World News @lemmy.ml alphacyberranger @sh.itjust.works 4 days ago

The amount of sugar consumed by children from soft drinks in the UK halved within a year of the sugar tax being introduced, a study has found.

www.theguardian.com Children’s sugar consumption halved since tax announcement, study finds

Experts say success soft drinks shows expansion of tax to cover other foods and drinks is a ‘no brainer’

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/22143130

27 comments

So is there study that would have looked into how much of the sugar was just replaced with other sweeteners? Or how much soda consumption itself has changed?
- What's wrong with other sweeteners?
  
  Most sweeteners have their own health risks. Generally probably still better than sugar, but just moving to sweeteners isn't all sunshine and happiness.
  
  Carcinogenic like aspartame, and still activate glucose receptors (that's why they are sweet) so still cause insulin resistance etc.
Imagine what would happen if the government actually regulated and restricted sugar.
- Imagine if people gave a shit about what they consumed
  
  People in despair don't care about much at all. Nevermind this shit is addictive, psychologically manipulative, it also acts as a little dopamine hit in an otherwise miserable life. Obesity deaths are deaths of despair.
  
  Imagine if people wanted to live.
  
  Imagine if people weren't constantly bombarded with expertly tailored marketing campaigns designed to psychologically manipulate them into consuming things that are unhealthy.
Great, now all the undernourished kids with poor parents are going to drink water instead and lose weight to dangerously unhealthy levels.

According to The Guardian (same source as this article), the number of children in food poverty in the UK is 4 million. 15% of UK households went hungry in January. Now, soda isn’t the smartest source of calories in a kid’s diet. It’s expensive and low in other nutrients. But kids aren’t always smart. A poor kid thinks “I’m hungry, I have a few pounds, there’s a vending machine, problem solved”. If the soda is too expensive, that doesn’t mean the kid is going to go to Aldi, buy some potatoes, and roast them for a cheap and nutritious meal. They’re a kid! It means they’ll pay more or go without. Which means you’re making the poverty and malnutrition problem worse.
- The Health Survey for England 2021 estimates that 25.9% of adults in England are obese and a further 37.9% are overweight but not obese.
- The tax only applys to soda. Fruit juces chocolate bars and all the other crap in vending machines is the same tax as always.
  
  While still crappy calories, they are all better than soda. As a % of the carbs is not refined sugar.

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