GLOBAL PROBLEM

Bloomberg’s proposal follows a series of failures by individual U.S. states and local governments to introduce new taxes on sugary drinks. Residents of Richmond, California, will vote in November on a proposed 1-cent-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. The city would use the estimated annual proceeds of $2 million to $8 million for soccer fields, school gardens and health programs for children.

Governments abroad have already begun to embrace taxes and other regulation on foods that contribute to weight gain.

Denmark imposed a tax last year on foods containing more than 2.3 percent saturated fats - lifting the costs of butter by 30 percent and a bag of chips by 8 percent. A year earlier, the country had raised excise taxes on chocolate, ice cream, sugary drinks and candy by 25 percent.

In 2011, Hungary started taxing prepackaged foods high in sugar, salt or caffeine - including carbonated sugary drinks, cookies, jams and instant soups. Finland introduced a tax the same year on sweets, chocolates and ice cream, and raised its existing excise tax on soft drinks.

Belgium, Ireland, Romania, Italy and the United Kingdom have considered similar measures as obesity rates among their citizens catch up to the United States.

Even Tasmania, whose isolation has protected many animal species from extinction since the Ice Age, is succumbing to fast food, said Dr. Gary Kilov, a primary care doctor from the Australian state who attended the diabetes meeting.

“There has been a doubling of childhood obesity in the last decade, and this pretty much reflects what’s happening in all the Western world,” he said. “Food is cheap, and lives are busy, so we opt for convenience over activity.”

Australia now has one of the world’s lowest smoking rates after emulating Bloomberg’s earlier ban on the practice in bars and restaurants, Kilov said. But the New York big-soda ban does not go far enough, he added.

“To select soft drinks as the sole target of obesity is laughable; it’s just fiddling at the edges,” he said. “A better option would be an empty-calories tax on sugary drinks and high-fat foods and putting that money back into health and education. Tax your french fries, your doughnuts and ice cream.”

Dr. Saleem Qureshi, an endocrinologist from Islamabad, Pakistan, said he wholeheartedly supported Bloomberg’s big-soda restriction and expected his country to follow suit.

“It is time for the government to interfere,” Qureshi said. “It’s not about the words ‘sugar’ or ‘diabetes’ - it’s about the heart attacks, the strokes, the kidney failure, the blindness and the amputations that come from diabetes. And it’s hitting at a younger and younger age.”

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By Ransdell Pierson
PHILADELPHIA