User:Samdrews/sandbox

Type II Diabetes is a growing health concern in many developed and developing countries around the world, with 1.5 million deaths directly due to type II diabetes in 2012 alone. Unlike sugar from food, the sugar from drinks enters the body quickly, which can overload the pancreas and the liver, leading to diabetes and heart disease over time. A 2010 study said that consuming one to two sugary drinks a day increases your risk of developing diabetes by 26 percent.

Obesity is also a global public and health policy concern, with the percentage of overweight and obese people in many developed and middle income countries rising rapidly. Consumption of added sugar in sugar-sweetened beverages has been positively correlated with high calorie intake, and through it, with excess weight and obesity. The addition of one sugar-sweetened beverage to the normal US diet can amount to 15 pounds of weight gain. Added sugar is a common feature of many processed and convenience foods such as breakfast cereals, chocolate, ice cream, cookies, yogurts and drinks produced by retailers.The ubiquity of sugar-sweetened beverages and their appeal to younger consumers has made their consumption a subject of particular concern by public health professionals. In both the United States and the United Kingdom, sugar sweetened drinks are the top calorie source in teenager's diets.

Trends indicate that traditional soda consumption is declining in many developed economies, but growing rapidly in middle income economies such as Vietnam and India. In the United States, the single biggest market for carbonated soft drinks, consumers annual average per capita purchase of soda was 154 liters.

Denmark began taxing soft drinks and juices in the 1930s. More recently, Finland reintroduced an earlier soft drink tax in 2011, while Hungary taxes sugary drinks as part of its 2011 public health product tax, which covers all food products with unhealthy levels of sugar. France introduced a targeted sugar tax on soft drinks in 2012. At a national level similar measures have also been announced in Mexico in 2013 and in the United Kingdom in 2016. In November 2014, Berkeley, California was the first city in the U.S. to pass a targeted tax on soda.