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It wasn’t that way back when cigarettes and soda had been go-to comfort retailer vices, glamorized in films and marketed towards, effectively, everybody.
New UC Berkeley analysis suggests sugar-sweetened drinks could also be on an analogous path.
The town of Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation soda tax a decade in the past, together with more moderen Bay Space tax will increase on sugar-sweetened drinks, haven’t solely led to lowered gross sales. They’re additionally related to vital adjustments in social norms and attitudes concerning the healthfulness of candy drinks, mentioned Kristine A. Madsen, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Faculty of Public Well being and senior writer of a paper printed Nov. 25 within the journal BMC Public Well being.
Over the span of just some years, taxes coupled with vital media consideration considerably affected the general public’s general perceptions of sugar-sweetened drinks, which embrace sodas, some juices and sports activities drinks. Such a shift within the casual guidelines surrounding how folks suppose and act might have main implications for public well being efforts extra broadly, Madsen mentioned.
“Social norms are really powerful. The significant shift we saw in how people are thinking about sugary drinks demonstrates what else we could do,” Madsen mentioned. “We could reimagine a healthier food system. It starts with people thinking, “Why drink a lot soda?” But what if we also said, “Why is not many of the meals in our grocery shops meals that makes us wholesome?'”
Madsen and colleagues from UC San Francisco and UC Davis analyzed surveys from 9,128 folks residing in lower-income neighborhoods in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco and Richmond. Utilizing knowledge from 2016 to 2019 and 2021, they studied year-to-year tendencies in folks’s notion of sugar-sweetened drinks.
They wished to know how the 4 taxes within the Bay Space might need affected social norms surrounding sugary drinks—the unwritten and sometimes unstated guidelines that affect the meals and drinks we purchase, the garments we put on and our habits on the dinner desk. Though social norms aren’t seen, they’re extremely highly effective forces on our actions and behaviors; simply ask anybody who has purchased one thing after an influencer promoted it on TikTok or Instagram.
Researchers requested questions on how typically folks thought their neighbors drank sodas, sports activities drinks and fruity drinks. Contributors additionally rated how wholesome a number of drinks had been, which conveyed their very own attitudes concerning the drinks.
The researchers discovered a 28% decline within the social acceptability of ingesting sugar-sweetened drinks.
In Oakland, optimistic perceptions of friends’ consumption of sports activities drinks declined after the tax improve, relative to different cities. Equally, in San Francisco, attitudes concerning the healthfulness of sugar-sweetened fruit drinks additionally declined.
In different phrases, folks believed their neighbors weren’t ingesting as many sugar-sweetened drinks, which affected their very own curiosity in consuming soda, juices and sports activities drinks.
“What it means when social norms change is that people say, “Gosh, I suppose we do not drink soda. That is simply not what we do. Not as a lot. Not on a regular basis,'” Madsen said. “And that is a tremendous shift in mindsets.”
The analysis is the most recent from UC Berkeley that examines how consumption patterns have modified within the decade since Berkeley carried out the nation’s first soda tax. A 2016 research discovered a lower in soda consumption and a rise in folks turning to water. Analysis in 2019 documented a pointy decline in folks turning to sugar-sweetened drinks. And earlier this yr, Berkeley researchers documented that sugar-sweetened beverage purchases declined dramatically and steadily throughout 5 main American cities after taxes had been put in place.
The penny-per-ounce tax on drinks, which is levied on distributors of sugary drinks—who in the end go that price of doing enterprise on to shoppers—is a vital technique of speaking about well being with the general public, Madsen mentioned. Researchers tallied greater than 700 media tales concerning the taxes on sugar-sweetened drinks through the research interval. That degree of messaging was doubtless a serious power in driving public consciousness and norms.
It is also one thing Madsen mentioned future public well being interventions should contemplate. It was a part of the progress made in chopping cigarette smoking and appears to be working with sugary drinks. And it is these interventions that may result in particular person motion.
“If we change our behaviors, the environment follows,” Madsen mentioned. “While policy really matters and is incredibly important, we as individuals have to advocate for a healthier food system.”
Extra data:
Emily Altman et al, De-normalizing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption: results of tax measures on social norms and attitudes within the California Bay Space, BMC Public Well being (2024). DOI: 10.1186/s12889-024-20781-6
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College of California – Berkeley
Quotation:
Soda taxes do not simply have an effect on gross sales. They assist change folks’s minds. (2024, December 10)
retrieved 10 December 2024
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