
Poorest Americans drink a lot more sugary drinks than the richest - elorant
https://theconversation.com/poorest-americans-drink-a-lot-more-sugary-drinks-than-the-richest-which-is-why-soda-taxes-could-help-reduce-gaping-health-inequalities-142345
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PeterStuer
Over here we went through this approach with cigarettes decades ago. It
worked, but it took taxation in the range of multiple 100% before the effects
were real. Do you think your political system can carry this?

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colejohnson66
It’s not so much that it isn’t taxed enough (if that is the solution), but
that the corn syrup inside is so heavily subsidized, the end product ends up
being cheaper than it should.

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Nasrudith
The focus on cold sugary drinks makes me wonder if they are looking at the
displacing factors which also aren't good like alcohol or the infamously
syrupy Starbucks drinks. What precisely makes up the difference in
consumption? Is there any relation to water quality and taste?

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catsdanxe
I notice that all the litter I see on the ground when fishing/hiking is the
kind of garbage food that you can buy as gas stations.

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randtrain34
This isn't surprising given how cheap soda is.

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randyrand
Self control correlates with a lot of things.

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newen
So let's tax the poor Americans so they get even poorer.

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treeman79
I’m always torn on this one. I value low taxes and freedom, and personal
responsibility.

However it wasn’t until mid 20s when I started feeling weird after drinking
soda that I started realizing it was damaging my body.

It was many years laterthat I realized diet drinks were also bad.

Information is out there, but people are amazing at ignoring it.

I talk to kids all the time about sugar addiction. They understand it. They
also have zero sled control around it.

Things for them fall into the category of “this specific Brand of food/drink
is good/bad”

Other part is I grew up with food pyramid.

Being taught by government that carbs were good helped re-enforced a lot of
poor choices. Was a slow realization over mangy years that growers were using
government to pump out bad information.

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newen
Yeah, I think educating the population is the right approach. Of course,
mistakes like the food pyramid is very hard to overcome since at the time you
did have scientists advocating for the food pyramid, you have lobbyists
influencing the government, and various other corruption problems. Removing
government corruption is just something that has to be overcome in general.

But sin taxes are just a bad idea since you end up punishing people who are
doing the sin, can make the poorest people poorer which can potentially
spiral. Sure, the non-sinners get to feel good since they are punishing the
sinners, they can get money from the sinners to do good things with it. They
just feel a great sense of righteousness from it. For what? For making things
more expensive for poor people. Instead of reaching out to people and
educating them about why it's bad, etc.

