Sometimes an idea takes a while to catch on.
In a 1994 op-ed essay for The New York Times, Kelly D. Brownell proposed taxing junk food. The response, he recalls, was immediate and powerful. Among the outraged was Rush Limbaugh, who deemed Mr. Brownell a member of the “high-fat gestapo.” A few furious snackers wrote letters to the Yale psychologist noting that they knew where he lived.
What a difference 15 years make. With obesity now an acknowledged national problem, the notion of taxing junk food doesn’t seem so radical. These days Mr. Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, is focusing his efforts on sugary drinks, which he contends are a significant contributor to the ever-expanding American waistline. And more than a dozen cities and states, including New York and California, are considering so-called soda taxes.
His idea works like this: The government adds a penny-per-ounce excise tax to all sugar-sweetened beverages, like carbonated sodas and sports drinks. Because excise taxes are often passed along directly to consumers, people who buy those drinks will notice the price jump. According to Mr. Brownell’s research, the higher cost will result in a 10-percent decrease in consumption—which, for the average soda drinker, will mean a loss of two pounds a year.
But it gets better. The government can use the money raised from the tax to offset the health-care costs of obesity-related diseases, like diabetes. Everybody wins.
OK, almost everybody. The beverage industry, not surprisingly, thinks it’s a terrible idea. Last fall the CEO of Coca-Cola, Muhtar Kent, said that if such taxes were the answer, “the Soviet Union would still be around.” A spokesman for the American Beverage Association, Kevin Keane, accuses Mr. Brownell of being “single-minded in his vengeance” against the industry. The association has organized Americans Against Food Taxes to give its opposition a grass-roots feel.
Not all the criticism is coming from the industry. Richard Williams, an economist, argues that the tax just won’t work, because people will substitute equally high-calorie drinks for those that are taxed. Mr. Williams is managing director of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, whose stated mission is to find “market-based solutions” to social problems. “I don’t think this is the right way to go with obesity,” he says. “What can work is giving people specific information at the point of purchase.”
In other words, education and personal responsibility will reduce obesity rates. Mr. Brownell doesn’t buy that argument. He says most consumers are no match for what he’s dubbed America’s toxic food environment. The huge sums spent by beverage companies on advertising (like Coke’s current “Open Happiness” campaign) overwhelm well-intentioned but meager attempts by the government to counter those messages. “Education is doomed to failure, and that’s why the food industry doesn’t oppose it,” says Mr. Brownell.
What’s more, according to a recent study of rats in Nature Neuroscience, certain foods can trigger brain changes similar to those produced by heroin and cocaine, perhaps making it all the more difficult for people to eat healthfully.
Another criticism of the tax is that, like any excise tax, it would tend to be regressive—that is, it would unequally hit people with low incomes. In a paper published last month, Mr. Brownell and his co-authors responded, writing that the “arguments that this would create hardship or remove one of life’s simple pleasures are difficult to swallow.” They pointed out that, even if the tax is as successful as proponents hope, the average American would still guzzle, by their calculations, 38.5 gallons of sugary drinks every year.
Strengthening Mr. Brownell’s case is growing evidence of a link between price and consumption. A recently published report by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who had examined the dietary habits of 5,000 people over a 20-year period, found that when soda prices increased by 10 percent, consumption dropped by 7 percent. Charge more and people drink less.
For a brief time last spring, it looked as if Mr. Brownell’s idea might be included in the national health-care overhaul, but the proposal was quickly shelved. Even so, President Obama has called it an idea “worth exploring.” Last year Mr. Brownell wrote a paper making the case for soda taxes with Thomas R. Frieden, who has since been named director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After the George W. Bush administration, which Mr. Brownell said did “almost nothing” to combat obesity, he now has some supporters in high places.
The professor is aware that the renewed interest in his idea is, at least in part, prompted by the budget shortfalls in states and cities across the country. For cash-strapped governments, a new source of revenue that also appears to promote an altruistic goal may be nearly irresistible. For Mr. Brownell, as long as the tax is big enough to reduce consumption, the purity of the motive is of little concern.
He became interested in obesity research after taking a class with Terence G. Wilson, a charismatic psychologist at Rutgers University who studies the treatment of eating disorders. Later, after landing a position at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Brownell became frustrated with the treatment of obesity—a notoriously intractable condition—and turned his attention to what he thought would be a more fruitful pursuit: prevention.
The battle over soda taxes has at times turned personal. The corporate-sponsored Center for Consumer Freedom, which was started with a grant from the Philip Morris tobacco company, has mocked Mr. Brownell’s own apparent weight problem, a topic the professor declined to discuss in an interview.
“Perhaps the best advice we could give Brownell (both policy and dietary) is for him to shut his mouth,” read a blog item posted on the center’s Web site last month. The organization has also argued that concerns about trans fats and obesity in general are overblown, and that mercury in fish is no big deal.
Mr. Brownell shrugs off the insults, noting that such groups have a vested interest in attacking him and his research. Besides, he says, the vitriol is proof that the beverage industry is worried, and that, after a decade and a half, he is finally winning.
“I’m more optimistic than ever,” he says. “It’s just a matter of time until these taxes start to happen.”
