Nanny State vs Daddy Market
By: Raj Patel
Bigger isn’t always better. By 2030, half of Americans won’t just be overweight, but obese. By then, nearly a fifth of our healthcare dollars will be spent treating the diseases that come with being bigger. Our lifestyles, rich in fat, sugar and inactivity, are creating a debt that’ll become the planet’s most expensive public health issue.
So what to do? One battle centers on how to make us better eaters and, especially, drinkers. Half of the sugar in US diets comes from sweetened beverages. Advocates of what gets called a soda-tax look like they’ve a strong case. Tax the sugar in the drink and the consumption goes down, right? Well yes, but a study from Northwestern University recently found that overweight people prefer diet drinks. You can almost hear the soda industry snickering.