Sugary drinks are, for many teenagers, a major source of added sugars: a can of Coca-Cola is seven sugar cubes swallowed at once! In 2015, the WHO therefore encouraged countries to introduce taxes on sugary drinks. A team of researchers shows that in England this measure was effective especially among young girls from working-class backgrounds.
It was in March 2016 that the United Kingdom decided to tax sugary drinks. It must be said that the percentage of English children suffering from obesity is skyrocketing: 25.5% of students de 6e (against an average of 5% in France). At the end of adolescence, these young people consume an average of 70 grams of added sugars per day, whereas they should not consume more than 30 g (6 sugar cubes). And these added sugars mainly come from taking sodas. Boys are more affected than girls, and children from working-class backgrounds are more at risk than children from more affluent backgrounds.
Encourage manufacturers to reformulate soda recipes by reducing the sugar content
Unlike countries like Mexico, which have implemented a tax on sugary drinks to make them more expensive, the English tax was intended to encourage manufacturers to reformulate their recipes by reducing their sugar content: less there was sugar in the drinks, the lower the tax. In order to give manufacturers time to review the composition of their drinks, the English legislator had decided that the tax would only apply from April 2018. Thus, from the moment the tax was applied, the percentage of drinks containing more than 5g of sugar/100ml dropped from 49% to just 15% of sugary drinks (eligible for the tax) sold in the UK. One caveat, however: the tax only applies to soft drinks, typically sodas… Last specificity: part of the tax paid by manufacturers has also been passed on to the retail price (as in Mexico), which which has increased the cost of these drinks.
It was therefore interesting to take stock of the impact of the English tax on childhood obesity. It is to this task that the team from the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), led by epidemiologist Nina Rogers, has tackled this task. Indeed, since I reccomend them[…]
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