What about an added sweetener tax instead?

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Once again the debate over a “soda tax” is going strong here in New York and throughout the entire nation. The pros and cons of this tax are complicated but something needs to be done. Except what is being floated around here and by many governments in a nation of drinkable disasters is really both a natural sweetener tax and a promotion of artificial sweeteners.

The embattled Governor David Paterson proposed it last year as an “Obesity Tax” before public outcry temporally crushed it. The outcry was over this tax being a regressive tax that poor people would be forced to pay with little thought about parents telling their children “No you cannot have 87¢ for a Coke but you can have 75¢ for a Diet Coke.” When diet sodas are exempt, since budget conscious shoppers will find drinks with artificial sweeteners and other chemicals to be money saving choices, it translates to government preaching better living through chemicals.

This tax seemed dead until Michael Bloomberg began presenting it as what it really is, an income generator. Now with Bloomberg’s endorsement this tax is getting the “full court press” again and Paterson is holding multiple meeting on taxing sugary drinks. Meanwhile there are dueling TV ads here now but little thought about what is being taxed to curtail empty calories through a straw. In this battle of interest groups  is anyone actually thinking?

Of course diet drinks might sound harmless enough but a study in 2005 claimed that diet soda drinkers not only gained weight;

The findings come from eight years of data collected by Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. Fowler reported the data at this week’s annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San Diego.

“What didn’t surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity,” Fowler tells WebMD. “What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher.”

In fact, when the researchers took a closer look at their data, they found that nearly all the obesity risk from soft drinks came from diet sodas.

Bloomberg for all of his faults does seem to make an honest effort towards improving New Yorkers health and new sources of income that can be put to many good uses are desperately needed. Since there is no evidence to be found of anyone mentioning the drawbacks of promoting diet soda, public health policy being set by myopic calorie counting could be an oversight.

Since this new tax seems to be taking roots all over the public debate should move beyond “loss of small business” vs. “it worked for cigarettes.”

There is another serious issue here.  As you probably know from reading soda ingredients this is not really a sugar tax, this is a high fructose corn syrup tax. HFCS is rarely scrutinized and has never once been mentioned by the politicians in this debate. Mayor Bloomberg should consider the part played by the federal government in making soda cheaper than milk, juice and even bottled water. Federal subsidies play a big part in fast food restaurants offering bottomless soda cups.

While both sugar and HFCS represent empty calories, considering whether a substance so heavily subsidized should be curtailed by a state tax can give you a headache. The fact that a portion of our federal payroll tax is devoted to making soda as cheap as possible isn’t really an argument against paying the state so we can consume it but it seems sort of crazy. Local politicians addressing what Washington has been doing to promote obesity would seem to make better sense than using their positions so that voters will pay once to make soda cheap and again to make it expensive.

This tax to save Americans from their obesity has been floated around on the fed level, even endorsed by our Diet Coke loving president. But since lobbyist make all the decisions there the best we can hope for is federally subsidized sodas that are taxed by our states and cities.  

Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado signed bills to tax candy and soda last month and Illinois has found a sweet source of state revenue. California is considering legislation and Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia wants twice as much as Mayor Bloomberg.

But this exemption for diet drinks is troublesome. Even if studies like this one are exaggerating;

In support of this possibility, a recent study found that rodents fed the artificial sweetener saccharin lost the ability to accurately regulate calorie intake and gained weight. Another concern is that habitual consumption of artificial-sweetened beverages may “infantilize” taste preferences, especially among children. Compared to the hyper-intense sweetness of these beverages, fruit may seem bland and vegetables may seem inedible, adversely affecting overall diet quality. Indeed, two observational studies have linked artificially sweetened beverage consumption to higher risk for obesity, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

Even if these artificial or chemically adjusted natural calorie free sweeteners have been tested enough, as this revenue generator spreads across the nation the message from cash strapped parents to their children will be that “aspartame is good and sugar is bad” has got to be a hindrance to children developing good eating habits.

Simply taxing added sweeteners no matter what the caloric value would be the more sensible solution.  The exemption for products that contain seventy percent natural fruit juices should be for 100 percent natural juices because 29 percent HFCS apple juice will become an overnight sensation.

If the success of the cigarette tax is going to be quoted over and over;

“It’s an interesting experiment and one that’s worth trying,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “The theory behind this approach is that it worked for cigarettes, and that soft drinks are demonstrably related to obesity in children.”

Than the cost to consumers should be set somewhere much higher than just some nickel and dime tax. A pack of cigarettes in NYC cost over ten bucks. One penny per ounce is just going to be government income where many people are concerned and will only modify the behavior of people on tight budgets.      

On Monday this new local tax had come up everywhere. The NBC Nightly News video covered how this tax will reduce American’s weight and Katie Couric pointed out that New Yorkers favor this new tax while covering the war on soft drinks bubbling out of our schools.

Both of these stories mentioned a public relations victory for the soda industry because they played a role in reducing soda consumption in schools. President Clinton was the real player and he gave a fun answer when an American Beverage Association representative tried to get him to make a commitment against a soda tax;

“It’s dumb for me to get involved in (the tax) debate when I can save God knows how many kids lives by making other agreements.”

I’ll get involved. I think a soda tax is good but not as a promotion of artificial sweeteners. How many years was sodium cyclamate considered safe? Not to mention that this government lost the battle to ban Saccharin while others succeeded. So why promote the unnatural?