This Study Made Me Change My Mind on Soda Taxes

The connection between soda and diabetes is just so clear.

<a href="http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/soda-can-pouring-a-high-amount-of-sugar-gm517676388-89617171?st=_p_fat%20can%20of%20soda">Stockyme</a>/iStock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The case for a soda tax—on the ballot on November 8 in San Francisco, Oakland, and Boulder, and promoted globally by the World Health Organization—just got stronger.

In a new peer-reviewed study, Swedish researchers tracked the dietary choices and health outcomes of a group of more than 2,800 adults over several years, adjusting their results for a range of factors like age, gender, family history of diabetes, and caloric intake. They found that people who drink 400 milliliters or more of soda daily—that’s 13.5 ounces, just a bit more than a standard 12-oz. US serving—are 2.4 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who did not drink these beverages. And people who drink 1,000 milliliters (33.8 oz, less then three US servings) had a 10 times higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

As the authors note, these findings are the latest in a massive weight of research (see here, here, and here, for example) tying sugary drink consumption to diabetes.

And get this: They found roughly equal results for people who drink Big Soda’s preferred alternative to sugar-laced beverages—artificially sweetened ones. That conclusion bolsters a rapidly expanding literature indicting “diet” soda, which I go into here and here.

Meanwhile, the industry has launched a robust effort to beat back efforts to impose soda taxes. Vox recently calculated that Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and their industry group, the American Beverage Association, have spent a combined $30.8 million to campaign against ballot initiatives in US cities this year. The American Beverage Association has even enlisted progressive hero Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in its efforts to battle tax fights in San Francisco and Oakland:

While campaigning against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year, Sanders came out against a proposed soda tax in Philadelphia, which ended up being enacted. In the months since, though, he has changed his stance, and he recently rebuked the ABA for using him in advertisements.

Meanwhile, Clinton, who publicly supported the Philadelphia tax, was privately pressured by Coca-Cola execs to tamp down her support for such measures, a trove of leaked emails published by the group DC Leaks suggests. As Politico notes, the email correspondence between Coca-Cola officials and campaign insiders “reveals the deep connections the soda giant enjoys in Hillary-land at multiple levels, which the company leaned on to urge Clinton to walk back her support for soda taxes last April.”

Another email dump, analyzed here by the group Ninjas for Health, shows Coca-Cola execs strategizing ways to defeat soda taxes from Oakland and Philadelphia to the United Kingdom, France, Israel, and Bosnia Herzegovina.

Like Bernie Sanders, I’ve long been ambivalent on soda taxes, because I’m allergic to any measure that falls most heavily on the pocketbooks of low-income people. But the public health case against soda has gotten so strong that I’m convinced. After all, taxes must really be an effective tool for turning people away from soda, or the industry wouldn’t be fighting them so hard, on so many fronts.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate