Ezra Klein is one of my favorite bloggers, but when it comes to fat politics, he’s a reactionary. So it’s no surprise that Ezra favors Governor Patterson’s tax on non-diet soda (often referred to as an “obesity tax,” although Ezra didn’t use that term).
Quoting Nick Kristof, Ezra suggests that we’ll see a public health benefit from the tax on non-diet soda, similar to the benefits of taxing cigarettes. “If we can save lives while we raise revenue, why not give that a try?”
I’d suggest three reasons: First, snack taxes don’t work. Second, this particular tax will discourage thin people and people who drink diet soda from considering the health implications of their own diets. And finally, far from saving lives, fat-obsessed public health measures may actually make fat people’s health worse.
Reason why not #1: Snack taxes don’t work.
Meowser quotes from the book Fat Politics:
The reason why snack taxes don’t work is that the demand for food is relatively insensitive to price; economists generally predict that a 10 percent increase in food prices would only reduce food consumption by less than 1 percent. That means that if you want to reduce soda consumption by just 10 percent, you would have to impose a 100 percent tax; if you wanted to reduce soda consumption by half, you would have to make a can of coke cost about four dollars. Not only do such taxes do little to deter demand, but they would take more money out of the pockets of the poor.
According to Meowser, cigarette prices are now 10 times as high as they were three decades ago. Does anyone believe that we’re going to raise soda prices that high?
Reason why not #2: The Obesity Tax implicitly suggests that diet soda is healthy, which will discourage healthy diets.
There’s no strong empirical case for soda being worse for health than diet soda. Even if you accept the “fat is always bad! Thin is always good!” mentality, there is no evidence that switching from regular to diet soda will cause any fat people to experience significant long-term weight loss.
But by exempting diet soda from the tax, the obesity tax will encourage people to think of diet soda as healthy, and discourage critical thinking about the health effects of drinking (other than obesity). As Liss writes, “thin-but-unhealthy people are discouraged from thinking about whether regular soda is something they should cut out of their diets for any reason other than it now costs too much thanks to those damn fatties, and the simplistic associations between fat/unhealthy and thin/healthy are reinforced yet again.”
In Ezra’s comments, North writes:
I’m all for taxing soda, but I just want to remind you/everyone that diet soda is linked to ‘metabolic syndrome’ – which doesn’t necessarily include obesity, but does include major risk factors for heart disease and diabetes. So we really ought to tax diet soda, and the reason that’s not on the table has more to do with the stupidity of obesity politics than anything.
In the rush to be mean to fat people, we’ve forgotten that for most people, weight is genetic; ((North’s use of the word “genetic” was the subject of some discussion. I agreed with Jasper that while genetics isn’t the only cause of fatness or thinness, “an individual’s propensity to get fat (or remain thin) given the nutritional and exercise environment of modern society is mostly genetic.”)) that there’s no reliable way to make a skinny person fat or a fat person skinny; and that eating quality food and getting healthy exercise are what’s actually linked to good health outcomes. (Being overweight actually exercises a protective effect against a large variety of illnesses.) Instead, we have a national moralistic crusade against obesity which leads us to an obsession with reducing the number of calories people take in. Which in turn leads policy-makers to the mistaken conclusion that sugar sodas, but not diet sodas, ought to be taxed.
The choice to tax regular soda but exempt diet soda — as well as the choice to refer to this as an “obesity tax” — is a choice to focus, not on improving health, but on fighting fat (and soda’s alleged connections to fat). This law doesn’t address making people live longer, or feel better; it addresses an aesthetic preference for thin bodies over fat bodies.
(By the way, North — who blogs at To The Lighthouse — did a great job arguing in Ezra’s comments. As did Jasper. Yay North and Jasper!)
Reason why not #3: Public health measures which focus on fat may make fat people less healthy.
Kate writes: ((Kate also wrote “Being fat is not behavioral; it’s existential.” Someone in her comments suggested making that a t-shirt, an idea I really like.))
….Calling this an “obesity” tax, as opposed to yet another “vice” tax, makes it quite literally about the punishment of fat bodies, rather than of “bad” habits that could be held by anyone. Not only are they once again conflating “fat” with “unhealthy,” they’re conflating “fat” with “vice” — reinforcing the message that fatness automatically equals a conscious decision to engage in (arguably) self-destructive behavior.
That the obesity tax will encourage prejudice against fat people is, in and of itself, reason enough to oppose the tax. But a recent study ((Muennig, Peter et al, “I Think Therefore I Am: Perceived Ideal Weight as a Determinant of Health,” in American Journal of Public Health; March 2008, Volume 98 Issue 3, pages 501-506. PDF file (3MB).)) suggests that worrying about being fat is actually more damaging to good health than fat itself is. (Curtsy to The Fatfacts Wiki.)
Researchers who looked at a nationally representative group of more than 170,000 US adults found the difference actual weight and perceived ideal weight was a better indicator of mental and physical health than body mass index (BMI).
“The obesity ‘epidemic’ might have a lot more to do with our collective preoccupation with obesity than obesity itself,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Peter Muennig of Columbia University in New York City, told Reuters Health. “We still need to focus on healthy diet and exercise as public health officials, but we need to take fatness out of the equation. Were we to stop looking at body fat as a problem, the problem may well disappear.”
Some researchers have suggested that stress due to stigmatization could be a factor in the health problems obese people have, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, he and his colleagues note in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health. […]
“There needs to be a realization among public health officials and medical professionals that the messages we are giving the public could be doing more harm than good,” Muennig said.
There are all sorts of public health measures that Ezra and I can agree on: measures to make vegetables more affordable and measures to make cities more walkable, for instance. But laws like this one, which add to the stigmatization of fat people, are harmful and shouldn’t be supported.
Er, WTF? Regressive taxes are bad for shit like gas, and necessities. People HAVE to buy gas. But they don’t have to buy Coke. They are not ‘Taking money from the poor” any more than anything else.
HFCS is pretty nasty stuff and it’s in most nondiet soda. Though artificial sweeteners are not so great either. Still, what does this sentence have to do with your next sentence?
Since I have heard you say a gazillion times that weight is a horrible proxy for health, it seems odd to see you essentially claiming that “it won’t make you lose weight” = “it won’t have health benefits.”
[shrug] people should drink less soda. Soda is just generally bad for you; I don’t drink it much myself, other than a root beer every few weeks. Diet soda (which I never drink) is probably bad for you insofar as it has artificial stuff in it. Nondiet soda is bad for you insofar as it has HFCS in it, along with the artificial stuff.
I’m all for a tax on soda, and while I think it would be better if they also taxed diet soda, you don’t seem to be arguing for that as much as you are arguing against any soda tax at all. You’re not arguing to rename the tax, you’re arguing to eliminate it. Sorta reminiscent of Mr. Sacks, in a way.
similar to the benefits of taxing cigarettes.
Hm. Other than raising a whole bunch of money, what are the benefits of taxing cigarettes? Has someone proven a causal relationship between raising tobacco taxes and, say, a decrease in cigarette smoking?
The reason why snack taxes don’t work is that the demand for food is relatively insensitive to price;
Well, Hell; how sensitive is a drug addict’s demand for their drug as a function of price?
economists generally predict that a 10 percent increase in food prices would only reduce food consumption by less than 1 percent. That means that if you want to reduce soda consumption by just 10 percent, you would have to impose a 100 percent tax; if you wanted to reduce soda consumption by half, you would have to make a can of coke cost about four dollars.
Look at the percentage of the price of tobacco products that taxes comprise before you discount this happening. Which you cover:
According to Meowser, cigarette prices are now 10 times as high as they were three decades ago. Does anyone believe that we’re going to raise soda prices that high?
This week? No. Over the next decade on the premise that “It’s good for you”? Sure. That’s what these kinds of folks do. They know what’s good for you better than you do, don’t you know. Do you think anyone would have believed 30 years ago that cigarette prices would have been raised 10-fold by now?
I wish we could stop subsidizing the production of corn syrup in this country. (Or get rid of some of the restrictions on importing sugar from Brazil.)
Once in a while, the free-market libertarians actually end up on the right side of an argument.
(Incidentally, high cigarette prices probably don’t do much to deter current smokers, but they probably keep people from lighting up in the first place.)
Sailorman, you quoted the bit where I said “Even if you accept the “fat is always bad! Thin is always good!” mentality…” Do I really have to painstakingly explain to you this incredibly common form of argumentation, in which a person briefly argues as if a false premise is true, in order to show that even if we accept the false premise, the conclusions are still unwarranted?
You’re putting words into my mouth. I didn’t say anything at all like that.
I’m lukewarm on sales taxes, because they’re regressive. But I don’t have any objection to soda taxes in particular (as opposed to sales taxes in general). The only reason I blogged about this is because of the anti-fat politics implicit in how the tax is being argued for, and in making an exemption for diet sodas.
Finally, the comparison to Glenn Sack’s actions against The Family Place seems over-the-top. I’m not sure if you’re deliberately trying to be offensive, or if you’re just grossly insensitive to the implications of your own words; but in either case, I wish you’d stop.
Um, what? Where’s the evidence that the relationship is linear? One data point does not make a line.
The question is not whether we WILL, it’s whether we SHOULD.
Okay, true, but why do you set up this false dichotomy between soda and diet soda? There are plenty of other beverage choices available that actually ARE better for health than these two.
I’m fine with this, except for the exemption for diet soda; all soda should be subject to the same tax, because diet soda are probably just as unhealthy, but in a different way (chemical additives, rather than sheer caloric content). Disincentivizing nutritionless “foods” is perfectly fine with me.
(edited out some stuff that Amp addressed in comment #4, while I was composing my reply.)
I didn’t set up the false dichotomy; Governor Patterson did, by proposing a law which taxes non-diet sodas but exempts diet sodas.
If sodas are to be taxed at all, I think diet and non-diet sodas should be taxed equally. (I don’t know why you think I said otherwise.)
Fair enough!
I got it from this line:
Where it sounds like you’re assuming that people who stop drinking sugar soda (because of the increased expense) will switch to diet soda, rather than give up soda altogether.
Regressive taxes are bad for shit like gas, and necessities. People HAVE to buy gas.
BS. I haven’t bought gas in the last 10 years. Just move out of the exurbs into a place with mass transit and recycle your car. Plus using public transit results in increased caloric use and exercise, which is probalby good with or without weight loss. (End digression of no more than moderate correctness.)
Does anyone know what the story is with high fructose corn syrup and why it is bad? Fructose is sweeter than glucose or sucrose so in principle HFCS should make food lower calorie and carbohydrate content. Apparently, it doesn’t. Why not? Also, I seem to remember hearing a claim that aspertame may block the receptors in the brain that lead to a feeling of satiety or feeling of having taken in enough sweet tasting food. So it may, in principle, lead to people eating more high calorie foods. Anyone heard any data supporting/refuting the claim?
I don’t think I’m assuming that. I think the people who wrote the law assumed that. If you believe in changing behavior via taxation, then the reason to tax soda but not diet soda is the belief that at least some people will respond by switching to diet soda, and this is a good thing.
If their intention was just to make people give up soda altogether, they wouldn’t have included an exemption for diet soda.
Edited to add: To be clear, I think they’re right to assume that if regular soda costs more, some consumers will respond by switching to diet soda. I just don’t agree with them that encouraging this switch is a good use of tax policy.
It’s a bit disappointing that reason #3 — which I think is the most interesting part of my post — hasn’t gotten any response in comments. (Yet.)
(Hint, hint. :-P )
Reason #1 seems like a poor use of economic modeling. *Food* prices overall are insensitive because people need to eat. However, look at the prices of specific foods. Lobster, for example, is a price-sensitive food item; in the current recession, people are eating less of it. (Because this is a market rather than tax driven shift, the decreased demand in turn has decreased prices, which may bring demand back up somewhat.)
The excerpt from Fat Politics does nothing to suggest that soda is a price-insensitive item. I don’t think there’s anything specifically in soda to which people get chemically addicted (there still will be plenty of non-taxed sources of fructose and caffeine). Soda is not an input or close accessory (there’s a more precise economic term than “close accessory” but I can’t remember it) to any price-insensitive goods.
Certainly in practice, many people treat diet soda as a reasonably substitutable good for regular soda. I think that is the real point on which to criticize: this will cause people to substitute toward diet soda. Is that a good thing? We also will see a host of soda manufacturers trying to get their drinks redefined as “juice” or something else non-taxed, without making the beverage any healthier.
Out of curiosity, do the folks who object to taxing regular soda also object to banning soda and candy machines from schools? And can the folks who believe that taxing soda will lead directly to “fat” kids getting beat up who otherwise wouldn’t have been because they will be scapegoated for the higher cost of soda, also document any increase in beating or bullying of fat kids in the school districts that have banned those candy and soda machines?
According to Meowser, cigarette prices are now 10 times as high as they were three decades ago. Does anyone believe that we’re going to raise soda prices that high?
1) I’m betting that’s based on the 2008, non-inflation-adjusted price of cigarettes in the highest-taxing states and localities (New Jersey and NYC), not on a dollars-constant nationwide average. Again, we should be careful with the use of economics. Easy to spout, hard to do accurately — which is why I prefer anecdotes ;-)
2) In the course of three decades, and if soda becomes as socially disapproved and (not wholly accurately) assumed to impose costs on others as cigarettes? Yes, I believe it.
Doug S.,
Actually, the rising price of cigarettes in New York really does seem to have increased the number of people trying to quit or cut back, although it’s difficult to be certain because the increased taxes were coupled with smoking bans in public places, education campaigns about the harms of smoking and state-sponsored programs to help people quit, including nicotine patches for people trying to kick the habit.
I’ve seen this both statistically and anecdotally. A friend of mine who was working an entry-level job in publishing simply could not afford to smoke anymore and quit. She was fortunate in that she was not highly addicted chemically (her weakness runs more toward shoes), but increasing the tax did what the smoking ban in NYC didn’t: got her to quit. The smoking ban just seems to send all the cool kids outside — I now inhale more second-hand smoke walking around the Lower East Side on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights than I remember there being in the bars pre-ban.
Re: Reason #3, it’s good research to have so doctors, teachers and others will understand that they shouldn’t stress people out about their weight. However, BMI isn’t a good proxy for obesity (which is a body fat measure). I have the “right” BMI, but I have high cholesterol and a good chance of becoming diabetic in part because I have a high level of body fat on a very small-boned frame. (Unsurprisingly, BMI numbers don’t account well for non-Caucasians.) BMI doesn’t tell whether the person is carrying a lot of fat, a lot muscle, is heavy-boned, etc. I don’t need to lose *weight*; I need to lose fat and gain muscle, which is heavier than fat. My ideal body probably would be heavier because of the substitution of muscle for fat.
The consensus definition of “obesity” used in the medical literature, and by government agencies, is based on BMI. You may disagree that this is how obesity should be defined, but the fact remains that this is how it’s defined in peer-reviewed studies. So to say “BMI isn’t a good proxy for obesity,” when commenting on a peer-reviewed study, doesn’t make much sense. In the context of academic research, obesity isn’t a body fat measure; it’s a technical term for someone with a BMI over 30. (IIRC.)
(Also, although I’m of course familiar with the Brad Pitt example and all that, I’m not sure that these individual cases establish that a high BMI is a bad proxy for body fat when dealing with very large populations. I see this argument made a lot — I may have even made it myself, at some point, although lately I’ve consciously avoided making it — but something can be a decent “proxy” for something across a large population and still have individual exceptions. I’m not saying BMI is a decent proxy for body fat; I just don’t know if it is or not.)
Point well taken.
I certainly agree with you that this is what’s likely to happen — and the higher the tax, the more likely it is to happen. And I don’t think there’s any particular reason to think the result will be better health.
The two cases aren’t the same, because this tax is called an “obesity tax” and this tax is levied only on regular soda. (Is there a movement to ban only non-diet soda from school, while leaving diet sodas in school?)
That said, I’ve seen some fat bloggers write about these topics, but I have only a vauge recollection of having seen it somewhere, not any specific links.
I don’t know of any such studies, but I’d be interested in someone conducting such a study.
The existence of anti-fat bias, and the bullying of fat kids, are both well-established by academic literature (and also by anecdotes). I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suspect that government acts that in effect endorse and promote anti-fat bias (such as an “obesity tax”) will tend to increase anti-fat bias, which will in turn increase the likelihood of bullying fat kids.
So the case isn’t as strong as it would be if there were empirical proof. Nonetheless, I think it’s a reasonable concern.
The consensus definition of “obesity” used in the medical literature, and by government agencies, is based on BMI.
Honestly, I don’t think that’s correct. The medical literature that is about surveying large populations, where it would be difficult to get accurate reads on body fat, will use BMI to categorize people as obese. However, if you look at medical literature about clinical studies (i.e. the kind where individuals interact with medical staff on a frequent, ongoing basis rather than for a single, usually self-reported instance, and where researchers are figuring out stuff like how excess body fat blocks insulin receptors and leads to Type II diabetes), obesity is defined by body fat levels. See, e.g.,
WHO’s definition: “Overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health. A crude population measure of obesity is the body mass index (BMI), a person’s weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of his or her height (in metres).”
American Heart Association: “Obesity is defined simply as too much body fat.”
NLM/NIH’s Medline Plus: “Obesity means having too much body fat. It is different from being overweight, which means weighing too much. The weight may come from muscle, bone, fat and/or body water.”
MayoClinic.com: “Obesity, in simple terms, is having a high proportion of body fat.”
NIDDK: ‘”Obesity” specifically refers to an excessive amount of body fat. “Overweight” refers to an excessive amount of body weight that includes muscle, bone, fat, and water. As a rule, women have more body fat than men. Most health care professionals agree that men with more than 25 percent body fat and women with more than 30 percent body fat are obese. These numbers should not be confused with the body mass index (BMI), however, which is more commonly used by health care professionals to determine the effect of body weight on the risk for some diseases.’
Even the CDC, which is very fond of surveys and thus of BMI, says in its “Defining Overweight and Obesity” section: “BMI is used because, for most people, it correlates with their amount of body fat. … It is important to remember that although BMI correlates with the amount of body fat, BMI does not directly measure body fat. As a result, some people, such as athletes, may have a BMI that identifies them as overweight even though they do not have excess body fat.”
The Surgeon General’s report has said, “Studies have shown that BMI is significantly correlated with total body fat content for the majority of individuals. BMI has some limitations, in that it can overestimate body fat in persons who are very muscular, and it can underestimate body fat in persons who have lost muscle mass, such as many elderly.” (I think BMI measures also do not account well for Asians, who are small-boned relative to the Caucasian norm.)
The study to which the SG report refers is National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Clinical guidelines on the identification, evaluation, and treatment of overweight and obesity in adults. HHS, Public Health Service (PHS); 1998. p. xxiii. It states conclusorily that “epidemiological and observational studies have shown that BMI provides an acceptable approximation of total body fat for the majority of patients,” but doesn’t cite the studies or say what is an “acceptable approximation.”
The existence of anti-fat bias, and the bullying of fat kids, are both well-established by academic literature (and also by anecdotes). I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suspect that government acts that in effect endorse and promote anti-fat bias (such as an “obesity tax”) will tend to increase anti-fat bias, which will in turn increase the likelihood of bullying fat kids. So the case isn’t as strong as it would be if there were empirical proof. Nonetheless, I think it’s a reasonable concern.
I agree that we know the bias and bullying exist (they also exist for kids who belong to ethnic, religious, sexual and other minority groups). However, I’m not sure it makes sense to assume that the government’s saying “X is undesirable and we will try to tax consumption that we believe leads to X” has much effect on schoolchildren. What I knew about taxation when I was at the ages where I got bullied (about 8-14) was: stuff always cost a little less than 10% more than the price marked on the label, and my parents were grumpy when they had to get all the paperwork together to “pay their taxes.” I’d say the attitudes of people in the community, especially teachers in the school, have a lot more to do with whether bullying will occur than what happens at the state and federal capitols.
With regard to the soda and candy machines’ being removed, the cause was clearly concern about childhood obesity. That also was a lot more localized, and went further than a mere price increase: in many school districts, you no longer can buy soda or candy at school at all. So if the bullying-age kids didn’t increase their bullying of fat kids by scapegoating them for that, I am skeptical this would occur due to a tax on soda.
To be fair, I have no exact data on the cost of cigarettes indexed to inflation. I was only comparing what I remember my mother spending on cigarettes 30 years ago with what they cost today.
Is soda a “food”? It’s how a lot of working-class people stay awake, dude, in an era where a cup of coffee costs two bucks with tip. You’d have to make it a lot more expensive for people to want to give it up. I love how some lefties who think they recognize signs of “classism” coming from the other side don’t have clue one about when they’re doing it themselves.
I could write a whole frigging book about why “obesity” is not like smoking. But here’s just one way. If you are a smoker who eventually manages to get yourself to the point where you don’t ever put a cigarette in your mouth and light it, you’re no longer a smoker. If you’re a fatass who quits buying Coke and doesn’t have any for a year, chances are excellent that you’re just a fatass who doesn’t drink sugared soda anymore. (I also love thin people who think we all just marinate in Coke, the ones who wouldn’t lower themselves to, you know, actually talk to us.)
Smoking rates fall with tax hikes, at a fairly high rate according to this newspaper article:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-08-09-1Alede_N.htm
I agree that this tax needs a name change, so it doesn’t increase discrimination against fat people. And I’d adore seeing it applied to all sodas and juice drinks with less than 80% juice, then having the proceeds used to fund vegetable and fruit vans for poverty stricken areas, or given to food banks.
Plus here’s a link to diet soda being bad for you too:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080122165624.htm
Instant coffee and teabags are pretty easy to access even for poor people (been poor, had lower quality tea, but not no tea) and not particularly expensive. Come to think of it, even my moderate quality tea at about twenty dollars a pound gives me about 200 cups of tea for a cost of ten cents a cup, not bad. Of course I need to add the cost of hot water, but that’s not much I suspect. So I don’t think there’s a huge class issue here; more of a Summer vs. Winter issue perhaps! Though ice teas and coffees are good (and again, don’t have to be expensive).
I was only comparing what I remember my mother spending on cigarettes 30 years ago with what they cost today.
The average price of a pack of cigarettes in NYC, including federal, state and local taxes, was $8 in June 2008. If your mom got a pack for 80 cents (including all taxes) in 1978, she was getting a hell of a deal — all the sources I’ve seen put the price of a pack in 1978 between $1.50 and $2.
Is soda a “food”? It’s how a lot of working-class people stay awake, dude, in an era where a cup of coffee costs two bucks with tip.
That would make it a drug, then. Which means the analysis about the price insensitivity of food is even more irrelevant than I had suspected. It also means that diet, so long as it is caffeinated, is indeed a perfectly substitutable good for regular soda for the set of people whom you claim are using soda to stay awake.
It’s kind of funny to see “classism” juxtaposed with the implicit claim that coffee is available only for $2 plus tip. Try McD’s — 12 oz for $1.19 and no tip expected.
I could write a whole frigging book about why “obesity” is not like smoking.
I’m not the one who raised the point about cigarette prices; I just responded to DougS’s supposition that increasing the price on cigs hadn’t decreased smoking.
But considering your claim above about how soda is used for its chemical content of caffeine, the fact that caffeine is a substance to which one can become addicted and that, unlike real food, it is not at all necessary to sustain life, then someone who quit soda, coffee and other caffeinated substances completely would indeed be comparable to a smoker who quit nicotine. If you watch a heavy coffee drinker go cold turkey on caffeine (no soda or chocolate to substitute), they have the typical set of withdrawal symptoms: headaches, fatigue, irritability, cravings, etc.
Not just heavy coffee drinkers; I’ve seen 12-year old kids who drink Mountain Dew or Jolt or lots of Coke who show all the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal when they are cut off from it.
I mentioned the cost of cigarettes in response to this:
If the price of the drug goes so high that the addict simply doesn’t have the money to buy as much as he or she wants, even an addict will buy less when the price goes up. The same analysis can be applied to expensive medical treatments, which have similarly inelastic demand; if it is beyond your means to pay for an expensive operation, even when taking into account the support you can get from other people, you don’t count as part of the “demand” even if you’re going to die without it.
Of course, “save the highest bidder first” is a rather crass way to ration medicine. However, you should be aware that, for each $1,000 you donate to Population Services International, you literally save the life of someone in Africa. Every time you spend $1,000 on something that’s not a donation to PSI, keep in mind that the opportunity cost of your purchase is, literally, a human life.
A little late to the game here — I just wanted to say that this is a great post.
But considering your claim above about how soda is used for its chemical content of caffeine, the fact that caffeine is a substance to which one can become addicted and that, unlike real food, it is not at all necessary to sustain life, then someone who quit soda, coffee and other caffeinated substances completely would indeed be comparable to a smoker who quit nicotine. If you watch a heavy coffee drinker go cold turkey on caffeine (no soda or chocolate to substitute), they have the typical set of withdrawal symptoms: headaches, fatigue, irritability, cravings, etc.
Well, cigarettes are a special case because they’re deadly even in moderation–and most people understand that. They know they should quit, and they have a powerful incentive, so the “sin” tax is perhaps easier to accept as intended.
I wouldn’t call caffeine necessary to sustain life. I would say that it’s necessary to the lives of many people. If you don’t have time for more than six hours of sleep per night, and haven’t for several years, the Mountain Dew or coffee isn’t just staving off its own withdrawal symptoms. It’s keeping you from exhaustion, and it’s a real substitute for sleep you’ll always need. That’s physical dependence, but I’m not sure I call it an addiction. And so I think the demand is even less elastic in this case–or, at least, that the root problem of unhealthy consumption is even more tenacious.
I believe that diet soda would be a viable substitute for non-diet in this case, since it’s also full of caffeine, but I’m not sure people should be drinking liters of that either. But I’m not sure that taxing one source of sugar will get people to take it out of their diets. Sugar is also a great substitute for sleep. People will quickly learn that a diet soda and a doughnut keeps them alert all through lunchtime, with none of the jumpiness created by unadulterated caffeine.
I’m not adverse to “sin” taxes on unhealthy foods. (I think that there are plenty of ways to put “sin” pressure on less-regressive levels of production and distribution, though.) I think that they won’t work unless healthy alternatives are made available to the people who can’t buy lunch out of vending machines any more. I doubt that most people–fat and otherwise–actually prefer to dine on candy and Coke; that’s just what’s there. Making them more expensive won’t make other things feasible if they aren’t also in the cafeteria, the kiosk, or the cooler. It’s like the sleep problem: if you took away my coffee, I still wouldn’t get to lie in bed for an extra couple of hours. I’d be just as overworked and under-rested.
Of course, at some point you start talking about sweeping changes to our way of life–not just the people who eat out of vending machines, but the people who take away their breaks, etc. on up the ladder. This is precisely the kind of change that legislators find it difficult to implement, and hard to sell.
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piny,
I agree with the points you make above, except possibly this one:
Sugar is also a great substitute for sleep. People will quickly learn that a diet soda and a doughnut keeps them alert all through lunchtime, with none of the jumpiness created by unadulterated caffeine.
Why doughnuts? It doesn’t make sense to take your sugar and caffeine together if the goal is to stay awake: you’ll get an unnecessarily big high and crash faster than you would with just one at a time. From experience, I’d say that the best combination is a slow intake of caffeine to keep the high going, balanced with protein to keep it from upsetting your stomach (carbs will make you sleepy). Something like espresso bean fragments with a thick coat of unsalted, unsweetened peanut better.
Dianne:
The term “high-fructose corn syrup” is a bit misleading. It’s high in fructose relative to regular corn syrup, which is pure glucose. But it’s only marginally higher in fructose than sucrose (55% vs. 50%).
My suspicion is that people are quick to point their fingers at HFCS because it’s easier to blame corporations than it is to take responsibility for your own health. The problem is not that we consume too much sugar—it’s that the greedy corporations took away our wholesome, natural sucrose and replaced it with HFCS to make an extra penny on each can of soda. If they would just go back to using wholesome, natural sucrose, then everything would be perfect and we’d never get diabetes and we wouldn’t have to cut back on our sugar consumption at all. Which is rubbish—the real problem is too much sugar of any kind—but it’s an easy, feel-good answer that doesn’t require any unpleasant lifestyle changes.
I think it has more to do with HFCS being subsidized massively by the government in ways that cane sugar isn’t, so that it’s cheap and easy to add to just about everything. If HFCS had a more rational pricing structure, we’d see foods that contained some huge percentage of it being more expensive than foods that don’t. Right now, we see the opposite.
Thus, whether HFCS is actually worse for you than sugar or not, our subsidy structures are designed to ensure that we consume much more of it, which IS worse for you.
Also, of course, it’s a cheap and easy way to add flavor and calories to foods, making them more tasty and filling. If you’re someone without a lot of money, a food that’s cheap, tasty, and filling sounds pretty good.
Brandon, if a weakness of the left historically has been ignoring personal responsibility for societal ills, a weakness of the right has been ignoring systemic ones. That’s what you’re doing right now. Saying ‘people should consume less HFCS’ without understanding why and how it’s happened that they’re consuming so much of it in the first place is more than a little silly.
—Myca
PG: good point. You could also do coffee and either McNuggets in honey-barbecue sauce or sweet roasted peanuts. It’s too bad bell peppers never got anybody through an eighteen-hour workday.
“HFCS” isn’t just a cheap substitute for sugar–Big Sugar, I guess–it’s shorthand for using sugar as a cheap substitute for food in order to get people to eat sugar instead of other kinds of food–or, worse, as a non-negotiable component of every other kind of food. Avoiding ornamental sugar without paying an unfeasible amount of money for groceries is difficult: wheat bread, guacamole, salad dressing, canned fruit and vegetables, whole-grain “healthy” cereal, raisins, trail mix, and peanut butter all often feature added sugar. Most people need processed food in order to plan a diet around a working life; they can’t bake their own bread or can their own produce. None of the above should be dietary landmines, should they?
Or one of those cow-pat-looking glazed apple things that are like the size of a baby. One of those would last an entire night shift, so you wouldn’t have to worry about the slump.
One of those would last an entire night shift, so you wouldn’t have to worry about the slump.
They never do; you have a brief pause in your work and you end up eating the whole damn thing. Seriously, lots of tiny snacks are the way to go to sustain the continuous high without getting a rush and crash. If you’re doing cheap packaged sugar, it’s hard to beat M&Ms eaten a few at a time.
piny, that’s an apple fritter, which would be god’s gift to mankind, were there a god.
More reason for me to avoid apple fritters and other sugary foods that can be easily gobbled up at once: blood sugar spikes might affect memory.
Actually, the problem is the inchy-squinchy rise of prices is the exact opposite way to go at it if you want to deter use – look at cigs. They slowly inched them up higher, so that there was no point at which a smoker said “aww, shiat, I can’t afford that!”.
Now, a sudden kick-in-the-ass price hike? That will make users take a step back and think about if it’s worth having in their lives. But they won’t do that, for two reasons:
1) It will be more vocally unpopular. Politicians have constituents who like coke, duh.
2) It will reduce revenue.
Think about it, by avoiding any cataclysmic jumps that will actually provide a single point where users will seriously considering dropping the habit, the government ensures that most users will stay in, maximizing revenue. At the same time, the tax is publicly popular because it is a taxation on a “sin”.
It’s practically free money*
*unless you’re a person who happens to really like soda.
@PG – Soy also is likely to affect memory long-term, but you’ll pry my overly-soy-sauced tomato-marinated tofu from my cold dead hands.
They slowly inched them up higher, so that there was no point at which a smoker said “aww, shiat, I can’t afford that!”.
Do you have some information that refutes the discussion upthread about how New York’s increases in cigarette taxes, in combination with state-sponsored programs to help smokers quit, actually have caused smokers to say “I can’t afford that”?
Also, do you have information that indicates regular soda is not a good for which diet soda or other drinks not subject to the tax could substitute easily? As I noted above, because nicotine is an addictive chemical peculiar to tobacco products, there aren’t good substitutes for cigarettes. (The average New Yorker is reluctant to take up chewing, for example.)
Absent the necessity of a “cataclysmic” increase in price to make people change their behaviors, the rest of your argument doesn’t hold.
No one is suggesting that sugar-spiking substances be banned, only that perhaps they should be examined critically and possibly taxed.
Wait, I had an argument beyond the “cataclysmic” thing?
That was kind of the whole point of my post – that they raise these behavioural-taxes in a small, creeping manner for cynical reasons. While these taxes do help in any case, it does make you wonder about their motives.
Diet soda doesn’t taste the same, and that’s my main point of why I don’t drink any.
Secondly, it has aspartame to simulate the sugar taste (with 0 calories). Aspartame is in contention as provoking various diseases (or increasing their likeliness) as well as causing gains in weight above and beyond what the amount of calories it allegedly replaces would.
150 calories for a 355 ml can ain’t the end of the world to me. At work I’ll eat a big cookie that has 400 calories, for lunch (cause there ain’t much else, I don’t eat sandwiches). Its 400 calories wether it’s got chocolate or not, it’s made of oatmeal 100%, still 400 calories.
Schala,
As you’ve stated previously that you’re “underweight” by BMI measures, I don’t think you represent a population for whom calories are a big concern.