[ellyagg]

        Armed with three years of grocery shopping data, researchers found that total sugar sales are down by almost 20 percent, driven largely by falling soda purchases.

This isn't the right definition of success. The first minimal requirement for this to be a successful initiative is that the community lost weight overall. Or even gained weight, but more slowly than other communities.

If they could prove that it would be an incredible breakthrough in public policy, but I wouldn't bet on it. The science on the effect of sugar in the diet, sugar in and of itself, is far more eqquivocal than popular press would make you believe. It is exceedingly likely that people just ate more fat instead of sugar, which is plausibly just as dangerous as sugar when one is eating calories in excess of daily energy requirements.

[eagsalazar2]

"exceedingly likely"? Are you taking the "right" thing from these "equivocal" studies? Sounds like you too are mainly expressing your personal and unsubstantiated beliefs. Anyway, it would be pretty weird if decreasing consumption of sugary liquids on average increased the consumption of solid fats. I could see if you were a person doing hard daily labor you'd need to get crazy amounts of calories from somewhere, but you seem to have a theory that there is a caloric balance people will naturally maintain one way or the other, even when they are obese because of excessive consumption. If you know of a study that does show that consumption of fats increases when sugary drink consumption decreases, OMG, that would be really interesting, please share a link since I've only heard of studies suggesting exactly the opposite.

[ellyagg]

I think exceedingly is the right word here. We know from lots of research that mass diet interventions don't work. The body's autonomic processes for weight equilibrium are powerful. Stephan Guyenet is a good follow but doctors on Hacker News are only too happy to tell you the same thing.

[misja111]

>> It is exceedingly likely that people just ate more fat instead of sugar..

Why do you believe this is so likely? To be honest I don't see the connection. People notice in the supermarket that their favorite soft drink became more expensive, and decide to switch to eating an extra hamburger instead?

[AnthonyMouse]

You're hungry, so you eat something. When you run low on food, you go to the supermarket. Soda has increased in price, so you spend your soda money on something else. The next time you're hungry, that's what's in your kitchen.

This is only better if the thing you replace the soda with is better for you than the soda. Without any data on what that is, you don't know if that's true.

[imoverclocked]

Eating sugar makes your body/mind crave more sugar though… regardless of consumed calories.

[AnthonyMouse]

You don't even know that the replacement thing isn't still sugar. People can't spend their soda money on candy?

What if they spend it on cigarettes?

[tsimionescu]

Quote from start if thread said "total sugar sales are down by almost 20 percent, driven largely by falling soda purchases", so at least we know they didn't buy candy with the money.

[AnthonyMouse]

We know they didn't buy only candy with the money.

Maybe they bought candy and cigarettes.

[C19is20]

Evidence? I use sugar as an energy source. The more energy I use (or plan to use) the more sugar I need. That's a biological necessity, not a craving.

[ProfessorLayton]

They're talking about refined sugar, which your body does not "need", other carbohydrates can be turned into sugar by your body just fine.

[thomasfedb]

It's not that simple, sadly, if it was my job would be way easier. Yes, your cells (usually) run on glucose but that glucose can be produced from a variety of dietary sources including sugar (sucrose, fructose, etc), other carbohydrates, and fats.

Reduced dietary sugar (particularly the added sugars) is an amazing public health outcome.

[cycomanic]

That argument relies on the assumption that we only eat/consume if we need energy. Thank you you have just solved obesity, because nobody eats more than the energy they need!

[zaji]

I wouldn't be surprised if the alternatives that the citizens of Seattle are choosing are juices, fruit punches, iced teas, and other non-water beverages that are hardly better for you than soda.

[notfed]

I had to look this up and you're right: the "sugary drink tax" excludes fruit juice.

Also, Starbucks is exempt.

[inglor_cz]

Drinking soda doesn't make you full, though. If you are hungry and drink soda, you will eat something anyway. Probably the same amount, if not more (soda may actually provoke feelings of hunger).

[cycomanic]

To be honest your post sounds like it's coming straight out of the sugar industry PR book.

1. Increase burden of scientific evidence/cast scientific evidence in doubt by saying it's not conclusive enough

2. Assert that reducing sugar is not working because people will just get their calorie input otherwise.

3. Blame fat/daemonize fat, that's what the sugar industry has done very successfully over the last decades.

[cycomanic]

I just want to clarify I am not accusing the OP of being an industry shill, they might just simply adopting arguments seen at other places (and they are very common). And it is incredibly easy to be led into this, I certainly have done this as well and only realized later. It is an important thing to be aware of.

I'm rejecting the type of argument, because they do not foster an honest debate. It's really classic FUD.

[Edit]: some further clarification

[SilasX]

When your entire argument is “you’re wrong because this pattern-matches to what shills say”, then yes, you are accusing the OP of shilling and it would be better to say what specifically is wrong with the arguments.

[cycomanic]

But why is it not on the OP to give some evidence, instead of making wild assertions? This is the problem that comes up again and again in lots of these discussions (be it climate change, health...), someone posts some assertions without evidence, people respond by dismissing it because it has been debunked again and again and they then get accused in not engaging in an honest debate.

Why are you not accusing the OP of not having an argument?

[SilasX]

It is on the OP to back their arguments! And I would have preferred a better argument there with better backing.

But the thing is, it was an argument, in terms of specifying a logical mechanism by which the conclusion would be unwarranted, even if the evidence doesn't bear it out in the way OP needs. And it's on you to make more substantive contributions than "you pattern-match to bad people" if you're going to respond at all.

I replied to you rather than the OP because your comment more obviously doesn't belong here. A culture of "you're wrong because you sound like bad people" is more toxic to this forum that a dubious counterpoint. (cf. "You know who else went vegetarian?")

[caskstrength]

I don't drink sugary "soda" drinks at all, so I don't have a horse in the race, but I think it is a valid question to ask whether the tax really decreased sugar consumption or people just bought bunch of cookies instead.

[cycomanic]

Directly taken from the article:

>But the researchers didn’t stop there. They also wanted to know if shoppers might be getting sugar from other foods instead—a possibility that soda tax opponents have argued would become commonplace. Were Seattle residents simply swapping out Mountain Dew for candy bars? To find out, the researchers also analyzed sales data for untaxed drinks like flavored milk, sweets—which the team defined to include candies, desserts, and baked goods—as well as loose sugar. Over the course of months, Powell’s team painstakingly coded each product sold by its sugar content, and then calculated just how much sales of these products changed after the soda tax went in place.

>They found a slight increase in sugar consumed through untaxed drinks in 2018, which then dissipated in 2019. They also noticed a small, sustained increase in sugar consumed through sweets. In both cases however, those upticks were not large enough to overcome the significant reduction in sugar sold through taxed drink

So they did exactly what you asked for and found that while there was a small increase in sugar intake through other means, it was much less than the decrease from reduced sugar intake from soda.

[caskstrength]

Well, technically that is what OP asked and I just chimed in to defend it as a valid question. So did the community became less overweight overall? (otherwise what is the point)

[renw0rp]

Or what are the effects of artificial sweeteners...

[inglor_cz]

Neither OP nor a sugar industry shill, but it may well be possible that we need to cut down on zero calorie soda as well.

Even though zero calorie soda does not directly contain any energy, it may mess up our feelings of hunger and make us more hungry. [0] So far, scientific studies indicate that people who switch from sugary soda to zero calorie drinks do not lose weight [1].

Feelings of hunger and satiety are complicated, driven by hormones and only somewhat correlated with total energy intake.

[0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/medical-myths-all-...

[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/zero-weight-loss-from-ze...

Edit: downvoted for what? Linking to Harvard health blog? If zero calorie soda had a slimming effect, we would have seen it a long ago, it is not exactly a new invention.

[netizen-936824]

People get angry and down vote when they don't like what you have to say, rather than making a point why you may be wrong.

[hellisothers]

I’m tempted to downvote mainly because at best this is besides the point and at worst is a distraction from the point.

[inglor_cz]

I don't feel this is beside the point. Human nutrition is complicated and tax incentives based on simple rules may have unintended consequences downstream.

[SilasX]

Yes, and sometimes fools say the sky is blue. That doesn’t make it red.

[cycomanic]

Do you have actual arguments? The reasons for me giving these points above is that this way of arguing has become standard PR practice from industries that want to prevent outcomes that would be detrimental to their bottom line (tobacco sugar, oil...). They actually are not interested in a debate that finds the actual truth. In fact they often know that the facts are correct from their own studies, but want to cast doubt on them nevertheless.

I'm perfectly ok with someone giving actual arguments (ideally backed up by some scientific evidence) why that study might get the correct result. I didn't even make any judgement about the validity of the original conclusions.

[SilasX]

Your “actual argument” is to (in contravention of HN guidelines) impugn motives and accuse others of shilling. Once there’s a substantive discussion to be had, I’ll join it!

[cycomanic]

Honest question, what are you trying to achieve?

[SilasX]

Productive exchange on the merit of the ideas here, as opposed to scoring good PR against the bad people.

[xboxnolifes]

A tax on sugar's job is to reduce sugar sales. So it's the right metric to see if the tax itself is doing what it's supposed to do. What you seem to be arguing is on a metric of if the tax should have been implemented in the first place.

i.e. If the actual goal was reducing weight, then the obvious thought is all weight increasers should be taxed, not just sugar.

[chrismcb]

The proponents of the law claimed they were doing it to fight obesity, to reduce weight. But considering that a per ounce metric is probably the wrong thing, and they didn't tax the worst drink, the milkshake, they didn't really do this to attack obesity.

[seanmcdirmid]

Also, Seattlites aren’t exactly obese on average, it would be difficult to measure a change vs if some small Texan town did this.

A lot of richer people in Seattle avoid sugar as a matter of health, but they pay for it since non-sugar sweetener drinks like super coffee are more expensive. The sugar tax is more aimed down market.

[david38]

There are more benefits to lowering sugar than weight loss. Diabetes and its related issues for example.

When one drops sugar consumption, it’s generally not replaced by fat. That’s not how obesity usually works.

[tjr225]

Lol, that might be tough as Seattle is already ranked as one of the countries healthiest cities.

[chii]

so if people being fat is the problem, why not target it at the root - a fat tax?

i'm jesting of course, but the modern tax system tend to be both a revenue generator, while also being a behaviour modifier, often to the detriment of each of those objectives. I think root cause targeting, rather than try to "incentivize" at the edges, is more effective a social policy.