Many public health activists and lawmakers often tout that taxes on common grocery items like beverages will be the silver bullet that will solve the complex issue of obesity. However, it has yet to be shown that such taxes actually can deliver on those promises.

Here are a few facts that illustrate that taxes just don’t work:

• A 2017 study done by researchers at the University of North Carolina who found that the beverage tax in Berkeley resulted in an average reduction of at most 6 calories per person of taxed beverages, a small drop that was greatly offset by a 32-calorie increase in purchases of non-taxed high fat beverages such as smoothies and horchatas.

• A study published in the Harvard Business Review, the most comprehensive review to date of the Berkeley beverage tax, by Bryan Bollinger, assistant professor of marketing at Duke University, and Steven Saxon, assistant professor of public policy and economics at Duke, found minimal decrease in beverage consumption in Berkeley. Bollinger’s study estimated that calories from taxed beverages decreased by only 5.8 calories per day due to the tax and that half of the decrease in beverage consumption from the tax at Berkeley supermarkets was made up in increased purchases just outside the city. Find out more about the Berkeley tax here.

• Beverages are not a unique driver of obesity rates. The latest government data verifies that beverage calories per person have been falling steadily for years at the same time rates of obesity have been going up steadily.

America’s beverage companies believe there is a better way to help people reduce the amount of sugar they get from beverages, rather than a tax that hurts working families and small businesses. We’re creating more drinks with little or zero sugar and we’re making smaller bottle and can options more widely available. Today, 50 percent of all beverages sold contain zero sugar. We are engaging with prominent public health and community organizations to do the hard work of changing behavior. And we are giving people the encouragement and information to help them cut back on calories and sugar they get from beverages.

To learn more about how we are helping people achieve balance visit www.balanceus.org.