One of the challenges public health officials face in reducing diet-related disease is the\u00a0relatively easy\u00a0and inexpensive access to sugar-sweetened beverages\u00a0globally.\u00a0To help address this\u00a0burden, public health organizations\u00a0like the\u00a0World Health Organization\u00a0and\u00a0American Heart\u00a0Association\u00a0have\u00a0recommended that governments tax\u00a0sugar-sweetened beverages.\u00a0Now, new research\u00a0from the\u00a0Food is Medicine Institute\u00a0at the\u00a0Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy\u00a0at\u00a0Tufts\u00a0University\u00a0shows that this policy\u00a0is being adopted at an accelerating pace around the globe, with 64 countries passing sugar-sweetened beverage taxes\u00a0for health purposes\u00a0between 1990 and 2024, covering 3.5 billion people\u00a0worldwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Leading the way are countries in South Asia,\u00a050%\u00a0of\u00a0which\u00a0have adopted sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, followed closely by\u00a0countries in\u00a0Southeast\u00a0and East Asia\u00a0at\u00a0nearly 48%.\u00a0Overall,\u00a0globally,\u00a0researchers found\u00a029%\u00a0of high-income countries have adopted such taxes. In contrast,\u00a0countries\u00a0with the lowest adoption rates were in\u00a0Central Eastern Europe and Central Asia,\u00a0at 17%. The\u00a0study\u00a0appears\u00a0June 8\u00a0in\u00a0The Lancet Global Health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The reasons for this variable adoption have\u00a0so far\u00a0not been clear.\u00a0In\u00a0this\u00a0first analysis of its kind,\u00a0researchers\u00a0found that a country’s burdens\u00a0of type 2 diabetes and obesity,\u00a0but\u00a0not rates of sugary drink consumption,\u00a0were drivers\u00a0of\u00a0adopting taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Surprisingly,\u00a0the\u00a0consumption rates of sugar-sweetened beverages had no significant\u00a0relationship with\u00a0whether a country chose to tax them, suggesting these decisions are driven more by disease burdens,”\u00a0said\u00a0the study’s first\u00a0author\u00a0Lizbeth Moreno Loaeza,\u00a0who led the work while a\u00a0postdoctoral scholar at the Friedman School\u00a0and\u00a0is\u00a0now at\u00a0the Instituto Nacional de\u00a0Ciencias\u00a0M\u00e9dicas\u00a0y\u00a0Nutrici\u00f3n\u00a0Salvador\u00a0Zubir\u00e1n\u00a0in Mexico City. “We also found that countries\u00a0with higher social and health development are less likely to adopt these taxes, regardless of their economic wealth. This may be because they\u00a0generally possess\u00a0more robust health systems and experience lower rates of diet-related diseases.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The study drew on multiple global datasets from 1990 to 2024 across 183 countries, including the Global Dietary Database, Global Burden of Disease Study,\u00a0Non-Communicable Disease\u00a0Risk Factor Collaboration, and World Bank data, to identify characteristics of sugar-sweetened beverage taxes implemented for health purposes and the factors associated with their adoption. Tax characteristics were\u00a0identified\u00a0using data from the World Bank, World Health Organization, and University of North Carolina.\u00a0For the\u00a0total of\u00a064 countries that passed these taxes in the\u00a0time period,\u00a0the researchers’ analysis\u00a0showed\u00a0tax rates ranged from 1%\u00a0to 34%\u00a0by country and 5%\u00a0to 17%\u00a0across world regions, with the\u00a0highest median rates in\u00a0the\u00a0Middle East and North Africa. Most countries taxed sugary drinks based on either price or volume. Only a small fraction tied the tax to sugar\u00a0content,\u00a0an approach the researchers say\u00a0may be\u00a0most\u00a0effective because it pushes beverage companies to\u00a0reduce\u00a0sugar in their products.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Notably, despite the public health rationale behind these policies,\u00a0the researchers found that\u00a0only 13% of countries directed the revenue toward health programs, a missed opportunity for\u00a0doubling the\u00a0public\u00a0benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a\u00a02025 study in the journal\u00a0Nature Medicine,\u00a0Tufts\u00a0University\u00a0and\u00a0Global Dietary Database researchers\u00a0estimated that sugar-sweetened beverages contribute to 2.2 million new diabetes cases and 1.2 million new cardiovascular disease cases globally each year, emphasizing the urgent public health need for policies that reduce their consumption.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We know these taxes work, and we now have a much clearer picture of\u00a0how they are being adopted and\u00a0what drives countries to\u00a0do so. Nearly half\u00a0of the world’s\u00a0population\u00a0now\u00a0lives\u00a0under a national sugar-sweetened beverage tax, but\u00a0we found that\u00a0the rates of many of these taxes\u00a0remain\u00a0relatively low, and\u00a0that\u00a0dozens of other countries, including the\u00a0United\u00a0States, have not passed national taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Dariush Mozaffarian, study’s senior author, cardiologist and director, Food is Medicine Institute<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“These\u00a0findings highlight opportunities to continue to advance nutrition and well-being through sensible policies, like soda taxes, around the world,” added\u00a0Mozaffarian.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Journal reference:<\/p>\n
Loaeza, L. M., et al. (2026). Understanding sugar-sweetened beverage tax implementation globally: a 34-year, population-based observational study in 183 countries. The Lancet Global Health.\u00a0DOI:\u00a010.1016\/S2214-109X(26)00093-8.\u00a0https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/langlo\/article\/PIIS2214-109X(26)00093-8\/fulltext<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the challenges public health officials face in reducing diet-related disease is the\u00a0relatively easy\u00a0and inexpensive access to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1702,493,426,3171,103,2685,61,60,1357,446,2361,89],"class_list":["post-490135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-diabetes","tag-diet","tag-food","tag-global-health","tag-health","tag-heart","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-medicine","tag-nutrition","tag-public-health","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}