many justify a soda tax. Florida state Rep. Juan Zapata called it the "crack of sweeteners" and tried to ban it in schools in 2006. At the popular blog Slashfood, it's known as "the devil's additive." High-fructose corn syrup has been treated as the fall guy for America's obesity problem. But the hazards of cheap corn sweetener are the stuff of pseudo-scientific legend. New York University nutritionist Marion Nestle, a major proponent of soda taxes, has said of corn syrup: "It's basically no different from table sugar. . . . The body can't tell them apart." Even the head of the self-proclaimed "food police" has denounced high-fructose fear-mongering. Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest tore into a 2004 scientific research report that kicked off anti-corn-syrup hysteria, saying, "The authors of this paper misunderstood chemistry, draw erroneous conclusions and have done a disservice to the public in generating this controversy."

5. Obesity is driving health-care costs up. A soda tax is just a user fee.

Should we consider soda taxes an advance payment for all those diabetes tests and emergency room visits down the road-not to mention the cost of buying the inevitably necessary super-size MRI machines? A group of academics, state health commissioners and others take exactly that line in the pages of the New England Journal of Medicine this month, writing, "Escalating health care costs and the rising burden of diseases related to poor diet create an urgent need for solutions, thus justifying government's right to recoup costs." But there is a dangerous precedent at the root of this argument: that government can and should tax any behavior that hurts the budget's bottom line. That logic sends us down a strange road. It's just a slouch, sink and a slump to taxing remote controls, thus encouraging the fat and lazy to get a little exercise by standing up to change the channel.

All kinds of private decisions-good and bad-affect government spending. That doesn't give politicians the right to use taxes to push people around.

Katherine Mangu-Ward is a senior editor at Reason magazine.

[neverdem]

Four out of five aint bad. "A calorie is a calorie." I used to think that too. I hate to be the skunk at the garden party, but that's not so. Biochemistry and physiology matter with fructose which increases the production of triglycerides.

Fructose facilitates the production of glycerol. One glycerol molecule and three fatty acid molecules will make one triglyceride molecule. It's spelled out nicely in this article:

Fructose, insulin resistance, and metabolic dyslipidemia

Figure 2
Hepatic fructose metabolism: A highly lipogenic pathway. Fructose is readily absorbed from the diet and rapidly metabolized principally in the liver. Fructose can provide carbon atoms for both the glycerol and the acyl portions of triglyceride. Fructose is thus a highly efficient inducer of de novo lipogenesis. High concentrations of fructose can serve as a relatively unregulated source of acetyl CoA. In contrast to glucose, dietary fructose does NOT stimulate insulin or leptin (which are both important regulators of energy intake and body adiposity). Stimulated triglyceride synthesis is likely to lead to hepatic accumulation of triglyceride, which has been shown to reduce hepatic insulin sensitivity, as well as increased formation of VLDL particles due to higher substrate availability, increased apoB stability, and higher MTP, the critical factor in VLDL assembly.

The high fructose corn syrup, HFCS, used in soft drinks is fifty five percent fructose and forty two percent glucose, so the liver is getting almost four parts fructose for ever three parts glucose. Besides the increasing prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes, there's a relatively new diagnosis called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease that's been associated with the introduction of HFCS in the diet. PubMed will give you 555 citations when you enter fructose and fatty liver in its query box, IIRC. When you limit to human studies, you get 128 citations including 23 free, full access articles and 32 citations of review articles.

HFCS is not limited to soft drinks. Read the labels. It's in all three salad dressings that I just checked and catsup/ketchup. Surprisingly, Hellmann's mayonaise used sugar.

There's another HFCS used in food products, HFCS-44, meaning forty four percent fructose. It's used mainly in baked/cooked/processed solid foods.

Don't tax table sugar, aka sucrose, which is made of equal parts glucose and fructose. I'm OK with taxing the HFCS-55 to fund definitive studies on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease as well as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Otherwise, just get fructose as it comes from nature, mostly fruit.

[hecht]

does Diet Coke get taxed?

[Huntress]

Two words: money grab.

[LearsFool]

Let ‘em!

Let ‘em tax the carbonation outta the stuff! Then all of America will see what life under a tyrant is like.

It took tax after oppressive tax to rile the colonists up enough to fight for freedom. Looks to me like it’ll take the same today. And the more widespread the tax, the quicker the resistance movement will reach critical mass.

The tyrants are making a colossal blunder by straying from their usual class-warfare divide-and-conquer strategy. But far be it from me to interrupt my enemy when he’s making a mistake.

[rigelkentaurus]

You know, it’s nobody’s business what I choose to eat and drink. Stay out of my life. If you want to avoid certain foods, that’s your business. If there are foods that I avoid, that’s my business. There is no role for a busy-body government or anyone else.

[Paradox]

Sillyness. HFCS is not much more F than table sugar, that is simply a fact. Its just another bogey man that (mostly lefties) latch on to, instead of blaming PEOPLE.

And yes, when it comes to getting fat, a calorie IS just a calorie. I know how Fructose works, and I've avoided it for 20 years now, since I read articles by Dan Duchaine about it. But HFCS is not THAT much worse than sucrose. Fact is, we should consume alot less of BOTH substances.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Today’s morality cops are less interested in your bedroom than your refrigerator.

[scooby321]

How do you Obama now Warren Buffett abd your 10 Billion investment in Coca Cola?

[1010RD]

Why would a free people ever want politicians, virtual strangers, to manage their lives?

Let me decide for myself and my family.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

What ?

[OpeEdMunkey]

Makes me wish I could deep-fry Coke in trans-fats.

Why doesn't O start with eliminating the ability of food stamps to pay for all of these bad foods.

[CriticalJ]

“Why do politicians keep trying to tax your Coke?”

More money to spend on entitlements?

[neverdem]

Sillyness. HFCS is not much more F than table sugar, that is simply a fact. Its just another bogey man that (mostly lefties) latch on to, instead of blaming PEOPLE.

It's 55 parts fructose to 42 parts glucose in HFCS-55. 56/42 = 4/3.(Hint: it's multiples of 14.) That's means fructose is almost one third more than glucose in HFCS-55.

But HFCS is not THAT much worse than sucrose.

What's your explanation for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease? You can't find it in medical books from over two decades ago. Now, they are predicting an epidemic of cirrhosis and a need for liver transplants.

[Tublecane]

Ah, so Science declares we should tax certain varieties of sweetener. And why stop there? Why not have federally-mandated meal plans, and just as a sop to pesky individualists, give people three options to choose from for each course. At least let’s not allow parents to dictate what their kids eat, thereby carrying bad habits into future generations. It’s For the Children!(/s)

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

That’s where they’re headed. Chips gone. Candy gone. Bacon (damn) gone. Get your soylent green here.

[neverdem]

Ah, so Science declares we should tax certain varieties of sweetener.

I'm suggesting just HFCS-55.

And why stop there?

Nothing else is as suspect for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

I’ m beginning to agree with you on the HFCS being bad but I adamantly disagree on justifying every two bit politician picking and choosing wich foods he wants to rail against to supply his addictive spending habits.

[elkfersupper]

Where were you on the smoking bans?

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"does Diet Coke get taxed?"
2 posted on Thursday, October 01, 2009 8:19:28 PM by hecht

When they figure out what Aspartame really does they will.

[neverdem]

I’ m beginning to agree with you on the HFCS being bad but I adamantly disagree on justifying every two bit politician picking and choosing wich foods he wants to rail against to supply his addictive spending habits.

A HFCS-55 tax would only be temporary to fund a study or two. The cost of human studies wouldn't be cheap. If it's no worse than table sugar, so be it. If it harms the liver, ban it.

Two soft drinks a day may lead to long term liver damage