The authors of a study the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador used to support its tax on sugary drinks made a big mistake in their original report.
The British Medical Journal pulled the original version and deleted an editorial based on it since the goof materially changed the paper’s conclusions.
In the new version, two years of data showed that household consumption of sugary drinks went up by 189 millilitres but the amount of sugar consumed went down by only eight grams each week. The authors said that further “studies are required to determine whether and how these apparently small effect sizes translate into health outcomes.” [Italics added]
Tiny amount up.
Teeny amount down.
And no one knows if this made any difference at all to anyone's health.
In the original version, the authors reported a 30 g drop in weekly household consumption and no increase in purchasing at all.
Big difference between 30 and 8.
There are a few things you should notice in this to help you understand what it means.
First, remember that since the typical can of cola is about 330 millilitres, that extra 190 ml intake is significant. It’s significant because it should normally contain enough sugar to wipe out that tiny drop in weekly sugar intake per household.
Second, notice that the changes are not per person. They're per household. So the health impacts of that would be roughly the same as Paul’s hexagonal testicle, according to the old limerick: two thirds of three fifths of frig-all.
Third, the adjusted BMJ paper is in line with another study your humble e-scribbler told you about in 2021 when the provincial government first announced this brain fart policy. That found exactly the same thing but not just in sugary drinks. The British tax changed sugar content in all sorts of foods. And the study reported in 2021 found a tiny drop in sugar consumption per household that was offset by an increased purchase of other food with refined sugar added in it.
Fourth, this Brit tax that didn’t work is not the tax we have in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Not by a long shot.
The British tax applied to the people who make soft drinks, candy, chocolates, and so on. Makers paid more based on the amount of refined sugar in their products. The idea was to encourage makers of these foods and drinks to use less sugar without putting an added cost on consumers. It was a smart play both politically and as a kind of government policy.
Yet, it didn’t work.
The Newfoundland and Labrador tax is old-fashioned, clumsy and - here’s the thing we knew in 2021 from experience elsewhere - it didn’t work either. The Brits went with their more complicated approach because they already knew the piece of junk idea the Andrew Furey government used didn't work. There was no meaningful change in sugar consumption per household when you just taxed consumers.
It’s like the equally brain-farty plastic bags ban. Experience everywhere else showed killing off plastic shopping bags didn’t do anything to cut down on the amount of plastic bags consumers use. They just bought *more* of the heavy, single-use garbage bags because they could no longer re-use what the anti-bag fad claimed were single-use. So in Newfoundland and Labrador, we just did the thing we know doesn't work.
There were lots of reasons to believe this sugary drinks tax was a bad idea *before* the government announced it. But like everything from Muskrat Falls to gasoline price “regulation” and … well… the sugary drinks tax, somebody’s brain fart in Newfoundland and Labrador politics became all the rage and no one will stop it no matter the cost. In this case, the cost is a few bucks, mostly out of the pockets of people who can least afford it, that the politicians can re-direct to something else that might itself be the product of another sugary brain-fart rather than an idea made out of protein.
Think about that when you watch some political pill make the next announcement about poverty reduction, the social determinants of health, and some other magic government solution to a big problem.
Update: More problems for UK sugar tax study authors
Wednesday: Dead Drop