by Kendra Klein and Anna Lappé, The Guardian

More than 50 years ago, Rachel Carson warned of a “silent spring”, the songs of robins and wood thrush silenced by toxic pesticides such as DDT. Today, there is a new pesticide specter: a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. For years, scientists have been raising the alarm about these bug killers, but a new study reveals a more complete picture of the threat they pose to insect life.

First commercialized in the 1990s, neonicotinoids, or neonics for short, are now the most widely used insecticides in the world. They’re used on over 140 crops, from apples and almonds to spinach and rice. Chemically similar to nicotine, they kill insects by attacking their nerve cells.

Neonics were pitched as an answer to pests’ increasing resistance to the reigning insecticides. But in an effort to more effectively kill pests, we created an explosion in the toxicity of agriculture not just for unwanted bugs but for the honeybees, ladybugs, beetles and the vast abundance of other insects that sustain life on Earth.

What we now know is that neonics are not only considerably more toxic to insects than other insecticides, they are far more persistent in the environment. While others break down within hours or days, neonics can remain in soils, plants and waterways for months to years, killing insects long after they’re applied and creating a compounding toxic burden.

“Neonics can remain in soils, plants and waterways for months to years, killing insects long after they’re applied”

The new study, published in the science journal PLOS One, designed a way to quantify this persistence and combine it with data on the toxicity and total pounds used of neonics and other insecticides. For the first time, we have a time-lapse of impact: we can compare year-to-year changes in the toxicity of US agriculture for insects. The results? Since neonics were first introduced 25 years ago, US agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insect life, and neonics are responsible for 92% of that surge in toxicity.

Looking at this toxic time-lapse, another interesting detail emerges: there’s a dramatic increase in the toxic burden of US agriculture for insects starting in the mid-2000s. That’s when beekeepers began reporting significant losses of their hives. It’s also when the pesticide companies that manufacture neonics, Bayer and Syngenta, found a lucrative new use for these chemicals: coating the seeds of crops like corn and soy that are grown on millions of acres across the country. These seed coatings now account for the vast majority of neonic use in the US.

Neonics are “systemic”, meaning they are water soluble and therefore taken up by the plant itself, making its nectar, pollen, and fruit – all of it – toxic. Only about 5% of a seed coating is absorbed by the plant, the remainder stays in the soil and can end up in rivers, lakes and drinking water with its runoff causing harm to wildlife and, as emerging evidence shows, to people.

This study comes on the heels of the first analysis of global insect populations, which found 40% of species face extinction, with near total insect loss possible by century’s end, driven in part by pesticides, with neonics a particular concern.

“An analysis of global insect populations found 40% of species face extinction, with near total insect loss possible by century’s end”

For all of this harm, farmers get few, if any, benefits from neonic seed coatings. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, they provide “little or no overall benefits to soybean production”, though nearly half of soybean seeds in the US are treated. Similar analyses have found the same for corn, yet up to 100% of US corn seeds are treated.

All this risk without reward has led some regulators to take action. The European Union voted to ban the worst neonics in 2018. But the US government has so far failed to act. Chemical company lobbying can explain much of this inaction. Bayer, maker of the most widely used neonics, spent an estimated $4.3m lobbying in the US on behalf of its agricultural division in 2017.

Not only has the EPA stalled scientific review of neonics, last year, the Fish and Wildlife Service reversed an Obama-era ban on use of these dangerous insecticides in wildlife refuges. Congress could change this. Democratic Representative Earl Blumenauer’s Saving America’s Pollinators Act would ban neonicotinoids and other systemic, pollinator-toxic insecticides. The bill has 56 co-sponsors, but faces a major hurdle clearing the House agriculture committee given that the chairman representative, Collin Peterson, a Democrat from Minnesota, counts Bayer and the pesticide industry’s trade association, Croplife America, among his top contributors.

Beyond a ban, we need a concerted effort to transition US agriculture away from dependence on pesticides and toward ecological methods of pest control. We already know how to do this. Research shows that organic farms support up to 50% more pollinating species and help other beneficial insects flourish. And by eliminating neonics and some 900 other active pesticide ingredients, they protect human health, too.

More than five decades ago, Rachel Carson warned that the war we are waging against nature with toxic pesticides is inevitably a war against ourselves. That is as true today as it was then. For the sake of the birds and bees – and all of us – this war must end.

Originally published in The Guardian

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Header image: Fabián Tomasi, photographed by Pablo Piovano in Basavilbaso, Entre Ríos province, Argentina, 2014

This article originally appeared on Medium

The post The Death of Fabián Tomasi appeared first on Real Food Media.

Dewayne Johnson with his sons. Photo courtesy of Baum Hedland Law Firm.

There is real momentum in the fight against agrochemicals and the companies that peddle them. After a landmark victory in Hawai’i banning the neurotoxic pesticide chlorpyrifos in the state, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to do the same—nationwide. The EPA has 60 days to comply.

That same week, we watched on pins and needles as the Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto Company case unfolded in a San Francisco courtroom. Johnson’s lawyers argued that Roundup and Ranger Pro—proprietary mixtures of glyphosate and other toxic ingredients produced by Monsanto (recently bought out by Bayer) —he had used while working as a groundskeeper at a San Francisco Bay Area school was a substantial factor in his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

As the verdict was read in Johnson’s case late on a Friday afternoon, we couldn’t believe our ears. Our Real Food Media team was calling and texting up a storm, reeling from the news that David had defeated Goliath: the jury ruled that the company acted with malice and negligence in failing to warn consumers and awarded the plaintiff $289 million in damages (Bayer shares immediately plunged in value). Read Anna’s reflections on the trial in Civil Eats.

This was the first Roundup cancer lawsuit to proceed to trial. There are around 8,000 other plaintiffs waiting in the wings.

The effects of this historic trial are rippling out in other ways, too: two California cities, Novato and Benicia, have gone Roundup-free and Santa Rosa has banned the use of Roundup in city parks. Following the landmark verdict, Monsanto is also getting renewed attention for its manufacture of other toxic substances, such as Agent Orange, which the company supplied to the US military during the Vietnam War. Vietnam is now demanding compensation from the company for the effects of Agent Orange—including birth defects, cancers, and other deadly diseases from which millions suffer to this day.

To all the activists, movements, frontline communities, and advocacy organizations working to get toxic chemicals banned and justice for those placed in harm’s way, we want to say: Thank you. Your hard work is paying off. Let’s keep the momentum going!

Want to throw some additional shade on Monsanto (now owned by Bayer)? Head to Corporate Accountability’s website and vote for Bayer (AKA #StillMonsanto) in their Corporate Hall of Shame.

Header image from Sustainable Pulse

The post Monsanto is Going Down appeared first on Real Food Media.

Extortion. That’s what people called it—and that’s certainly what it was. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other beverage giants just held California hostage and won.

The American Beverage Association, whose largest contributors include those two companies, raised most of the $8 million dollars
backing a November ballot measure that would have required a two-thirds majority vote to pass any local tax increase, including those for public services from parks to firefighters—you name it. As a threat, the backers of the ballot measure said they would
pull it only if legislators signed a bill to ban all local sugary drink taxes in the state until 2031. The pressure was on. One legislator characterized voting for a soda tax ban as a “Sophie’s choice.” Another said he and his colleagues were voting for it “with a gun to our head.”

This all happened fast, but industry deploying a preemption policy, like this one, to thwart democracy is nothing new. Around
the state, organizers who had been working on possible sugary drink tax initiatives woke up Sunday morning, June 24th, to the news of the impending deal. Legislators had until Thursday to vote. By Thursday evening, statewide ballot initiatives would be finalized.

At the legislative hearing on Thursday morning, more than two dozen expressed outrage at Big Soda’s attempt to bully legislators. But the testimony by young people from Stockton, California—a city of more than 300,000 people, 50 miles away from the Capitol—was particularly moving. (The foundation where one of us works had supported some of this organizing work).

“I come to you heartbroken,” said one organizer. Just one of the more than two dozen—including many high school students—who had been working for more than a year and a half to get a soda tax on the ballot in Stockton. They were weeks away from doing so.

“Our goal was to educate our community in order to make a difference,” another said. She described seeing kids—young
kids—affected by sugary drinks, including her own sister who had to have all her teeth pulled at age four because her parents hadn’t known how harmful sugary drinks were.

Like the communities the youth organizers live in, overwhelmingly, communities of color around the country are directly targeted
as consumers by soda companies. Because of this, people of color and low-income communities experience preventable health disparities at a largely disproportionate rate. The soda companies have a strategy. This is not simply an issue of individual choice or
miseducation, it is an issue of predatory marketing and an abundance of access to products that cause harm.

As Big Soda has done with similar preemption policies around the country, the industry spun this bill as a ban on “grocery taxes,” the same tactic used to oppose the passing of sugary beverage taxes on Oakland’s 2016 ballot. Said one young person, “Sodas are not groceries. Groceries are foods you need. You do not need soda.” Another organizer made it clear: “People want to change; they want to be better. We were giving them solutions. The American Beverage Association is taking away our right to offer these solutions. They’re taking away our voices and our right to vote.”

This backroom dealing can sound like a far-fetched political scandal until you hear young people whose lives have been directly
affected by the target marketing of Big Soda and the misinformation spread by it.

Several years ago, Kyle Pfister, a public health advocate, wrote about internal Coca-Cola documents leaked to DCLeaks that revealed the company’s global political strategies to kill what the company
had identified as a major threat: Soda taxes.

This play by Big Soda is a sign they were leaving nothing to chance—certainly not leaving the choice for soda taxes to us voters. Soda corporations are throwing millions of dollars at these preemption policies with two more pending in Oregon and Washington, to protect their bottom line. They, too, see the data: Sugary drink taxes are proving to work. In the places where they have passed, soda consumption has dropped, water consumption is up, and revenue dollars are flowing toward valuable health and education programs particularly to communities most affected by sugary drinks. In Philadelphia, the soda tax is underwriting universal pre-K. In Oakland, the city has collected more than $8 million dollars in tax revenue since July 2017. Here, soda taxes will fund clean water in public schools and parks, support year-round meal service in the City’s head start programming, and support community led activities to educate and create healthy alternatives for those who are impacted by diet-related diseases connected to the overconsumption of sugar.

Preemption policies, like the one just pushed by the American Beverage Association and signed by Governor Brown on Thursday, are a time-tested corporate strategy to make a run-around democracy, prioritizing profits over people’s health. Big Tobacco has used them, so has the gun lobby. With millions of people’s
lives impacted around the country by diabetes, heart disease, and other illnesses linked to sugary drink consumption, it’s time we see Big Soda as we have come to see Big Tobacco: As a major threat to public health and—as we saw this week in California—to democracy as well.

Originally published in the East Bay Express

Photo by NeONBRAND/ Unsplash

The post Big Soda Is The New Big Tobacco appeared first on Real Food Media.

Eleven billion dollars. That’s the total tally of the national school-food program in the United States and just a small fraction of what public institutions in this country spend every year in taxpayer dollars on food—including food for county jails, hospitals, city parks, and more. Public food procurement is clearly big business. But we also believe it can also be a force for good. On May 16, Cook County—home to Chicago and one of the largest counties in the country—joined a growing movement of public institutions when it adopted a procurement program that does just that: promotes public health, community well-being, animal welfare, social justice, and environmental protection.

It may seem like common sense that public institutions should promote the public good, but when it comes to food purchasing that’s not usually the case. All around the country, in local governments and public-school districts, officials pore over the minutiae of contracts for bread rolls and chicken patties, pizzas and salad greens. The dominant decision-making criteria? The cheapest bid.

In 2011, community leaders in Los Angeles started asking what it would take to transform that decision making so that city leadership could make food purchases based on shared principles, not just price tags. The result is the Good Food Purchasing Program, passed first in Los Angeles in 2012 and now in four cities nationwide. The Good Food Purchasing Program views purchases through five values: public health, local economic development, animal welfare, worker wellbeing, and the environment. The program can also be used, as it will in Cook County, to incentivize public institutions to support under-capitalized businesses—that is, those that have been historically shut out of tax incentives and access to technical and financial support. The idea is to help to correct long-standing inequities in the food system.

In the cities where it has passed, we’ve seen real impact. In Los Angeles alone, with support from the Center for Good Food Purchasing and other partners, program implementation catalyzed 220 new, good union jobs in the local food economy and a $70 million multiyear poultry contract with a producer committed to keeping antibiotics out of its feed. Following adoption of the program, the school district cut meat purchases by 28 percent, reducing water use by 1 billion gallons a year among other benefits. And the district’s largest food distributor rethought the source of its wheat, choosing to buy from California farmers for the first time and milling it in the heart of the city. Now more than 80 percent of all bread products served in LA schools come from California-grown, sustainably produced wheat.

Inspired by this impact, the Chicago Food Policy Action Council and a coalition of over 40 organizations have led the way in Cook County. As a first step, the groups helped press—and win—the adoption of the program in the City of Chicago in 2017 transforming the way food is purchased by its public schools as well as its parks department. Now, with leadership from Cook County Board Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, the county is following suit, making it the first in the nation to adopt the Good Food Purchasing Program. The Chicago Food Policy Action Council estimates that the county spends $20.6 million on food annually across its agencies.

In Cook County, enthusiasm for the program came in large part from those businesses, workers, consumers, and farmers that have long been marginalized in the food system. Under the program, the County will incentivize contracts with minority- and women-owned businesses, help to preserve urban farmland with community ownership, and transition publicly owned vacant lots to minority-owned social enterprises and public land trusts. Says the Chicago Food Policy Action Council’s Rodger Cooley, “The Good Food Purchasing Program has the power to transform the food system in every region where it is implemented as it will in Cook County where we are creating a model for food procurement that supports frontline communities most impacted by existing inequities.”

This all sounds good, you might be thinking, but these are tax dollars at work; shouldn’t public institutions entrusted to use money wisely make the most economical choice? Well, here’s the rub. Cheap food isn’t always so cheap. Consider the costs in the United States of the illnesses and deaths linked to unhealthy food (blights that fall mostly on low-income communities and communities of color, where millions live either without access to good food or in food environments with too much unhealthy food). Health-care costs from diagnosed Type 2 diabetes total a staggering $327 billion a year—a cost we all share.

Or consider the price to taxpayers when private-sector employers fail to pay living wages. Around the country, food-sector workers are among the most underpaid and exploited and are twice as likely as workers in any other sector to rely on government assistance to put food on their table. With the Good Food Purchasing Program, good food means good jobs.

But let’s also be clear: While the program incurs a range of community benefits, it doesn’t always cost more. Analysis of the Good Food Purchasing Program has found that food costs don’t necessarily go up after implementation. In Oakland, for instance, the school district’s choice to buy better and, yes, more expensive meat—increasing the amount of 100 percent grass-fed beef and antibiotic-free chicken purchases, for instance—was coupled with a reduction in meat purchases. The result? The more expensive choice was actually cost neutral and the customers—those finicky kids—reported high rates of satisfaction.

Cook County’s groundbreaking decision to adopt the program is just the latest sign of the momentum nationwide for tapping the enormous buying power of public institutions for the public good. Another 13 cities across the country—including Austin and New York, Cincinnati and Washington, DC—are actively pursuing the program. If all pass it, the program will reshape a whopping $880 million worth of food purchases annually.

Cook County’s adoption of the Good Food Purchasing Program is a huge leap forward in the quest of good food for all. Who’s next?

Originally published in The Nation

Photo by Mike Blake / Reuters

The post What if School Lunch Programs Promoted Public Health, Good Jobs, and the Environment? appeared first on Real Food Media.

The soda industry won big in Chicago this week when county commissioners voted to scrap the 1-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks that had been in place for just two months.

This is a stark turn for the effort to tax these drinks, which has been making headway as voters and City Councils in at least a half-dozen other cities, including San Francisco and Philadelphia, in recent years approved measures in favor of soda levies. The sudden about-face in Chicago, after a battle in which both sides spent millions on TV and radio ads, offers an important lesson for advocates of these taxes, ourselves included, as the industry we call Big Soda takes aim at other communities: We can’t forget the grass roots.

While we are longtime healthy-food advocates, we have only recently awakened to the alarm bell of sugary drinks. For years, these drinks were flagged for “empty calories” that lead to weight gain. Today, the public health community understands that consuming sugar — particularly in liquid form — increases risks of serious health conditions, such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, not to mention tooth decay. A 2010 study found that consuming just one to two sugary drinks a day increases your risk of developing diabetes by 26 percent.

While sugar is everywhere — in cookies and crackers, breads and pasta sauce — the single largest source in the American diet is sugary drinks. A 20-ounce Coca-Cola contains 65 grams of added sugar, significantly exceeding the American Heart Association’s daily maximum recommendation for adult women, 25 grams, and adult men, 36 grams.

It’s not hyperbolic to claim that sugary drinks pose a major public health threat. Nationally, we spent $245 billion on diabetes medical costs in 2012. By 2030 we could be spending as much as $818 billion on the direct medical costs of heart disease. Both illnesses are associated with the consumption of sugary drinks.

Fortunately, we have effective tools for addressing this crisis. Taxes on sugary drinks are one. As a peer-reviewed study published this spring found, since the tax went into effect in Berkeley, Calif., in March 2015, purchases of healthier drinks have gone up and sales of soda have gone down, all without consumer grocery bills increasing or the local food sector losing money. The tax raised about $1.5 million last year for nutrition and health programs in a city of 113,000 people.

Since Berkeley passed its tax, seven municipalities have followed suit, and many others, even some states, are interested in doing the same. This has Big Soda scared because these taxes — with the awareness they create about the health effects of sugar and the consumption they reduce — threaten the industry’s bottom line.

How scared? Leaked internal Coca-Cola emails last year revealed a “coordinated war” against policies like these, says a public health advocate, Kyle Pfister, who has studied these documents. This war, waged by the American Beverage Association and sugary drink manufacturers like Coca-Cola, includes a slew of duplicitous tactics, like funding research to give a hue of legitimacy to their anti-tax claims, pursuing social media influencers, lobbying at every level of government and targeting key journalists for persuasion. These time-tested tactics have been used by the tobacco industry in its fight against cigarette taxes.

The industry also starts and funds faux grass-roots organizations. In another email, a trade group representative boasted about the impact of Philadelphians Against the Grocery Tax, an industry-funded group, which deployed an aggressive media strategy that achieved a “significant shift in public attitudes away from initial majority support for the discriminatory tax” in Philadelphia. In the end, the industry lost there.

In Cook County, which includes Chicago, the industry’s “Can the Tax” campaign spent millions on local TV ads and pressured commissioners, in particular critiquing the use of the soda tax revenue to help cover budget deficits. (In other cities, the money has been directed to public health concerns or, in the case of Philadelphia, to fund universal pre-K.) When Jesus Garcia, a Cook County commissioner, signaled he would vote to repeal the tax, he acknowledged that the beverage industry used its financial power to shape public opinion before supporters of the tax were able to craft their own message for a public debate.

There is an important lesson here: When efforts for sugary-drinks taxes are driven and supported by community coalitions that build public awareness early on, they’re better able to withstand industry attacks. Strong coalitions are vital both to adopt new taxes and to ensure they remain to curb consumption and generate funds for public health programs.

In Berkeley, the industry waged a $2 million anti-tax campaign. We credit the success of the tax effort there to a broad-based community coalition — a united front of the local NAACP., Latinos Unidos, teachers unions and many more groups. This compact was strong enough to withstand the industry’s onslaught. We won decisively, with 76 percent of the vote. Community engagement is key.

While the Cook County decision is a setback, it’s a clear reminder of what it will take to win. There’s no substitute for good, old-fashioned community building. We know we will be outspent. Let’s not be outnumbered.

Originally published in The New York Times

Photo by Jean Balzan/Pexels

The post How to Win Against Big Soda appeared first on Real Food Media.

An audacious idea was hatched: A global boycott of the biggest pusher of infant formula, the Big Food giant Nestlé. The resulting campaign included the founding of INFACT (now known as Corporate Accountability International and home to Real Food Media) and, while the campaign didn’t end Nestlé’s marketing of infant formula, it dramatically restricted how, what, and where the company could market.

This multi-decade campaign of courageous leaders around the world working to promote health in the face of multinational food industry marketing was front-of-mind reading The New York Times deeply reported piece about Nestlé in Brazil. In the piece, you learn about how the global giant is still impacting the health and well being of people around the world, not only through its ongoing marketing of infant formula, but also KitKats, pudding, sugar-sweetened yoghurt. The Times pieces is powerful evidence that preventable diet-related illnesses are on the rise and the processed foods industry, including giants like Nestlé, are driving this public health scourge.

We at Real Food Media believe as a global community, we must stand up to Big Food and its attempts to influence our elected officials and demand real regulation and new policies for public health. The good news is we know there are policies that work—the ones we seek to amplify, through our videos, collaborations and media engagement—like restricting marketing to children (particularly in schools and hospitals), promoting healthy food procurement through initiatives like the Good Food Purchasing Program, and passing taxes like the sugary beverage taxes. (Ideas I shared in a Letter to the Editor, published here).

If you haven’t yet, we encourage you to read The New York Times piece and turn the heartbreak you may feel when you finish into positive action—what we try to do every day.

The post Taking on Big Food… From 1977 to Today appeared first on Real Food Media.

The sugary drinks tax approved by Cook County—home to one of the nation’s largest cities, Chicago—can move forward, despite Big Soda attempts to block implementation in the courts.

As our colleagues at Healthy Food America said in the wake of the ruling, “We are pleased that Cook County is a step closer to making a real difference in the health of its residents.”

Starting with Mexico’s 2013 approval of a sugary drinks tax and the city of Berkeley’s win in 2014, these taxes are catching on: Cook County joins Philadelphia, Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, and Albany, California. And the research on tax implementation is showing they work, reducing consumption of sugary drinks and upping consumption of water, while generating much needed revenue.

In 2016, the World Health Organization came out in favor of these taxes, stating: “If governments tax products like sugary drinks, they can reduce suffering and save lives. They can also cut healthcare costs and increase revenues to invest in health services.” Why? Because drinking soda and other sugary beverages is a “major factor in the global increase of people suffering from obesity and diabetes,” explained Dr. Douglas Bettcher of the WHO.

I don’t know about you, but I like the sound of saving lives. You know who doesn’t seem to? Big Soda. Want to know how worried the industry is about these taxes? Check out this leaked document with Coca-Cola Europe’s internal strategy mapping of the policies most threatening to the bottom line.

The industry is fighting back against these taxes, the attempt to block the tax in Cook County is just one example. I saw Big Soda’s bullying tactics up-close-and-personal when my small city of Berkeley, California, launched a campaign for a tax on sugary drinks. The industry was relentless in its misinformation, but despite outspending the community efforts, the industry lost in a landslide.

Today, more than $1 million is being generated from tax revenue each year to support public health and nutrition education efforts across the city, benefiting our most vulnerable neighbors.

Hopefully today’s victory in Cook County will inspire even more communities to explore this powerful tool to help address the epidemic of diet-related illnesses sweeping the country and the world.

Cheers to the over 5 million residents in Chicago and Cook County who will benefit from this win. *clinks glass of non-sugary sweetened beverage*

Anna and the Real Food Media team

The post A Blow to Big Soda in Cook County appeared first on Real Food Media.

In August of 2016, the consumer advocacy group EDUCAR Consumidores along with the coalition Alianza por la Salud Alimentaria aired a public service announcement on Colombian television highlighting the public health impacts of consuming sugary beverages. The PSA, titled “Take it Seriously” (Tómala en Serio) shows how easy it is to consume 47 teaspoons of sugar in a single day by drinking just a few servings of juice, sweetened tea, and soda. The PSA—which also points to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cancer as dangers of excessive sugar consumption—was taken off the air in early September by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce just as public debate was ramping up on including a sugary beverage tax in the country’s tax reform law. Civil society widely denounced the move as censorship and a violation of the freedom of expression. The legal group DeJusticia filed a suit on behalf of EDUCAR, which was upheld by the Supreme Court on April 5, declaring that consumers have the right to “access information about the positive and negative consequences that a product may have on their physical and mental integrity.” The ruling is being touted as a major victory in Colombia and throughout the region in the fight against Big Food and Big Soda.

The post Colombian Supreme Court Rules Against Big Soda, for Consumer Rights appeared first on Real Food Media.

by Anna Lappé

As we begin to sort through the post-election rubble, it’s worth taking a close look at what happened with soda taxes at the ballot box.

This year, Big Soda spent nearly $39 million to stop taxes on sugary beverages in five U.S. cities. They filled mailboxes and flooded the airways with misleading ads, they engaged lawyers in legal battles, and padded the pockets of local progressives to try to turn them against the tax all to convince people to vote against a penny per fluid ounce tax—in the case of Boulder, Colorado, a two-cent per fluid ounce tax—on the distributors of sugar-sweetened beverages.

But it’s too late: The cultural tipping point on soda is already here. Philadelphia passed a tax in June. And yesterday, three Northern California cities—San Francisco, Oakland, and Albany, which borders Berkeley to the north—and Boulder all passed taxes with sizable margins.

“Despite the billions spent on marketing and more than $30 million in deceitful campaign ads, voters saw the truth and sent a clear message that their families’ health comes first,” said Jim Krieger of Healthy Food America.

These wins are proof that the conversation about soda is changing. It’s a conversation backed by solid science. We now know that liquid sugar is the single largest source of added sugars in our diets and is a leading cause of heart disease, liver disease, and Type 2 diabetes. We know regularly consuming just one or two sugary drinks a day will increase your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Soda and other sweet beverages are also the main cause of cavities and dental decay. What’s more, consuming liquid sugar doesn’t send the same signals of fullness to our minds, so we don’t register these drinks’ calories in the same way we do as when we eat calories.

With these wins, ballot measures taking on soda taxes could be “the new normal for Big Soda,” said Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in a statement. Today, Cook County, Illinois, home to Chicago, will vote on a similar tax on sugary drinks; other municipalities nationwide are exploring soda tax ballot measures as well. [Editor’s note: Cook County, with 5.2 million residents, today became the largest region in the nation to put in place a soda tax.]

In its recent Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s clearest recommendation was for governments to implement a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. As Dr. Margaret Chan, director of the WHO, said in a speech last month, “Diabetes is one of the biggest global health crises of the 21st century… The interest of the public must be prioritized over those of corporations.”

While some of the research is still taking shape around the benefits of soda taxes, we know they work for several reasons: First, they decrease consumption, which translates into lives saved and health care costs diverted. In Mexico, where a soda tax passed in 2014, consumption dropped by 12 percent in the first year.

They also help raise awareness about the harms of these products, including energy drinks and “flavored waters,” like VitaminWater. Many of these drinks have just as much sugar as a classic soda or more. For instance, a 20-ounce Power-C Vitamin Water contains 32 grams of sugar, nearly as much as a 12-ounce Coke. Meanwhile, an Orange-Mango Nantucket Nectar has 58 grams of sugar and an Odwalla Vanilla Protein Shake has 43 grams. (To put those figures in perspective, the American Heart Association recommends that women consume 24 grams of added sugar a day.)

Another reason soda taxes work is because they raise revenue that can tip the scale back toward health equity. Berkeley’s soda tax revenue has topped $1.4 million a year and is funding programs like a popular gardening program in the city’s public schools, hydration stations at the public high school, and health outreach in communities of color, where diabetes rates are the highest.

Research from Healthy Food America estimates that the three soda taxes in the Bay Area will raise $22 million annually for health programs and diabetes prevention. In Boulder, the soda tax there will dedicate revenue raised to address health inequities, including helping to make clean water, healthy food, and sports accessible and affordable for the people who can least afford it.

But while these taxes are proving to be popular with voters, the battle over soda taxes has also revealed that Big Soda will pull out all the stops to thwart them. All told, since 2009, Big Soda has spent $94 million fighting these taxes and other measures to decrease soda consumption, according to CSPI. As New York University nutrition professor and author Marion Nestle explains in her latest book, Soda Politics, these companies are taking a page out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. The soda industry is fighting hard against any regulation, whether limits to marketing to kids, warning labels on sugary drinks, or taxes popping up worldwide.

In leaked internal strategy documents from Coca-Cola Europe, for example, that soda taxes are the policy that would have the biggest impact on their sales and were the most likely to materialize. There’s little doubt of similar projections in North America.

Two years ago, when Berkeley became the first American city to pass a soda tax, the industry portrayed the win as an aberration. Those of us following the movement nationally believed it was a bellwether. We were right. We’ll have to wait and see whether under the Trump presidency there are attempts to preempt any of these policies. But in the meantime, there are more soda tax battles on the horizon. 

Originally Published in Civil Eats

The post A Big Blow for Big Soda appeared first on Real Food Media.