LibGuides: VCE English Issues: Sugar tax

Sugar industry: background

ABC Four Corners: five articles to get you informed on sugar and Big Sugar’s role in food policy
Prior to the airing of an ABC Four Corners program about the sugar industry, The Conversation has published links to five articles that provide background to the sugar industry and their influence surrounding policy making.

To tax or not to tax

The sugar debate: To tax or not to tax
The argument over a tax on sugary drinks continues, despite the Federal Government’s refusal to implement one.

Sugar tax is no cure for obesity
Obesity is a major social challenge. There’s no hiding from it, and there’s no way to ignore the numbers on obesity’s rise and rise: a record 63 per cent of Australian adults are overweight or obese, up from 57 per cent 20 years ago. One in four children is overweight or obese. We’re not the worst in the world — that title goes to the US — but we’re in the top five.

Sugar tax: other countries

UK: Sugar tax is already producing results
So are retailers and manufacturers in revolt and is the Treasury looking forward to a tax windfall to help prop up the public finances?
The answer, intriguingly, is no to both questions.
Rather than waiting to see how customers react to the tax - known officially as the soft drinks industry levy - companies have already started altering their recipes.
Could UK’s New ‘Sugar Tax’ Work in the US?
Early studies suggest that soda taxes might help reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.
For example, Popkin and colleagues have found that purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages fell by 8.2 percent on average in the two years following the implementation of a tax in Mexico.
Lessons from Mexico: ‘Our sugar tax hasn’t worked’, says beverage association
The special tax applied to soft drinks in Mexico has been ineffective in reducing obesity, but effective in increasing product prices and tax collection.

Sugar tax

Australian sugary drinks tax could prevent thousands of heart attacks and strokes and save 1,600 lives
(April 14, 2016) Background information about the effect of a tax on sugary drinks and the impact in Australia.
Sugar tax and the power of big business: How influence trumps evidence in politics
Sweet power: the politics of sugar, sugary drinks and poor nutrition in Australia
Australia is getting fatter and more unhealthy — and one industry is working overtime to make sure nothing changes.
Sugar tax: why health experts want it but politicians and industry are resisting
The Australian Medical Association has kicked off debate again, but how does a sugar tax operate? And do they even work?
Don't tax sugar, tax these foods
Australia currently has no obesity strategy, yet over 60 per cent of the Australian population is overweight or obese, and that number looks set to rise to 80 per cent by 2025.
more...less...
While the causes of obesity are complex, there is no doubt that drastic changes to our diets over the past 50 years have had a significant impact. Particularly, the increase in availability (and associated decrease in cost) of processed foods high in saturated fats and added sugars, and low in vitamins, minerals, complex carbohydrates, and proteins, which is becoming a growing problem not only in wealthy developed nations like Australia, but also in developing countries where threats to food security heighten the reliance on food corporations as both a nutrition and income source.