The findings are difficult to contest:
Some of the previous research it summarises seems seriously unreliable. For example, a US study found that, ‘a 35% tax on sugar sweetened drinks … led to a 26% decline in sales’, but the sample was a single canteen and there was no follow-up to see if sales simply moved elsewhere.
More prominence was given to the finding that, ‘US studies predict a daily reduction in energy consumption of 29-209 kJ per person for a 20% tax’, yet even the highest reduction here is just 50 calories and it ‘assumed no substitution with other drinks’.
My own firm view is that:
Further details are available from the British Medical Journal citing BMJ2012; 344:e2931, or from its lead author Oiver Mytton
Richard Hall is chairman of Zenith International
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