Joe Weisenthal | The Business Insider
A new report from the USDA, via The Atlantic, examines the potential effect of a soda tax as a possible obesity curb.
Not surprisingly, since you wouldn’t expect a government agency to say that a tax wouldn’t help the government, the USDA’s conclusion is that such a tax would work.
Here is is in a nutshell.
From the agency:
A tax-induced 20-percent price increase on caloric sweetened beverages could cause an average reduction of 37 calories per day, or 3.8 pounds of body weight over a year, for adults and an average of 43 calories per day, or 4.5 pounds over a year, for children. Given these reductions in calorie consumption, results show an estimated decline in adult overweight prevalence (66.9 to 62.4 percent) and obesity prevalence (33.4 to 30.4 percent), as well as the child at-risk-for-overweight prevalence (32.3 to 27.0 percent) and the overweight prevalence (16.6 to 13.7 percent).
A tax of this sort may be inevitable. States and cities need cash, and there’s a compelling health argument for limiting soda And as ths seems to show, like all taxes, there will be an effect on consumption.
The original version of the story appears here.
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