Greetings on World Health Day!

In celebration of World Health Day, we at Healthy Food America are releasing our own contribution toward fighting the global diabetes epidemic: a new guide to adopting taxes on the sugary drinks that are a prime contributor.

The number of adults living with diabetes has quadrupled since 1980 to more than 420 million – 8.5 per cent of adults, according to the WHO’s first report on diabetes worldwide, released this week. Fully 90 percent of those cases are Type 2 and the growing prevalence of processed foods almost certainly plays a part. Daily sugary drink consumption alone increases diabetes risk by 26 percent. To reverse course, we have to change industry practices and curtail the added sugars that permeate our beverages and foods. The WHO endorsed taxes on sugary drinks as a good start, and we are here to help along in the U.S.

A Roadmap for Successful Sugary Drink Tax Campaigns

Today, Healthy Food America is distributing a new guide, A Roadmap for Successful Sugary Drink Tax Campaigns, responding to numerous requests from communities around the country for information on how they can join Berkeley, CA, Mexico and now the UK in raising revenue while improving health.

The science is clear: Sugary drinks are bad for us, contributing about 47 percent of the added sugars that are contributing to burgeoning rates of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart, liver, and dental diseases. The typical 20-ounce soda, for example, has about 16 teaspoons of sugar – 33 percent more than the daily maximum recommended by recent federal guidelines. Taxing sugary drinks – just as we do tobacco – to raise revenue and improve health is an approach that is gaining momentum across the country and around the world. Read More.

We Have Resources to Support You

We at Healthy Food America are excited to be up and running! Our new organization is helping to energize a national movement for healthier food, starting with a major campaign to reduce consumption of added sugars in food and beverage products. We want to help you act on scientific evidence to drive change in food policy and industry practice, and take control over diet-related illnesses. We have a number of resources to support you:

Research Watch is a monthly summary of key research findings on the impacts of sugar on health, and what strategies work to reduce excessive sugar consumption. Scientific evidence is coming in fast. We hope to help you stay on of it all.

Best Practices in Designing Local Taxes on Sugary Drinks is a guide to help communities design taxes for maximum health benefit. It identifies critical policy considerations such as legal, administrative and political factors. We hope it will help answer the political and administrative questions about a sugary drink tax initiative in your community or state.

Let's Knock Sugar Consumption Back to Healthy Levels

Share our email with your associates and encourage them to sign up for our emails. We’ll keep you up to date with our latest news and resources. We also invite you to follow us on Twitter at @HealthyFA and on Facebook at Healthy Food America. We look forward to working with you to knock back sugar consumption to healthy levels!