Health Affairs

In a Web First paper published April 1 by Health Affairs, Jason Fletcher of Yale University and coauthors assess the effect of policies, such as vending machine restrictions and taxes on soft drinks, aimed at reducing sugared beverage consumption by students. They conclude that, “as currently practiced, neither vending machine restrictions nor soft drink taxes will lead to noticeable weight reduction in children.”

The paper by Fletcher, David Frisvold of Emory University, and Nathan Tefft of Bates College is one of two Health Affairs papers published yesterday on the challenges involved in combatting child obesity by reducing the consumption of soft drinks and other sugared beverages. In the second paper, Roland Sturm of the Rand Corporation and coauthors also conclude that current levels of taxation on soft drinks are inadequate to reduce beverage consumption and weight gain among children overall. 

Fletcher and his coauthors report that “typically imposed beverage taxes are neither large enough nor transparent enough to lead to meaningful behavioral change. Likewise, vending machine bans may redirect how children access soft drinks but not whether they access soft drinks,” because of the many other ways of obtaining such beverages.

To have a good chance at being successful, restrictions on soft drink access by students “must be comprehensive. Soft drinks should be completely removed from schools … no vending machines, no cafeteria sales, no access anywhere,” Fletcher and his colleagues say.  They add: “Our findings suggest that incremental changes in taxes on beverages will be largely ineffective,” but this “does not preclude the effectiveness of very large increases in taxation on these products, as have been proposed in New York, for example.”

The Limited Effect Of Existing Taxes On Soft Drinks. Some jurisdictions impose modest sales taxes on soda above and beyond the taxes on other grocery items, note Sturm and coauthors Lisa Powell, Jamie Chriqui  and Frank Chaloupka of the University of Illinois at Chicago. But existing differential sales taxes on soda, which are typically not much higher than 4 percent, do not significantly affect soda consumption and weight gain among children overall, Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation and coauthors report in a second Health Affairs Web First article published April 1. However, the authors did find statistically significant effects from differential soda taxes among subgroups of children — those who are heavier, have lower family income, are African American, or watch a great deal of television – particularly when soda is available at school.

If a soda tax is to curtail obesity among the overall population of children, the tax must be larger than existing taxes and should be structured as an excise tax, not a sales tax, to make it more visible to customers, Sturm and his colleagues write. They suggest that soda taxes in the range of existing levies could make a greater impact on obesity in the general population of children through the “dedication of the revenues they generate to other obesity prevention efforts rather than through their direct impact on children’s consumption of soda.”

This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 at 3:59 pm and is filed under All Categories, Children, Obesity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.