News coverage of sugar-sweetened beverage taxes: pro- and antitax arguments in public discourse.

Accelerating the Worldwide Adoption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes: Strengthening Commitment and Capacity; Comment on “The Untapped Power of Soda Taxes: Incentivizing Consumers, Generating Revenue, and Altering Corporate Behavior”

In their recent article Roache and Gostin outline why governments and public health advocates should embrace soda taxes. The evidence is strong and continues to grow: such taxes can change consumer behavior, generate significant revenue and incentivize product reformulation. In essence, such taxes are an important and now well-established instrument of fiscal and public health policy. In this c...

Taxing Sugar-Sweetened Beverages: Not a “Holy Grail” but a Cup at Least Half; Comment on “Food Taxes: A New Holy Grail?”

In this commentary, we argue for the implementation of a sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax as a tool to help address the global obesity and diabetes epidemics. Consumption of SSBs has increased exponentially over the last several decades, a trend that has been an important contributor to the obesity and diabetes epidemics. Prior evidence demonstrates that a SSB tax will likely decrease SSB con...

Estimating the potential of taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages to reduce consumption and generate revenue.

OBJECTIVE Beverage taxes came into light with increasing concerns about obesity, particularly among youth. Sugar-sweetened beverages have become a target of anti-obesity initiatives with increasing evidence of their link to obesity. Our paper offers a method for estimating revenues from an excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages that governments of various levels could direct towards obesity pr...

Tapping the Power of Soda Taxes: A Call for Multidisciplinary Research and Broad-Based Advocacy Coalitions – A Response to the Recent Commentaries

Substitution Patterns Can Limit the Effects of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes on Obesity

Dramatic increases in obesity and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption over the past several decades have become major public health and clinical concerns. Obesity rates tripled in 30 years, and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption among children more than doubled in the last 2 decades of the twentieth century (1). Many children drink more sugar-sweetened beverages than milk, and sugar-sweetene...