Interesting juxtaposition in the pages of Yale Public Health. Page 6 of the fall 2010 issue reports on a study by Yale’s Jason M. Fletcher, Ph.D., that found increased taxes on soda and restricting sugary drinks from school vending machines are having a “negligible effect” on childhood obesity. Kids just find substitutes or buy soft drinks elsewhere, thestudy found. “Our strongest finding is that current policies of low soda taxes and incremental soft-drink restriction do not lead to any noteworthy weight reductions in children,” Fletcher said. Even doubling soda taxes would only result in a small weight reduction, he added.
Then on page 45 of the same issue is a snippet titled, “Researcher calls for intervention against soda.” It quotes Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, as calling for “guerilla, viral and stealth” marketing efforts against soft drinks and telling students at a lecture that a soda tax of 1 cent per ounce would be a “public health home run.”
“It is so strange to see a study at the front of the issue saying soda taxes don’t do anything, and an article at the back of the issue on this researcher calling for higher soda taxes!” exclaims ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, a Yale alumna (M.P.H.) herself.