An Urban's Rural View

It isn't every day you receive such seemingly contradictory emails as the two that just showed up in my inbox with reports on academic studies of soda taxes.

One, a poll of 1,319 Americans conducted in the fall of 2012, said only 22% support them (http://tiny.cc/…). The other, by a Dutch team using a 3D computer simulation of a supermarket, said taxing sugar-sweetened beverages produces the desired effect: Consumers buy fewer of them (http://tiny.cc/…).

Yes, the two studies can be reconciled. They're only "seemingly contradictory." But there is more than one possible reconciliation.

It could, for example, be simply that Americans and Dutch people differ: What works there would fail here. Europeans are used to heavy taxes on what they buy. Americans hate taxes.

Except. Except that it isn't just taxes the Americans in the study reject. Only 26% of them advocate restrictions on portion sizes.

So maybe it's the heavy hand of government that Europeans have come to accept, while we Americans treasure freedom and hate government regulation. Statist Europe versus the Wild, Wild West.

Again, except. Except that 65% of the Americans polled favor requiring nutrition labels on the front of packages and 62% support removing sugary beverages from schools. Seems the Wild, Wild West has been tamed.

The simplest and probably best explanation is that the two studies measure different things. The American one looks at what people say, the Dutch at what people do.

Chances are that if the Dutch shoppers had been asked their preferences they, like the Americans, would have voted no on taxes. No one actually likes taxes.

Chances are even better that if the Americans had been put in a simulation study and taxed, they too would have bought fewer sugar-sweetened beverages. No one is immune to market signals. Raise the price of something and demand for it declines.

The companies that make these drinks will continue to resist government regulation -- taxes, labeling, restrictions on marketing to children, anything. In the past they have proved formidable lobbyists.

The future may be different. A single can of soda contains the equivalent of eight to 10 teaspoons of sugar. The connections between these empty-calorie sugar bombs and obesity and between obesity and diabetes are becoming harder to deny.

The more government subsidizes medical care, the more taxpayers will lose patience with the argument that risking obesity is a matter of individual choice.

Taxes may be a long way off but if the poll is any guide more prominent labeling may be coming soon. If 65% favor it, how long can the lobbyists hold it off?

Urban Lehner

urbanity@hotmail.com

(ES)

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