Can ‘sugar tax’ actually lower healthcare costs?

January 11, 2012 by Christian Schappel

It’s no secret American’s don’t take very good care of themselves. Well, researchers suggest a new tax may help change that.

Researchers from Columbia University, UC San Francisco and Virginia Tech calculated that a penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverag

es would significantly slash the instances of heart disease and strokes, according to a report in Health Affairs.

Surely, this would tick off a lot of soda fans.

But the researchers say the tax would reduce super-sweet beverage consumption by 15%, resulting in the average adult age 25 to 64 consuming nine fewer calories per day. That, they say, would result in enough weight loss to reduce the number of obese adults by 867,000 in 10 years.

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