http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/opinion/fight-big-soda.html 2016-10-06 11:24:45 Fight ‘Big Soda’ Yes, the presidential race is important. But so are the soda tax proposals that will help Americans get healthier. === This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can Over the next few weeks, I want to use this newsletter to call your attention to some big issues that are on the ballot this year but getting obscured by the presidential race. One of them is obesity. For years, the soda industry has been using the undeniable fact that the obesity epidemic has many causes to evade responsibility for its own role. All of which is true. Yet it’s also true that soda drinking is one of Calorie consumption from soda roughly tripled from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, accounting for Fortunately, the public has started to realize this, and soda consumption has fallen since the late ’90s. But it’s still far too high. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo remain major purveyors of obesity, tooth decay, diabetes, heart disease and other scourges that damage people’s health and raise medical costs. Next month, three California cities — San Francisco, Oakland and Albany — will each vote on a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages, including soda. Philadelphia and Berkeley already have similar taxes. And they work. Academic research has found that taxes reduce soda drinking, Margot Sanger-Katz of The Times As usual, Big Soda is We shouldn’t be surprised when the soda industry claims it’s really just looking out for the rest of us. But we shouldn’t listen either. More soda taxes and less soda drinking will make for a healthier country.