Perspective Taxes on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages to Curb Future Obesity and Diabetes Epidemics

Diet is the leading cause of health loss globally according to the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010, contributing 10 % of all health loss [1]. Requiring many assumptions, the GBD team also estimated that 300,000 (95 % uncertainty interval: 212,000 to 404,000) deaths per year were attributable to diets high in sugar-sweet-ened beverages (SSBs) [1], or about 0.6% of all deaths globally per year. Thus the impact of SSBs on global health is not as big as tobacco, alcohol, or salt, but it is still important. A feature of SSBs is how much they ‘‘stand out’ ’ as an unnecessary health risk