She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.<br />Dr. Kathryn Backholer, an expert on the issue at Deakin University in Australia, said taxes on soda were “low-hanging fruit” in the fight against obesity, diabetes<br />and other weight-related diseases because such drinks are easily categorized to tax and sensible to target because they “have little or no nutritional value.”<br />Dr. Backholer and other experts said the turning point for soda tax proponents came in 2014, when Mexico<br />— Coca-Cola’s biggest consumer market by per capita consumption — approved a 10 percent tax.<br />In March 2016, the country’s health minister, Alejandro Gaviria Uribe, proposed a 20 percent tax on soda and sugar-sweetened beverages — the equivalent of about 10 cents on a liter bottle —<br />that became part of a larger tax overhaul backed by Colombia’s president and the Ministry of Finance.<br />Studies of soda taxes have shown they lead to a drop in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages — a 10 percent sales decline, for example, over the first two years of Mexico’s tax — however, such measures are so new<br />that there is not yet evidence of their impact on health.<br />“We need a national plan to fight sedentary lifestyles, better product labeling and education efforts<br />that teach people to eat more fruit, fish and vegetables.”<br />Dr. Cerón and her team got a Pyrrhic victory two weeks ago when the country’s Constitutional Court overturned the consumer agency’s decision to silence Educar<br />and ordered the agency to “abstain from censoring any other ad related to public health in the future,” according to the ruling.
