Posts Tagged ‘sugar-sweetened beverages’

Objectivity is having a rough time these days. This is true whether the subject is politics, policy, or even a study in a medical journal. Very often, believing is seeing. Not the other way around. A new study on soda policy in JAMA Internal Medicine provides a case in point. Improving Metabolic Profile Very Effortlessly […]

Everything is effective. Give somebody a potent drug and it will surely do something to them. Enact a health policy and it will surely have an effect. In fact, the effects will certainly be many – both desired and undesired. But for both drugs and health policies, the target is health. So we’d best be […]

Fruit juice, soda, cigarettes, and vapes. They’re all killing us, but we keep consuming them. Tobacco and sugar are close neighbors on the slippery slope to poor health and premature death. Right? Well, not really. News and journal articles might give you an impression that sugar and tobacco are very similar bad actors. We hear […]

Yep. We’re just about done here. Soda taxes are highly effective, and Philly has proved it. Classic economic price-demand curves work, especially in a city with a lot of poverty. If you tax soda and raise the price, sales go down. Philly obesity and diabetes rates will follow. A hot new publication in JAMA proves […]

Victory is right around the corner. It’s not easy, but the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Heart Association (AHA) have finally figured out how to win the war on childhood obesity. They’ve published a joint position paper that calls for taxing sugar-sweetened beverages and curbing advertising for such products. Benjamin Winig of […]

Scientists at the University of California at San Francisco have discovered that tobacco companies once owned food and beverage companies. Philip-Morris bought General Foods in 1985 and then Kraft in 1988. This arrangement lasted until 2007 when Philip-Morris sold all of its ownership of Kraft and the old General Foods brands. RJ Reynolds acquired Pacific […]

We have some surprising days ahead in the war on sugar. We now have a decade of it behind us. So people all over the world are responding. Canada offers us a new snapshot that tells us how it’s going there. If you believe the self reports, sugar in Canada is down. But the picture is […]

Is this a millennial dream? Or instead, a caricature? Recess is coming at us with a distinctive vibe for sparkling water – infusing it with hemp extract and “adaptogens.” The brand promises balance and clarity. Can this be what’s replacing soda for generations to come? Tapping All the Trends In case you haven’t noticed, big soda’s […]

Who pays and who benefits from a national sugar-sweetened beverage tax? A new paper in AJPH asked this question and demands our attention. Unfortunately, instead of offering objective answers, we find only wobbly math used to make a point about the hypothetical cost-effectiveness of an SSB tax. A Complex Model to Make a Simple Point […]

The plan to “make school lunches great again” is complete. The USDA has announced its final plans to lower the nutrition standards for school cafeterias. That means more sodium, more white bread, and more sugar-sweetened milk will be A-OK with the USDA. Completely Unsurprising Anyone who’s surprised by this needs to get out from under […]