The Sugar Tax

G'day, Freedom. We're particularly fond of it in the West. A lot of our national identities are tied up in some way or another to the concept of being "free" people. And we get it. Being free is cool. But when is the government justified in curtailing some of those freedoms? The answer to that question might be easy when we're talking about harming another person--I think we mostly agree not being free to punch anybody you want in the face at random, is probably a good thing. But what happens when we talk about food? Things get a little more tricky here. Many people believe that they should be able to eat whatever they please, whenever they want, consequences be damned. But the truth is, our Western diet kind of sucks. And it particularly sucks at keeping us healthy. Most of us are aware of this in an abstract way, but there's increasing empirical evidence that a diet high in refined sugar and other processed food is quite terrible for people on many different levels. Which brings us to our news story of the day: the UK's "sugar tax." In 2018 the government in the UK, which has one of the highest childhood obesity rates in the world, imposed a tax on sugary drinks to try and help reduce the number of its severely overweight children. 

The UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy, which is what the tax is called, introduced a tiered taxation system that charged £0.24/L for drinks with more than 8g of sugar per 100ml. And £0.18/L for drinks that had between 5g-8g of sugar per 100ml. And  a recent study by the University of Cambridge has come out with interesting findings. The tax has resulted in the reduction of per week sugar consumption in UK households, which is a decent feat in and of itself. However, it also has been correlated to the reduction in obesity levels in some segments of the study by 8-10%.That seems like pretty good results for a tax that only increased the price of sugary drinks by a few cents.But is it FREE enough?