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Armed with three years of grocery shopping data, researchers found that total sugar sales are down by almost 20 percent, driven largely by falling soda purchase
by ellyagg 5y ago
Armed 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?
- tsimionescu 5y agoQuote from start if thread said "total sugar sales are down by almost 20 percent, driven largely by falling soda purchases", so at least we know they didn't buy candy with the money.
- AnthonyMouse 5y agoWe know they didn't buy only candy with the money. Maybe they bought candy and cigarettes.
- arcticbull 5y agoThat's a cool theory, do you have any data to back it up or is this just an unfounded assertion?
- AnthonyMouse 5y agoThis is literally the thing the person who started this thread is asking for: > 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.
- jimmygrapes 5y agonot for the price of even large amounts of soda for the same consumed time period
- smorgusofborg 5y agoYou can't have it both ways, if stopping candy leads to cigarette money then cigarettes are healthy because anyone who smokes has less money for heroin.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- inglor_cz 5y agoDrinking soda doesn't make you full, though. If you are hungry and drink soda, you will eat something anyway. Probably the same amount, if not more (soda may actually provoke feelings of hunger).
- zaji 5y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the alternatives that the citizens of Seattle are choosing are juices, fruit punches, iced teas, and other non-water beverages that are hardly better for you than soda.
- notfed 5y agoI had to look this up and you're right: the "sugary drink tax" excludes fruit juice. Also, Starbucks is exempt.
- eagsalazar2 5y ago"exceedingly likely"? Are you taking the "right" thing from these "equivocal" studies? Sounds like you too are mainly expressing your personal and unsubstantiated beliefs. Anyway, it would be pretty weird if decreasing consumption of sugary liquids on average increased the consumption of solid fats. I could see if you were a person doing hard daily labor you'd need to get crazy amounts of calories from somewhere, but you seem to have a theory that there is a caloric balance people will naturally maintain one way or the other, even when they are obese because of excessive consumption. If you know of a study that does show that consumption of fats increases when sugary drink consumption decreases, OMG, that would be really interesting, please share a link since I've only heard of studies suggesting exactly the opposite.
- ellyagg 5y agoI think exceedingly is the right word here. We know from lots of research that mass diet interventions don't work. The body's autonomic processes for weight equilibrium are powerful. Stephan Guyenet is a good follow but doctors on Hacker News are only too happy to tell you the same thing.
- chii 5y agoso if people being fat is the problem, why not target it at the root - a fat tax? i'm jesting of course, but the modern tax system tend to be both a revenue generator, while also being a behaviour modifier, often to the detriment of each of those objectives. I think root cause targeting, rather than try to "incentivize" at the edges, is more effective a social policy.
- tjr225 5y agoLol, that might be tough as Seattle is already ranked as one of the countries healthiest cities.
- cycomanic 5y agoTo be honest your post sounds like it's coming straight out of the sugar industry PR book. 1. Increase burden of scientific evidence/cast scientific evidence in doubt by saying it's not conclusive enough 2. Assert that reducing sugar is not working because people will just get their calorie input otherwise. 3. Blame fat/daemonize fat, that's what the sugar industry has done very successfully over the last decades.
- SilasX 5y agoYes, and sometimes fools say the sky is blue. That doesn’t make it red.
- cycomanic 5y agoDo you have actual arguments? The reasons for me giving these points above is that this way of arguing has become standard PR practice from industries that want to prevent outcomes that would be detrimental to their bottom line (tobacco sugar, oil...). They actually are not interested in a debate that finds the actual truth. In fact they often know that the facts are correct from their own studies, but want to cast doubt on them nevertheless. I'm perfectly ok with someone giving actual arguments (ideally backed up by some scientific evidence) why that study might get the correct result. I didn't even make any judgement about the validity of the original conclusions.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoAlso, Seattlites aren’t exactly obese on average, it would be difficult to measure a change vs if some small Texan town did this. A lot of richer people in Seattle avoid sugar as a matter of health, but they pay for it since non-sugar sweetener drinks like super coffee are more expensive. The sugar tax is more aimed down market.
- david38 5y agoThere are more benefits to lowering sugar than weight loss. Diabetes and its related issues for example. When one drops sugar consumption, it’s generally not replaced by fat. That’s not how obesity usually works.
- xboxnolifes 5y agoA tax on sugar's job is to reduce sugar sales. So it's the right metric to see if the tax itself is doing what it's supposed to do. What you seem to be arguing is on a metric of if the tax should have been implemented in the first place. i.e. If the actual goal was reducing weight, then the obvious thought is all weight increasers should be taxed, not just sugar.
- chrismcb 5y agoThe proponents of the law claimed they were doing it to fight obesity, to reduce weight. But considering that a per ounce metric is probably the wrong thing, and they didn't tax the worst drink, the milkshake, they didn't really do this to attack obesity.