(Press-News.org) RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Taxing sugary beverages may help reduce calories, but the health benefits may be offset as consumers substitute other unhealthy foods, according to a joint study by researchers at RTI International, Duke University, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The study, published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, found that the reduction in sugary beverages due to a soda tax would likely lead consumers to substitute those calories by increasing their calorie, salt and fat intake from untaxed foods and beverages.
"Instituting a sugary beverage tax may be an appealing public policy option to curb obesity, but it's not as easy to use taxes to curb obesity as it is with smoking," said Chen Zhen, Ph.D., a research economist at RTI, and the paper's lead author. "Consumers can simply substitute an untaxed high calorie food for a taxed one. And as we know, reducing calories is just one of many ways to promoting healthy eating and reducing nutrition-related chronic disease."
The study also examined differences in purchase behavior between lower and higher income households. Compared to higher income families' purchases, foods and beverages purchased by lower income families tend to be higher in calories, fat and sodium content on average.
"Because lower-income families tend to buy more sugary soft drinks than higher income families, they would more readily reap the health benefits of reduced sugary beverage intake," Zhen said. "However, they would also pay more in beverage taxes, making it a regressive tax."
To conduct the study, researchers used data on household food purchases from the 2006 Nielsen Homescan panel, a large national consumer panel maintained by the Nielsen Company. Families in the panel are provided with a handheld scanner and instructed to scan the Universal Product Code (UPC) of products they purchased at retail outlets, record purchase quantities and coupons used and identify the retailer that the product was purchased from.
Obesity rates in the United States are about 36 percent for adults and 17 percent for children and adolescents. A previous RTI study found that medical costs associated with obesity are estimated at $147 billion or more per year.
###
The study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Study: Taxing sugary beverages not a clear cut strategy to reduce obesity
2013-07-30
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Exercise may be the best medicine for Alzheimer's disease
2013-07-30
College Park, Md. –New research out of the University of Maryland School of Public Health shows that exercise may improve cognitive function in those at risk for Alzheimer's by increasing the efficiency of brain activity associated with memory. Memory loss associated with Alzheimer's disease is one of the greatest fears among older Americans. While some memory loss is normal and to be expected as we age, a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, signals more substantial memory loss and a greater risk for Alzheimer's, for which there currently is no cure.
The ...
Inhalable gene therapy may help pulmonary arterial hypertension patients
2013-07-30
The deadly condition known as pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), which afflicts up to 150,000 Americans each year, may be reversible by using an inhalable gene therapy, report an international team of researchers led by investigators at the Cardiovascular Research Center at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
In their new study, reported in the July 30 issue of the journal Circulation, scientists demonstrated that gene therapy administered through a nebulizer-like inhalation device can completely reverse PAH in rat models of the disease. In the lab, researchers ...
AGU journal highlights -- July 30, 2013
2013-07-30
The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) and Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (JGR-B).
In this release:
1. Atmospheric rivers linked to severe precipitation in Western Europe
2. Warming climate increases rainfall extremes
3. Carbon fertilization increased arid region leaf cover over past 20 years
4. Understanding the complexities of volcanoes that erupt just once
5. Revealing the early seafloor spreading history between India and Australia
6. Independent observations corroborate ...
Water clears path for nanoribbon development
2013-07-30
HOUSTON – (July 30, 2013) – New research at Rice University shows how water makes it practical to form long graphene nanoribbons less than 10 nanometers wide.
And it's unlikely that many of the other labs currently trying to harness the potential of graphene, a single-atom sheet of carbon, for microelectronics would have come up with the technique the Rice researchers found while they were looking for something else.
The discovery by lead author Vera Abramova and co-author Alexander Slesarev, both graduate students in the lab of Rice chemist James Tour, appears online ...
Lessons from combat care helped save lives and limbs after Boston bombing, reports
2013-07-30
Philadelphia, Pa. -- Collaboration across surgical specialties and lessons from combat casualty care—especially the use of tourniquets and other effective strategies to control bleeding—helped mount an effective surgical response to aid victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, according to a special editorial in the July issue of The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery, which is led by Editor-in-Chief Mutaz B. Habal, MD, and published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
The experience of surgeons treating victims of the Boston bombings at Brigham ...
Full body illusion is associated with a drop in skin temperature
2013-07-30
Researchers from the Center for Neuroprosthetics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Switzerland, show that people can be "tricked" into feeling that an image of a human figure -- an "avatar" -- is their own body. The study is published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.
Twenty-two volunteers underwent a Full Body Illusion when they were stroked with a robotic device system while they watched an avatar being stroked in the same spot. The study is the first to demonstrate that Full Body Illusions can be accompanied by changes ...
Doctors urged to talk to patients about parking cellphones
2013-07-30
(Edmonton) Family physicians regularly counsel patients about medical risks associated with heart disease, stroke, diabetes and smoking, and a team from the University of Alberta wants to add cellphone use and driving to the discussion.
Talking on a cellphone while driving raises the risk of collision by four to six times—comparable to getting behind the wheel while under the influence, studies show. Addressing the problem requires educating the public about the risks, and a good place to start is in the doctor's office.
"The evidence is clear and compelling. Epidemiologic, ...
Protein surfaces defects act as drug targets
2013-07-30
New research shows a physical characterisation of the interface of the body's proteins with water. Identifying the locations where it is easiest to remove water from the interface of target proteins could constitute a novel drug design strategy. The candidate drugs would need to be engineered to bind at the site of the protein where interfacial water is most easily dislodged. These findings, based on the work of María Belén Sierra from the National University of the South, in Bahia Blanca, Argentina and colleagues, were recently published in EPJ E.
The challenge is to ...
Researchers overcome technical hurdles in quest for inexpensive, durable electronics and solar cells
2013-07-30
Electronic touch pads that cost just a few dollars and solar cells that cost the same as roof shingles are one step closer to reality today.
Researchers in the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., have overcome technical hurdles in the quest for inexpensive, durable electronics and solar cells made with non-toxic chemicals. The research was published in the most recent issue of Nature Communications, an international online research journal.
"Imagine a world where every child in a ...
Study shows combination stroke therapy safe and effective
2013-07-30
CINCINNATI -- The combination of the clot-busting drug tPA with an infusion of the antiplatelet drug eptifibatide dissolves blood clots safely and more quickly than tPA alone, a study led by University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers has found.
Results from the study, known as the CLEAR-ER Stroke Trial, are published online in the journal Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. UC was the coordinating center for the trial, which included nine medical centers comprising 21 hospitals.
Standard treatment for acute ischemic stroke (characterized by an obstruction ...