Consuming sugar is bad — don’t be duped

The soda tax seems to have left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Santa Fe may be a liberal city, but we are also a complex one, like nowhere else in the country. The vote highlighted a distrust in city government that has been brewing since the parks bond fiasco (“Report: $2M from parks bond was misused,” Feb. 27, 2016).

It also unveiled the deep divisions in our community that cut across racial and socioeconomic fault lines. I see those divisions every day in my work. They are evident in the health disparities our community suffers. Just one example: The overall rate of diabetes in New Mexico is about 10 percent and rising; among the white, non-Hispanic population, it’s 6.3 percent; among Hispanics, it’s twice that at 13 percent; and among Native Americans, it’s almost 18 percent.

Although I supported the tax, I believe that those opposed had valid reasons, and I respect their views. Why focus on private pre-K when the public schools and our infrastructure are crumbling? Why not a tax that disproportionately affects the rich? And most of all, there seemed to be a general resentment at having the liberal elite decide what is best for the whole city without much input from the working class. I saw a lot of arrogance in the comments of pro-tax folks, calling the anti-taxers “stupid” or assuming that they must “hate kids.”

But one opinion I heard is just flat-out wrong and dangerous. Ironically, some of the very same people who are so opposed to being told what to do by outsiders are being manipulated by the Big Soda manufacturers into believing that soda is not very harmful. I saw these comments over and over: “Why not tax diet drinks, why not fast food? Why not all sugar?” or, “Sugary drinks aren’t so harmful.”

Sugary drinks stand out as the most important contributor to obesity and its consequences, including diabetes and heart disease. They are more dangerous than cigarettes for most people. Cigarettes are what is called a stochastic risk, like buying a lottery ticket to cancer. The more you smoke, the better your chances of getting cancer, since you are buying more lottery tickets. But you can also be a heavy smoker all your life and never get cancer. In fact, the lifetime risk of getting cancer for even the heaviest smokers is only about 20 percent to 25 percent. Not so with sugary drinks; nearly everyone who drinks more than a couple per day will suffer the consequences of the excess calories. And the more you drink, the worse those effects will be.

Another difference: The dangers of smoking have been widely known for almost 50 years. Sugary drinks are considered so safe that children routinely are given juices and sodas as young as 1 or 2 years old. The calories in sugary drinks don’t register in our brains like calories from food do, so we can drink hundreds of empty calories in the form of sodas and not feel full, leading us to drink even more.

The links between obesity and sugary drinks are well-documented and unimpeachable. For each 12-ounce soda per day a child drinks, the odds of that child becoming obese increase by 60 percent. And among adults who average just one can per day, heart attack risk is 20 percent higher, gout risk is 75 percent higher. Those who increase their consumption by just one can per day gain more weight over time. And reducing your intake of sugary drinks is one of the fastest and easiest ways to lose weight. There is some evidence that diet drinks may also be bad for your health, but not nearly as direct. The same goes for fast food or other sugar delivery systems.

Sugary drinks are some of the cheapest drinks you can buy at the supermarket, because your tax dollars are used to promote soda-drinking in the form of heavy subsidies to corn farmers and the production of high-fructose corn syrup. In addition to this, many grocery stores use sodas as a lossleader, luring customers into the store with even cheaper prices.

Use of cigarettes only started to drop when they were highly taxed and banned in public places, even though people were well aware of the dangers of smoking for years before. We can expect the same for sodas. We humans are creatures of habit, and sugar, like cigarettes, is a highly addictive habit. Our environment — the prices, the advertising, the availability — encourages us to drink more soda than we should.

Those against the tax said they want to make free choices without being influenced by outside actors or government intervention. Right now, we all are being influenced by the slick advertising from the soda companies and the cheap prices subsidized by our tax dollars. Don’t be duped. Sugary drinks are among our biggest public health threats, and that will only change when we cut through the propaganda to educate ourselves and begin to treat them the same way we treat similar threats like cigarettes. Wendy Johnson, M.D., M.P.H., is medical director of La Familia Medical Center.