From http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/tax-sodas-sugary-drinks-who-urges-governments-n664386
Tax Sodas and Sugary Drinks, WHO Urges Governments
by STEPHANIE NEBEHAY, REUTERS
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Governments should tax sugary drinks to fight the global epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
A 20 percent price increase could reduce consumption of sweet drinks by the same proportion, the WHO said in a report issued on World Obesity Day.
Image: San Francisco Approves Ordinance For Health Warnings For Sugary Soda Ads
Bottles of soda are displayed in a cooler at a convenience store Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Drinking fewer calorie-laden sweet drinks is the best way to curb excessive weight and prevent chronic diseases such as diabetes, although fat and salt in processed foods are also at fault, WHO officials said.
"We are now in a place where we can say there is enough evidence to move on this and we encourage countries to implement effective tax on sugar-sweetened beverages to prevent obesity," Temo Waqanivalu, of WHO's department of Noncommunicable Diseases and Health Promotion, told a briefing.
Related: Have Soda Company Donations Influenced Health Groups?
Obesity more than doubled worldwide between 1980 and 2014, with 11 percent of men and 15 percent of women classified as obese - more than 500 million people, the report said.
"Smart policies can help to turn the tides on this deadly epidemic, especially those aimed at reducing consumption of sugary drinks, which is fuelling obesity rates," former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a WHO ambassador for noncommunicable diseases, said in a statement.
Related: One Serving of Sugar a Day Can be Dangerous
An estimated 42 million children under age 5 were overweight or obese in 2015, said Francesco Branca, director of WHO's nutrition and health department, an increase of about 11 million over 15 years.
The United States has the most obesity per capita, but China has similar absolute numbers, Branca said, voicing fears that the epidemic could spread to sub-Saharan Africa.
The WHO said there was increasing evidence that taxes and subsidies influence purchasing behavior and could be used to curb consumption of sweet drinks.
Related: Sugar Industry Manipulated Heart Studies
"This is tax on sugary drinks which is really by definition all types of beverages containing free sugars and this includes soft drinks, fruit drinks, sachet mixes, cordials, energy and sports drinks, flavored milks, breakfast drinks, even 100 percent fruit juices," Waqanivalu said.
In Mexico, a tax rise in 2014 led to a 10 percent price hike and a 6 percent drop in purchases by year-end, the report said.
WHO guidelines say people needed to roughly halve the amount of sugar they consume to lower risks of obesity and tooth decay.
That means sugar making up less than 10 percent of their daily energy intake - about 50 grams or 12 teaspoons of sugar for adults - but 5 percent is even better, it said.
Next time you are thirsty and pop into your local convenience store to buy a drink, choose carefully. Yet another study has found links between soda and negative effects on your health.
This one is large — involving data from 800,000 people in Japan — and looked at cardiac risk. Researchers found that the more money people spent on carbonated beverages, the more likely they were to suffer from heart attacks of cardiac origin outside of a hospital.
The study, presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress, found that spending on other types of beverages — including green tea, black tea, coffee, cocoa, fruit or vegetable juice, fermented milk beverage, milk and mineral water — didn't appear to lead to the same risk.
Keijiro Saku, a study author and professor of cardiology at Fukuoka University, theorized that "the acid in carbonated beverages might play an important role in this association."
The battle over sugary drinks has come to a head in recent months with dueling studies and public health messaging campaigns about what soda does to your body.
In March, researchers quantified what diet soda does to your waistline, calculating that those who consumed daily and occasional diet soda were linked to nearly three times as much belly fat as those who didn't consume the drinks. In June, after a study in the journal Circulation by Tufts University researchers estimated that sugary beverages are responsible for 133,000 deaths from diabetes, 45,000 from cardiovascular disease and 6,450 from cancer, many doctors warned that people should cut down on those drinks.
In July, a former pharmacist's graphic representation on a blog of what happens to your body one hour after you drink a can of Coca-Cola went viral — spurring heated discussion about the accuracy of the analysis and the possible dangers of drinking too much soda.
Coca-Cola has been fighting back through a nonprofit that funds medical research with the message that it is not diet but lack of exercise that is to blame for America's obesity epidemic.
Saku emphasized that in the Japan study the researchers used expenditures on carbonated beverages as a proxy for consumption and that there was no way to determine a causal link. He said in an e-mail that the data was also limited because it did not contain information about the type of carbonated beverage purchased — whether it was a sugary soda like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, or mineral water like Perrier.
"Since this detailed information is not available in Japan, a large-scale population-based cohort study will be needed, but we think it is a very good evidence to warning children" to reduce intake of beverages like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc., he said.
The American Beverage Association, which represents America's non-alcoholic beverage industry, emphasized in a statement that "the researchers themselves admit that there is not sufficient evidence to make a causal link between carbonated beverages and heart attacks."
“There are numerous factors that contribute to heart attacks," the group said. "No single food, beverage or ingredient causes heart disease — or any other adverse health outcomes.”
This post has been updated.