Adding an excise tax of $0.01 per ounce to sugar-sweetened beverages has the potential to reduce obesity rates by 2.4% in adolescents and 1.6% in children, according to new research.
"It reduces obesity while generating significant revenue for additional obesity prevention activities," Alyson Kreutensen of Partners for Prevention in Washington, D.C., and her colleagues said, citing an estimate that such a tax would have generated $13.25 billion in 2010 (Am. J. Prev. Med. 2014 Aug. 28 [doi:10.1016/ampre.2014.07.011]).
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Taxes on sugar-sweetened drinks may be the key to reducing childhood and adolescent obesity rates.
The researchers analyzed three policies aimed at reducing childhood obesity – the excise tax, after-school physical activity programs, and a ban on child-directed fast food television advertising – looking at each policy’s impact on diet or physical activity, as well as body mass index, on a simulated school-aged population in 2032.
The physical activity program fared the best, reducing obesity among the most children aged 6-12 years (a 1.8-percentage point decrease), with the advertising ban having the smallest effect of the three policies examined (a 0.9-percentage point decrease). The excise tax, however, was cited as the best option because it also would help reduce sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in adults and raise revenue.
An excise tax "would also reduce obesity among adults who consume sugar-sweetened beverages, does not require substantial federal funding to implement (unlike the afterschool policy) and would not face the legal hurdles that new regulations often encounter," they said.
The researchers also predicted that the excise tax would have a greater impact for black and Hispanic populations because whites "had higher income levels and are therefore less affected by a price increase, and had a lower baseline rate of obesity."
The investigators reported no relevant conflicts of interest. The study was funded by the Aetna Foundation.