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Lawmakers call for endocrinologists’ support for sugary beverage legislation
A California legislative proposal that would require safety warning labels on sugary drinks has put practicing endocrinologists in a position to shift public health outside of daily practice.
“Endocrinologists are the holders of critical information, the experts who know what most people in this country do not know about the unique harm liquid sugar is doing to drive the diabetes and obesity epidemics,” Harold Goldstein, DrPH, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, told Endocrine Today. “There is nothing more important than to have endocrinologists let legislators know that this is vital information for their patients.”
In early April, just 2 months after it was introduced, the Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Safety Warning Act (SB 1000) made its way through the initial committee. It has until the end of the legislative calendar to pass.
The bill is co-sponsored by the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, California Medical Association, California Black Health Network and Latino Coalition for a Healthy California. The language of the warning label was developed with input from a national panel of nutrition and public health experts.
The safety warning reads, “Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay.” The panel determined that placement on beverages with added sweeteners containing ≥75 calories per 12 oz — encompassing sports and energy drinks, vitamin waters and soda.
Bottles, cans, vending machines, dispensers and restaurateurs could all be required to display the universal sugary drink labeling by July 2015, after a 6-month grace period.
“This is a first-in-the nation legislation,” Goldstein said. “It’s about consumers’ right-to-know. When it passes in California, we are confident that it will spread across the country like wildfire.”
Policy impact
In a study recently published in Preventive Medicine, Sarah Gollust, PhD, of the division of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and colleagues asked a nationally representative sample of 1,319 US adults aged 18 to 64 years how palatable they found policies to reduce sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption.
Front-of-package nutrition labels and removing SSBs from school environments garnered greater support — 65% and 62%, respectively — compared with only 26% support for portion size restrictions and 22% for taxes.
“The results provide policymakers and advocates with insights about the political feasibility of policy approaches to address the prevalent consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages,” Gollust said in a press release.
California’s proposed safety warning label bill harkens to the launch of the anti-tobacco campaign. Gollust’s fellow researcher, Jeff Niederdeppe, PhD, from Cornell University and an expert on the effectiveness of large-scale anti-tobacco media campaigns, said it is the right platform.
“Increasingly, health advocacy groups have focused attention on the behavior of the beverage industry, highlighting their marketing tactics aimed at young people and their heavily funded effort to oppose regulation,” Niederdeppe said in a press release. “Similar to the patterns we’ve seen over the years with big tobacco companies, people with negative views of soda companies are in favor of stricter regulations on their products.”
Taxing SSBs
In another study, Eric A. Finkelstein, PhD, from Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore, and colleagues explored potential weight loss, based on reduced caloric purchases of beverages and foods, after an SSB tax that aligns with California’s proposed plan.
The researchers looked at data from the National Consumer Panel, a representative sample of US households that scan their store-bought purchases, for the 19 categories most likely to be purchased: three SSBs, four other beverages and 12 foods. The calorie, fat and sodium content was merged when Universal Product Codes were scanned, and aggregated by quarters, resulting in a sample of 114,336 observations from 28,584 households.
The findings showed such a tax would result in a decrease of 24.3 store-bought calories per day per person, which would translate into an average weight loss of 1.6 lb during the first year and 2.9 lb in the long run. “If the revenue raised from these taxes were used to further fund obesity prevention efforts, the weight losses could be even greater,” the researchers wrote.
There are 35 states that already have a sales tax on soda, ranging from 1 to 7 cents, Y. Claire Wang, MD, ScD, assistant professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said in an interview with Endocrine Today.
Although that added cost is likely too low to shift consumer habits, a study conducted by Wang and colleagues revealed the potential impact of a nationwide penny-per-ounce excise tax.
The researchers estimated consumption of SSBs would decrease 15% among adults aged 25 to 64 years. From 2010 to 2020, estimated cases of diabetes would drop by 2.6%; there would be 95,000 fewer coronary heart events, 8,000 fewer strokes and 26,000 fewer premature deaths. That would total $17 billion in avoided medical costs, besides the $13 billion already generated in revenue, according to the study.
“Taxes are never popular, so it really depends on how you work with local communities and appeal to leaders in trying to get this through, and of course different stakeholders will have different points to make,” Wang said. “On the plus side, there are a lot of voices on healthy communities. I think it requires a lot of political wisdom and real emphasis on the health benefit.” — by Allegra Tiver