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New evidence suggests that Seattle’s soda tax is working well
- jspaetzel 5y agoHaha. Such correlation, such little data. But hey, at least someone got paid.
- 1123581321 5y agoInteresting. Does the partial increase in compensating sugar purchases give an idea of how many actually got some benefit from the sugar, as opposed to the caffeine, flavor and bubbles? Once more of these policies have been in place for a few years, some will likely be repealed. At that point, a study of similar magnitude to analyze to what degree the habit changes are permanent will be even more interesting.
- oneepic 5y agoDepends how closely you watch your spending on food. I'm so disconnected that I only learned just now that we have a soda tax. I will still buy my favorite sludge water without concern for the price.
- insickness 5y agoBased on a 1.75 cents per ounce tax and CVS's prices, here is the increase: 20-ounce bottle of Coke: $2.50 --> $2.85. 2 liter (72-ounce) bottle of Coke: $2.70 --> $3.96. If you drink a lot of soda, it can definitely add up.
- chrismcb 5y agoIt adds up. But not as much, percentage wise, as compared to something with less sugar in it, like iced tea.
- silisili 5y agoI'm...skeptical. Mostly that in a city where houses stretch into the millions now, people forego a can of Coke over a 20 cent price increase. Soda consumption has been on a long decline since the late aughts. I even noticed as much anecdotally - often when dining out I would be the only one or maybe one of two to order a soda at all. I'm completely willing to be proven wrong, but the data set is much too small to conclude anything either way. Why not include the top x cities, instead of just one 200 miles away? Because it rains a lot in both?
- cosmodisk 5y agoWhen I arrived to the UK, a can of Coke was about £0.45. They kept increasing the prices each year and now it's probably about £1. It's not that I couldn't afford a can, but for me, paying a £1 for it became much less attractive and I only bough it a couple of times over the last two years.
- gnicholas 5y agoIt's possible the decrease is driven largely by spending habits of low-income families: > Last year, researchers at the University of Washington found that low-income families in particular saw a significant decrease in soda consumption following the implementation of the tax. The findings were based on a survey of residents, meaning that it relied on self-reporting, which is less accurate than sales data. This leads to interesting policy questions. For example, some people might complain that the tax is regressive and hits poorer families harder. A rebuttal to this is that obesity is also regressive, and if you wish to fight obesity you need to change behaviors of the people whom it afflicts. One way around this knotty issue is to take the money from this tax and use it for public services that disproportionally benefit the populations from whom it is generated. (I have no idea what the tax revenues in Seattle are used for.)
- idontwantthis 5y ago> It's possible the decrease is driven largely by spending habits of low-income families: Which I think, isn't really caused by their low-income, but by their greater preference for soda. Demand changes at the margin, so a $.20 increase is a $.20 increase to everyone. It depends how much you value the soda in the first place.
- gnicholas 5y agoThe price elasticity of demand (i.e., the amount someone changes purchasing decisions based on price changes) depend in part on how much of your budget the item takes up. For wealthy people, soda is a rounding error on a rounding error. For lower income folks, soda could be a small but noticeable percentage of their budget. So 20¢ is not 20¢ to everyone. For my part, I know that teenager-me would have absolutely noticed this price increase, but adult me would not.
- techsupporter 5y agoA lot of people will point out that the difference of a relative handful of cents doesn't matter much to the individual buyer, and they're probably right. I think the change has happened largely on the supply side. Businesses didn't want to change the price of a soda and so swapped in zero-sugar versions that don't carry the tax. Anecdotally, I've noticed a distinct rise in the number of places offering several more zero-sugar options (though, for some blasted reason, it's still easier to find Coke Zero at restaurants in the suburbs than it is in the city and no, Diet Coke is not OK come on now). (Alternatively, they did raise the price of all sodas, sugared or not, but I haven't seen much of that.)
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- ellyagg 5y agoArmed with three years of grocery shopping data, researchers found that total sugar sales are down by almost 20 percent, driven largely by falling soda purchases. This isn't the right definition of success. The first minimal requirement for this to be a successful initiative is that the community lost weight overall. Or even gained weight, but more slowly than other communities. If they could prove that it would be an incredible breakthrough in public policy, but I wouldn't bet on it. The science on the effect of sugar in the diet, sugar in and of itself, is far more eqquivocal than popular press would make you believe. It is exceedingly likely that people just ate more fat instead of sugar, which is plausibly just as dangerous as sugar when one is eating calories in excess of daily energy requirements.
- misja111 5y ago>> It is exceedingly likely that people just ate more fat instead of sugar.. Why do you believe this is so likely? To be honest I don't see the connection. People notice in the supermarket that their favorite soft drink became more expensive, and decide to switch to eating an extra hamburger instead?
- AnthonyMouse 5y agoYou're hungry, so you eat something. When you run low on food, you go to the supermarket. Soda has increased in price, so you spend your soda money on something else. The next time you're hungry, that's what's in your kitchen. This is only better if the thing you replace the soda with is better for you than the soda. Without any data on what that is, you don't know if that's true.
- imoverclocked 5y agoEating sugar makes your body/mind crave more sugar though… regardless of consumed calories.
- AnthonyMouse 5y agoYou don't even know that the replacement thing isn't still sugar. People can't spend their soda money on candy? What if they spend it on cigarettes?
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoHow's coffee sales doing? With coffee you can add as much sugar as you want without increasing the price!
- kebman 5y agoI might be an outlier, but I usually only add some milk. If not I take it black, no sugar.
- Gigachad 5y agoYou wouldn’t want to put sugar in coffee.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoI believe you mean "One shouldn't want" because I do want.
- gnicholas 5y agoThis tax does not apply to diet sodas, [1] which have been shown to prompt food cravings, especially in women and obese people. [2] So it's possible that people just substituted from regular to diet soda, and still eat just as much. 1: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/washington/articles/2017-12-26/seattles-new-tax-on-soda-sugary-drinks-takes-effect-jan-1 https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/washington/articles/... 2: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/10/07/1044010141/diet-soda-may-prompt-food-cravings-especially-in-women-and-people-with-obesity https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/10/07/1044010...
- sdze 5y agoI heard sweeteners are actively used in piglet farms as fattener.
- RankingMember 5y agoGot any source on that? Would be curious to read about it if true.
- sdze 5y agohttps://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11597823.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11597823.pdf it is a german diploma thesis. 8.2 ff. Basically they say that piglets prefer sweet taste and regular sugar is too expensive. So they can feed bitter tasting junk sweetened artificially.
- thesz 5y agoArtificial sweeteners also prompt insulin rise and promote insulin resistance: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014832/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014832/ So, yes, if it is not water, with or without CO2, it should be ingested with caution.
- causi 5y agoSparkling water is also a concern for dental health. Carbonation becomes carbonic acid.
- gyc 5y agoDid they also study whether total sugar sales rose in the cities next to Seattle? I can imagine that some price sensitive soda drinkers just drove to the nearest store outside of Seattle to buy their sodas.
- dlp211 5y agoThis makes zero sense. A gallon of gas is about $4.00, the idea that someone would spend all that gas money to avoid a tax of 1.75 cents/oz just doesn't pass the sniff test.
- icelancer 5y agoPeople grocery shop closer to their work (if it's outside of Seattle) if they can avoid these taxes.
- friedturkey 5y agoMy parents would drive 30 extra minutes to save pennies on gas. I have no doubt they'd do the same to dodge a soda tax. People don't think logically so long as they feel like they're saving money.
- t-writescode 5y agoYou know people go to Oregon to avoid sales takes on various purchases, right? That’s 2-4 hours from Seattle depending on traffic.
- dlp211 5y agoBut they don't do it to avoid sales tax on $100 purchase. They go down there to make $1k+ purchases and avoid $100+ in taxes. The cost to get in and out of Seattle to purchase soda just isn't worth it unless you are purchasing a large amount of soda.
- function_seven 5y agoThe tax is 1.75¢ per ounce? That nearly doubles the price of a 12-pack depending on whatever brand is on sale that week. When I buy soda during my shopping trips, I usually get three 12-packs for $9.99. With this tax, the total would be $17.55. If I still drank sugary soda, I'd go out of my way to avoid this tax. I find the idea people alter their shopping habits to avoid it totally believable. probably not enough to offset the reduced consumption (or else it'd show up in lower gross receipts at stores within city limits), but it wouldn't be surprising to see increased sales in neighboring towns.
- roenxi 5y agoThis is an article that suggests the pro-tax side of the argument never came to understand the anti-tax side. Possibly the anti-tax side were being misleading about their complaints. Of course a soda tax will reduce the amount of soda consumed and there was a decent chance it would reduce the amount of sugar too. And if there is a goal to achieve, keep raising the tax until it does what you want. The problem with this sort of strategy is that we make laws by voting, and so it assumes that we can determine what is healthy by popular vote. This isn't true and it is very easily corrupted if the option is open. A process like the one that throw out Barack Obama -> Donald Trump -> Joe Biden as the best candidates to lead the US should not be the process that decides what is and isn't healthy to eat. That isn't a reliable process. It is going to get corrupted by special interests. You should be using a different process (maybe using evidence?). And as an aside it could be argued that taxes are a bad tool if we think there is overwhelming evidence something is unhealthy. It creates weird incentives.
- tsimionescu 5y ago> The problem with this sort of strategy is that we make laws by voting, and so it assumes that we can determine what is healthy by popular vote. This isn't true and it is very easily corrupted if the option is open. Well, we don't really know of any better option for taking collective decisions of high impact. The public and their representatives are informed of the science (and for nutrition information, it's really much more "science" than science at this point) and they decide by voting whether they choose to believe the data presented enough to try to impose tax burdens or other regulations. What alternative is there? Have nutritionists be able to unilaterally decide what stores are allowed to sell and at what prices? That would get much more easily corrupted, as many nutrition studies have been in the past.
- roenxi 5y ago> What alternative is there? You could let people who think soda is unhealthy avoid it, and people who don't care buy it from the soda makers. Maybe set up some official nutritional advice [0]. There doesn't have to be a centralised determination on whether soda is to be encouraged or discouraged. [0] https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/the-australian-dietary-guidelines https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/the-austral...
- anilakar 5y agoEvery time someone vocally claims that a well-targeted tax won't reduce the effect of something harmful, one can be pretty sure it will - those people would not be complaining unless it directly hit their wallets.
- kebman 5y ago> Every time someone vocally claims that a well-targeted tax won't reduce the effect of something harmful, one can be pretty sure it will - those people would not be complaining unless it directly hit their wallets. The saying goes that the price is right when the customer curses but still signs the contract. So I wouldn't be too sure about that. Besides the effect is statistical. The reason people buy less sugary sodas might equally be attested to grocers and wholesalers simply filling their stores with more diet sodas, instead of sugary sodas, due to the tax—and not because consumers actually avoid sugary sodas due to the very slight price increase. So there still isn't a clear cause and effect. This is important, because if it's the former, and the state claims it's the latter, then either they're clearly wrong about the cause and effect, or they're lying; either of which would be bad for public relations. On the other hand, the end result is pretty much the same, but if the effect is due to availability, then perhaps the whole thing could have been solved with regulation instead of taxation. On the side comes the matter of what the taxed money is used for. Does it go towards better public health care in the region, or is it simply spent on covering various deficits. This is also important, because if the goal is to fight obesity, then how is it morally right to spend the tax profits on other things?
- throwawaysea 5y agoThe causation here seems very vague and hard to establish as confidently as this article tries. But even if the causation was there, I don’t know if I would count this as “working well”. People can’t access a product they want to access because of an artificial burden imposed on them. That doesn’t feel like the system is “working well”. It feels more like the system is restricting the agency and self determination of those with less money.
- ArtDev 5y agoWait, people still drink soda?
- renewiltord 5y agoNo. No one drinks soda. Coca Cola Corporation’s revenue of 40 billion dollars a year is entirely fabricated. It is the next Enron. When you see a person drinking a soda, try touching them. They are a hologram, an attempt by a fading company to convince people of their relevance. Having substituted all soda with clear water, humanity has entered a new era of peace and prosperity. War is a thing of the past now that Man is hydrated. Peace reigns over the Earth as fusion powered reactionless spacecraft take to the skies. Our third space colony is prospering and we are on the brink of conquering Death itself.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoCoke Zero is a thing, it’s what I get my kid when he wants a very occasional pop. I tried some, it mostly tastes like the coke I remember.
- notfed 5y agoTo me "Coca Cola Zero Sugar" tastes 100% exactly like regular Coca Cola. I've wondered how many people agree.
- dlp211 5y agoSoda is delicious for those of us that like sweet foods. It's certainly not for everyone, but I could honestly drink soda and eat cookies nonstop all day if I didn't limit myself to at most 1 can in a day and purposely don't purchase cookies to have in the house.
- kebman 5y agoHow much are sodas taxed in Seattle? Maybe I missed something but I couldn't find it in the article. Does the soda tax go towards increasing public health services in the region?
- dlp211 5y ago1.75 cents/oz.
- chrismcb 5y agoIt is a sugar tax, not a soda tax. All drinks, that are sweetened with a caloric sugar based sweetener that are not milk based, are taxed. There are a few other exceptions such as alcohol, 100% fruit juice and anything with calories fewer than 40 per 120 ozs. The majority of the proceeds are supposed to go into expanding access to healthy food a well as education, asking other things
- nsonha 5y agoI love that they need evidence for "taxation works". It doesn't take a prophet to tell if you charge $10 for a can of soda, sales decline. The question is how much can we tax
- chrismcb 5y agoHad increasing the tax on cigarettes caused people to buy fewer cigarettes?
- harles 5y agoI can’t help but find this situation incredibly ironic. How much tax money do we spend propping up corn and the corn syrup used to make these sodas only to tax and try to discourage their sale? I wholeheartedly support this tax, but it’s an incredibly bizarre contradiction.
- NumberCruncher 5y ago> The data set itself—gathered by marketing insight firm Nielsen—was huge, representing 45 percent of all food store sales in the city This means that in the 5 households Nielsen used as a "representative sample of Seattle's population" one person got so overweight that he can't leave his flat any more and therefore he started buying his daily dose of soda online instead of buying it in his favourite store. Soda consumption drops by 20%. At least this is what Nielsen says. But hey, who am I to judge decades of financially successful quackery...
- Nursie 5y ago> And that’s exactly what happened in Washington shortly after Seattle passed its soda tax: In November of that same year, soda companies campaigned successfully for the passage of a ballot initiative banning all future fees on sugary drinks across the state. Wow, this is nakedly self interested and a law purely for the industry at the expense of democracy, how on earth can that be allowed to happen?
- inglor_cz 5y agoBecause 55.88% of voters (1,721,487 people) voted for it. Note that the initiative banned "local government entities from imposing any new tax, fee, or other assessment on grocery items" in general, not just from sugary drinks. I guess people did not want more expensive groceries. This may in the future be compensated by more expensive healthcare, but such is the human species. Short term gain > long term loss.
- derbOac 5y agoJust for some perspective, in some states there is zero tax on any food because it is seen as essential. The problem is there are a lot of assumptions being made about the choice to buy a soda in any given situation. Someone in my family, for example, has type 1 diabetes, and occasionally (not usually; they control it well) needs something sugary for weird situations to regulate their blood sugar. On average the state might gain from some policy, but is it always in the best position to understand what is in the best interests of the individual? I guess I've never understood the focus on sugary beverages in particular. Why not candy? Pastries? Sugary cereal? Seems arbitrary and capricious to me.
- chrismcb 5y agoWashington state has a candy tax. And like most places has a tax on prepared food but not unprepared for.
- timbit42 5y agoBecause it's America.
- danielrpa 5y agoI live in a place without the soda tax. I'm noticing that kids aren't into sodas as much as they used to. My kid and his friends all dislike sodas. There could be other cultural trends alongside the tax.
- Proven 5y ago
- chrismcb 5y agoOk, but are they shopping outside the city? The Seattle sugar tax is flawed. It is charged per ounce not a flat percentage. Typically more expensive drinks have more sugar but are actually effected less. Throw in the fact that milk based drinks are exempt, like the sugar rich milkshake, and this is a flawed law.