By Richard Tardif
A new study on sugar says taxing sugar will not solve a thing. The real problem, it says, isn’t soft drinks themselves but overall calorie intake. This is another assumption that Calories In, Calories Out model actually works.
Calories In, Calories Out model is the constant mantra among nutritionists, trainers, or anyone in the health and fitness industry. It doesn’t take long into any conversation to see where many stand – “burning more than you take in” and “Eat less move more” or “Push back from the table” and then, “get to the gym, walk, or run”, and often, almost chronic-like, do this and you will lose weight.
Quantity trumps quality.
In real life, balancing energy includes a lot more than just the calories we eat and the calories we burn. The energy parts of the equation include: calories consumed; calories converted to energy and used in involuntary movement; calories used for heat generation and in response to external environmental exposures and temperatures; calories used with inflammatory and infectious processes; Calories adding our microbiome, or gut bacteria; calories used in growth, tissue restoration and numerous metabolic processes; calories used in voluntary movement; calories not absorbed in the digestive tract and matter expelled; calories stored as fat, and fat converted in the liver to glucose; and more. Each variable affects the others, varies with mass and age, involves complex hormonal and enzyme regulatory influences, and differs in efficiency.
So tax sugary drinks?
Governments, not surprisingly, in the battle against obesity, believe by setting public policy you will adjourn from ingesting sugar, another killer, if they tax it. Another killer, high fructose syrup, seems like a taxable option, as are trans fats, but public pressure and convincing studies have seen them banned.
Why would a tax on sugary drinks change anything? Good question, one that a 2016 health study commissioned by a dream team of Canada’s disease fighters answer by advising a tax on sugar drinks, an excise that researchers are predicting that, over 25 years, will reduce obesity rates, curb diabetes, and cut cancer—in turn saving 13,000 lives and perhaps $12 billion in health care costs.
The government’s cut, if it’s a 20 percent tax, is an estimated whopping $44 billion. This bill is still in the Senate for a third reading.
Taxing products with sugar is debatable as a deterrent to sugar consumption. Mexico, in 2013 implemented a tax of one peso per liter on sweetened beverages to battle its climbing obesity rates, a great part of directly connected to Coca Cola invasion. In the first year, the purchases of taxed beverages decreased by 12 percent, with bottled water purchases up by four percent. The average BMI in Mexico is still increasing, though, in fairness, at a slower rate.
Think about this for a moment? Are Mexicans compensating by eating other sugary foods? What about physical activity? How does poverty impact the purchase of sugary drinks? Other foods? Availability of junk food, and Coca-Cola?
According to Tamara Pearson of Alternet, a new shop, called Oxxo owned by Coca-Cola and open 24 hours, opens roughly every eight hours in Mexico. These local Oxxos stocks chips, biscuits, soft drinks, nachos, cigarettes, beer, bottled water and sweets.
According to the Oxxo website, these Coke owned stores have grown from 300 shops in Mexico in 1990 to nearly 16,000. Coca-Cola claims it serves 10-million people a day. Most people believe the severe obesity and diabetes problems in Mexico are down to local culture and individual choices. Pearson writes, “They would be wrong.” The Mexican indigenous food pyramid—known as the “sacred trinity”—revolves around three key foods: corn, beans and chili. Today? Mexico’s Indigenous community consumes soft drinks, candy and other junk food, as that is what Coca-Cola is pushing.
The tax has not worked.
Sarah Khatri,a Nutrition Consultant in Montreal, told Always Fit in 2017 the tax would be a good start but definitely more has to be done.
“All we do is conduct studies and discuss theories but we don’t act and we need to act,” she said. “I make the effort to feed my kids healthy foods and to keep healthy options in the house,” she said. “But my kids are bombarded with outside influences and they crave candy, junk foods and sugary drinks that other kids are consuming. It has gotten to the point where they will do anything to sneak some of these foods behind my back.”
Khatri calls for a collective stand leading to real change. “We must educate children and adults to take care of their bodies and eat well. Physical activity is tremendously beneficial but nutrition is paramount.
While examples are cited of successful implementation of sugary drink taxing –Mexico, Norway, Chili – there is no simple relationship between patterns of consumption and price, so targeting a specific food based on complex consumer purchasing patterns is a hit and miss. Brand-loyalists will buy in bulk, shop for sales or shop somewhere else – or pay for other products containing sugar.
This was actually a point made in the 2016 study. Pop sales in Canada decreased 27 percent over the 12-year period, but energy-drink sales rose a stunning 638 percent, while sales of sweetened coffee (coffee drinks with sugar added before purchase) jumped an astonishing 579 percent. The study didn’t come outright and say taxing was the only solution. An overall strategy to tapping out obesity includes restricting marketing to kids, improving food and menu labeling, providing better access to affordable healthy foods and water, increasing food literacy and preparation skills, as well as public education.
Just. Eat. Right.
Richard Tardif is an award-winning journalist, author and personal fitness trainer. Richard’s first book Stop the Denial: A Case for Embracing the Truth About Fitness, challenges, surprises, and inspires you to embrace a fitness lifestyle that will work in achieving your individual goals.
