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The Pros And Cons Of Soda Tax

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Recently, people have become worried about the health issues associated with consuming sugary drinks, especially soda. The rate of people being diagnosed with type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease has been going up primarily because of beverages with added sugar (Cited in Crawford, 2016). Several studies have found that soda is linked to over 180,000 deaths per year (Cited in Crawford, 2016). An article by the Huffington Post (2011) said that an average American drinks about 44.7 gallons of carbonated beverages a year, which adds up to over 350 pounds of soda. Comparatively, in 2005 an average American drank only 0.5 gallons, making soft drinks the most consumed beverage in America (n/a, 2011). The way the government is trying to fix …show more content…

Consumers think that it is awful that they have to pay for someone else’s health care while that person may just as well be drinking twelve cans of soda daily and continually destroying their health. (“Should there be a”, n.d.) These consumers are hoping the soda tax will encourage people to stop abusing soda and at the same time lowering the obesity rate in our country, which now about 66% of our population. Some commenters also said that the government is doing the right thing to try and stop this …show more content…

Based on a 2,000 calorie daily diet, dietitians recommend only consuming 50 grams of sugar daily. A can of Coke takes up more then half of that amount. When interviewing some health care professionals, Kristin Raebinger a registered dietitian, found that the majority of them quickly commented that sugar consumption is a major contributor to obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease (Cited in Worthington, 2016). A lot of health care professionals think that the soda tax is the only way to stop this issue but they also think it may be best to not pass the tax and just lower the amount of sugar in soda (Worthington,

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