Dirty Tricks and Data: The Great Soda Wars, Part 2

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2018

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Over the past five years, more than forty cities and countries around the world have passed a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. These soda taxes are designed to improve public health—but do they? Or have all the doom-and-gloom predictions of the soda industry come true instead? Researchers have been crunching the data, and this episode we have the scoop: do soda taxes work? We’ve also got the story of how the soda industry is fighting back, with dirty tricks in Colombia and blackmail in California. Finally, are soda taxes even the best intervention for improving public health? We have brand-new results from a radical, world-first experiment in Chile. Listen in now as we reach the epic finale of the great soda wars! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this show comes from Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice produced with Fox Creative.
0:07.0	As state legislatures consider more than 500 anti-trans bills, the latest episode of Into the Mix asks,
0:13.0	how best to support and protect transgender youth.
0:16.0	Like Olioski, a young man who, despite growing up in a loving and supportive home,
0:20.0	felt the need for friendship with other trans and queer kids.
0:23.0	At just seven years old, he took initiative and built a lasting community.
0:27.0	That story, on Into the Mix, subscribe now.
0:57.0	I think it's absolutely outrageous. It's not going to change anybody's drinking habits or eating habits.
1:10.0	If anything, I know me personally. I'm going to stock up on all my sugary drinks before January 1st.
1:16.0	The measure won by a wide margin. It requires distributors of soft drinks and other sugary beverages to pay attacks of one cent per ounce.
1:25.0	Also, I feel that this is going to have an incredible statewide first and then definitely national impacted.
1:33.0	This, Dear listeners, is where we left you last episode in the city of Berkeley, California,
1:40.0	which is the city where Cynthia and I first met.
1:43.0	Ah, the memories. But today we're not going to stroll down that particular memory lane. We are going to stick to the soda lane today.
1:50.0	So we're in 2014. Berkeley has passed the nation's very first modern soda tax.
1:56.0	Some people are already planning to hoard the sugary stuff. And others are saying, this is the start of a wave.
2:02.0	So was it? Did other cities, even countries, catch that wave? This is part two of the great soda wars.
2:09.0	You're listening to Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history. I'm Cynthia Graber.
2:14.0	And I'm Nicola Twilly. And this episode, we're going to get to the bottom of the real question.
2:19.0	Do these soda taxes work? But also, what does work even mean in this context?
2:25.0	And why did the soda industry take the entire state of California hostage last summer?
2:30.0	What was going on? Not to mention their Durgie Tricks campaign in Colombia.
	...

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