If you’re like me and enjoy the (very) occasional sugary drink the suggested new ‘sugar tax’ might leave you with a rather a sour taste in your mouth. The proposed sugar tax is something that has discussed for a few years within the UK, and it seems as though a sugar tax to soft drinks specifically will be hitting the UK at some point; more information can be found here. The article claims that the tax will be imposed according the volume of sugar-sweetened drinks a company produces, meaning the sugar tax will only be targeting drinks. Therefore, that other treats with high quantities of sugar such as chocolate will be excluded from this scheme. This got me thinking is this a wise way to tackle obesity, and where do we stop? Fat tax? Saturates tax?
I, for one, know I drink to many soft drinks as it is but I’m still unsure how I feel towards this suggested tax. One the one hand obesity is becoming a problem – according to the NHS around 36-38% of 11-15 year olds are either overweight or obese. Which is alarmingly high, at least in my opinion. And while the article states obesity rates have stabilised over the past few years 37% of teenagers being obese suggests quite clearly precautions need to be implemented to help combat this huge population of overweight teenagers within the UK. But even with this in mind If a person wants sugary drinks they will buy them regardless of the price, I know I still will – Denmark’s recent ‘fat tax’ law proves this; the implementation of this law was described as a ‘bureaucratic nightmare’ with the Danish people resorting to travelling to Germany and Sweden to get their fatty fix! And with this in mind I’m not sure how well received this law will be within the UK – although I doubt I will be travelling to France for a can of Irn-Bru!
However recent research has gone to some lengths to prove to us a sugar tax may in fact be useful after all. Briggs et al (2013) modelled how the effect of a 20% sugary drink tax would fare on the UK population – with the results showing this tax could decrease the population on obese people by up to 1.3% with the great impact suggested to be on young people, which suggests that this law has potential and should probably be trailed, I wouldn’t mind spending a few extra pence if it helps the population in the long run!
Overall, there are strong arguments for either side and we won’t know if it works until it is tested on us as a nation, and anything that cuts us from drinking drinks with high sugar volumes is a good thing right? Or I could always switch to diet…
References
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35824071
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/01January/Pages/Child-obesity-rates-are-stabilising.aspx
Stafford, N. (2012). Denmark cancels “fat tax” and shelves “sugar tax” because of threat of job losses.
Briggs, A. D., Mytton, O. T., Kehlbacher, A., Tiffin, R., Rayner, M., & Scarborough, P. (2013). Overall and income specific effect on prevalence of overweight and obesity of 20% sugar sweetened drink tax in UK: econometric and comparative risk assessment modelling study.
A Consuming Blog 
This blog was really interesting, always heard about the sugar tax but never really read much into it. I have however found research which suggests that an increase in price by just 10% can reduce risky eating behaviour by 7.3% (Cornelsen et al., 2015) so I think an increase by 20% is sure to, at the very least, reduce sugary drink consumption by a marginal amount. But I also think that more should be done to reduce the amount of advertising of sugary drinks to really help the fight against obesity
Cornelsen, L., Green, R., Turner, R., Dangour, A. D., Shankar, B., Mazzocchi, M., & Smith, R. D. (2015). What Happens to Patterns of Food Consumption when Food Prices Change? Evidence from A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis of Food Price Elasticities Globally. Health economics, 24(12), 1548-1559.
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really enjoyed reading this blog as I am also have a weakness for the odd sugary drink, i guess the effect of the sugar tax is simply down to the demand for sugary drinks, if the demand is high enough they will still pay extra for them regardless of how much it is, however i think that the likelyhood is that sales of sugary drinks will decrease due to the increased price due to the sugar tax.
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Hi. It’s a really interesting topic and one I was considering for my blogs. I do think our behaviour would change if a sugar tax were imposed. There’s evidence from the tobacco industry and also more recently from the plastic bag levy that introducing an aversive stimulus (i.e. a price rise) modifies behaviour through negative reinforcement, i.e. we would buy sugary drinks less frequently or switch to a healthier alternative. I also think the very act of adding a sugar tax highlights the negative effects of sugary drinks and would therefore increase the negative associations with the category. I imagine this would reduce the value & reward delivered to consumers of sugary drinks and could be replaced by guilt.
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