Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington, believes taxing soda fails to target obesity’s true causes — and is unfair to boot.
Drewnowski notes that soda consumption patterns in the general population correlate not just with obesity but with poverty, and that in focusing on the soda-obesity connection we fail to address other conditions associated with poverty, from sedentary lifestyles and television viewing to unemployment and “general hopelessness,” that contribute to weight gain.
“We should be looking at those things,” Drewnowski says. “That’s my complaint — why aren’t we?”