Less sugar in soft drinks; prescribing sociality; cervical cancer screening and Indigenous women; pandemic pregnancy

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How could a tiered sugar tax reduce sugary drink consumption without hurting the industry?

Tegan Taylor 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Health Report podcast with me, Tegan Taylor, as Norman Swan takes a break this week. Coming up on the show, what effect did Melbourne's tough lockdown have on babies? Australia's on track to eliminate cervical cancer, except in this one critical group. How much healthier would we all be if doctors could prescribe social connection? And health reporter Lauren Roberts joins me to answer your questions in our mailbag section at the end of the show. Remember, you can email your questions and comments But first, what if you could reduce the amount of sugar in Australian diets at no cost to industry and generate revenue that could be spent on improving people's health? Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?

Tegan Taylor 0:50

Well, taxing sugary soft drinks is regularly suggested as a way to improve diets, but it's a tough sell politically because drink manufacturers argue it will hurt business. Well, a new initiative in the UK has used a tiered taxing system to encourage manufacturers to reduce the amount of sugar in drinks. And it looks like while people are buying less sugary drinks, somehow the drinks industry hasn't taken a financial hit. The results were recently published in the BMJ and Alexandra Jones from the George Institute for Global Health reviewed the paper and wrote an accompanying editorial. And I spoke to her earlier.

Unknown 1:24

Around 50 jurisdictions worldwide have some kind of health-related tax on sugary drinks. In Australia today, we know that the two major political parties have said they're not interested in this tax. And that's not that surprising because announcing a tax isn't really an election winning strategy. You know, for me, this study is just another piece in the puzzle which shows that it's not really about if, but when Australia would get a tax on sugary drinks.

Tegan Taylor 1:51

Why do you think it's inevitable?

Unknown 1:52

Because this is a really promising policy. It's one of the few policies as well in health where you actually can generate revenue that you can use to fund other health policies. And I think that's why we're seeing global interest in it. And the other main reason why is because they're working worldwide. And so this study out of the UK led by the researchers from Cambridge really showed that not only did it shift the way consumers are purchasing drinks and they're getting less sugar, but it also didn't harm industry profits. So that is an important piece of the puzzle when you're talking about getting the political will to put a tax on the soft drink industry.

Tegan Taylor 2:27

If they're not harming industry profits, like what are people buying instead? Are they healthy if people are buying, say, diet soft drinks instead?

Unknown 2:34

Yeah, so the really interesting thing about the UK tax is that it's a tiered tax. And that's where it's unique worldwide. So they put, I think it's a higher rate of taxes. You've got over 8% sugar in your drink. There's a low rate of tax if you're between 5% and 8%. And if you've got under 5% sugar in your drink, you don't pay any tax. And so that's what they've put a tax on the manufacturers. And what happened was manufacturers changed the products quite quickly, actually. And they cut a lot of sugar out of drinks so that they didn't have to pay so much tax. What it means is that consumers... Even if they still buy the old drinks they used to buy, so they might not have changed their behaviour at all, they're actually getting less sugar.

Unknown 3:11

And that's what this study showed. It showed they're both buying less of the high-tax drinks, but they're buying more of the no-tax drinks, which are things like bottled water and things that are lower in sugar. And that means they're getting less sugar in their diet overall.

Tegan Taylor 3:24

Right, so it becomes an incentive for companies to reformulate their products.

Unknown 3:28

Yeah, and one of the benefits of reformulation, like I said, is that it doesn't rely on changing consumer behaviour. So a lot of the sugar taxes around the world right now have been targeted at consumers and changing the price, the sticker price, you know, at the point of sale.