Tax on Sugary Drinks Reduces Risk of Gestational Diabetes

According to a recent UC San Francisco study involving more than 5 million women, taxes on sugary drinks lower the risk of gestational diabetes and unhealthily high weight gain in pregnant women.
This is the first investigation into the impact of SSB taxes on mother and child health both before and after delivery, and it was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Researchers compared expectant moms who resided in cities with SSB taxes in place to those who resided in places without SSB taxes. The danger of having an excessively small fetus was greatly reduced, along with the risk of diabetes and unhealthy weight increase in expectant moms.

“All three of these outcomes are important for health later in life, for both the mother and child,” said senior author Justin White, Ph.D., associate professor of health economics at UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. “If you can reduce risk at this key developmental stage, it can have long-lasting health benefits.”

Sugar-sweetened beverages are linked to an increased risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease in the general population. According to the authors of a study released on March 24, 2023, SSBs are the main source of added sugar for pregnant women, who consume 50% more calories from added sugar than is advised.

From 2013 to 2019, researchers studied 5,324,548 pregnant women in the United States and their offspring using data from national birth certificates. Data from those places were compared with scores of cities without taxes at the time. At the time, the five cities having SSB taxes were Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, and Berkeley.

SSB tariffs were linked to a reduced risk of gestational diabetes by 41.4%, a reduced risk of unhealthful weight gain for gestational age by 7.9%, and a reduced risk of small-for-gestational-age births by 39.1%. Race, socioeconomic position, and retail environment were among the demographic and city-level variables that were taken into account by the researchers while looking for disparities.

The taxes didn’t appear to affect blood pressure and body mass index (BMI) during pregnancy, or the low birthweight and preterm status of the infant.

About 50 countries have implemented SSB taxes in the last decade, and research indicates they have helped reduce the consumption of sugary beverages. Research on the health effects is limited, however, with one large study in Mexico showing a reduction in obesity rates while another in Mauritius showed no effects. At the same time, modeling studies indicate that SSB taxes lower the risk of chronic disease in the general population.

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