Why food and drink taxes don't work

Europe has an increasing obesity problem

obesity is mainly caused by an excess intake of calories that come from a wide range of food and drinks often combined with a lack of exercise some of us are not making the healthiest lifestyle choices some governments are looking at taxing specific food and drinks in an effort to curve this rise but will this solve the problem and make people thinner actually it won't taxation is the wrong tool to address obesity and make our diets healthier the fact is the taxes affect all consumers regardless of their weight status they hit families and the least well off the hardest as they spend a greater proportion of their income on food and drink the impact of food taxes is unpredictable and can result in product substitution to other food and drink categories containing similar or higher calories thereby negating any positive health impact that is why denmark has abolished its taxes on fat and soft drinks because they failed to provide any measurable health benefit but resulted in severe economic damage let's look at soft drinks in particular it's tempting to single out soft drinks but the reality is much more complex over the past 10 years while obesity rates have increased the contribution of soft drinks to the daily calorie intake in Europe has decreased to just three percent the average calories for a hundred milliliters has gone down by eleven point five percent and the availability of smaller pack sizes has gone up by a hundred and fifty percent meanwhile no and low-calorie drinks account for up to thirty percent of sales in many markets there is no correlation between soft drinks consumption and obesity levels

for example children's consumption of soft drinks in the Netherlands is five times higher than in Greece yet obesity and overweight rates are three times lower what