The idea that the federal and state governments should be involved in what we eat or drink doesn’t make any sense to me. In addition, their ways of interfering in our lives is ludicrous. Obesity is a complex issue and if you want to address the problem seriously, lawmakers better try to understand what’s causing it. Simple, narrow-minded, deficit-driven solutions like the soda tax, for instance, won’t do any good.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal this morning, Mr. Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca Cola, explains that while it is easy to blame its company for 12 percent increase in calorie intake by Americans since the 1970s, it doesn’t hold water. First, he shows that obesity has as much to do with calorie intake than it has to do with the amount of calories out.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics 2008 Chartbook, 39% of adults in the U.S. are not engaging in leisure physical activity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that 60% of Americans are not regularly active and 25% of Americans are not active at all. The average American spends the equivalent of 60 days a year in front of a television, according to a 2008 A.C. Nielsen study. This same research data show that the average time spent playing video games in the U.S. went up by 25% during the last four years.
If we’re genuinely interested in curbing obesity, we need to take a hard look in the mirror and acknowledge that it’s not just about calories in. It’s also about calories out.

He also shows pretty effectively, I think, that the excess of calorie intake has more to do with fat and flour than sugar in soda drinks.

A soda tax (also called excise tax) is not the way to change people’s behavior anyway. The Mercatus Center’s Richard Williams and Katelyn Christ have worked extensively on this issue and concluded that it’s a myth that these taxes could force people to reduce their calorie intakes.

Research has shown that when the price of a “sinful” good increases, consumers often substitute an equally “bad” good in its place. For example, two studies found that teen marijuana consumption increased when states raised beer taxes or increased the minimum drinking age. Another study found that smokers in high-tax states are more likely to smoke cigarettes that are longer and higher in tar and nicotine than smokers in low-tax states. Specifically, they discovered that young adults aged 18–24 are much more responsive to tax changes than older smokers. For young smokers, the switch to cigarettes with higher tar and nicotine is so large that tax hikes actually increase average daily tar and nicotine consumption.

For more soda-tax myths, read their work here and here.