More lies and self-serving manipulation of statistics from an industry desperately seeking to protect its revenue.
First, while fizzy drinks may well represent 2% of the total caloric intake in Great Britain, it is uncritical to claim that they represent 2% of the intake in an average diet. The reality is that consumption of fizzy drinks is not homogenous across the population. It tends to be concentrated within certain cohorts (particularly age cohorts), and the far more meaningful statistic would be the percentage of calorie intake among people who regularly consume fizzy drinks.
Secondly, there is a strong question about the impact of glucose-fructose in fizzy drinks. It is not simply a question of how many calories these drinks contribute, but also the source of these calories and the impacts on consumers.
Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing in that 2% figure that in anyway addresses the issue of artificially sweetened fizzy drinks. To what degree are so-called "diet" drinks actually contributors to obesity? To my mind, the jury is still out on this one--there simply hasn't been enough research done. But there are strong intuitive hypotheses about consumption behaviour, and how it is affected by the consumption of "no-risk" diet soft drinks.
From a medical and nutrition perspective, there are abundant good reasons to object to fizzy drinks. To my mind there is absolutely no reason that they should not be subject to the same level of scrutiny as alcohol, tobacco, transfats, sodium and other consumables that are linked to chronic health problems.
Taxation is an effective method of disincentivizing bad choices. Consumers are still free to make those bad choices, but they should properly be made to mitigate the impact that their choices have on public costs.
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--James
18 Feb 2013, 8:51 am
