Where 'Yes! to affordable groceries' really means no to a soft drinks tax

The soda industry is spending millions of dollars to push ballot measures that would permanently deny cities the ability to tax sugary drinks and other items

Standing in a grocery store produce aisle, her face shadowed with dread, the middle-aged girl speaks on to the digital camera and makes a plea for widespread decency.

“We shouldn’t be taxed on what we eat,” she says in a business that’s being broadcast throughout Washington State. “We have to eat to outlive, and if we have now to chop again on what we eat, that’s not going to be good — particularly for the aged.” In the run-up to Election Day, residents of Washington and Oregon have been bombarded with related messages from teams with names like “Yes! To Affordable Groceries.” The organisations have spent greater than $25 million on commercials that function plain-spoken farmers and penny-pinching mothers urging assist of poll measures that might prohibit municipalities from taxing meals gross sales.

But what most voters don’t know is that Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and different American beverage corporations are largely financing the initiatives — to not block taxes on staples like milk and greens however to choke off a rising motion to tax sugary drinks.

At a time of hovering childhood weight problems, and with a couple of in three adults obese, well being advocates say that soda taxes are an efficient option to dampen consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks. Nearly 40 nations now have them, together with seven cities within the United States, together with Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boulder, Colo.

Towns and cities throughout the nation have been mulling related strikes as a option to cut back sugary drink gross sales whereas elevating income for applications that goal to blunt the general public well being impression of coronary heart illness, hypertension and Type 2 diabetes, circumstances which were linked to diets heavy in sugar. 

© 2018 The New York Times News Service