A first-of-its-kind study suggests that soda taxes do reduce sugar consumption. Researchers used grocery shopping data to track food and drink sales before and after the city of Seattle implemented a sugary drinks tax in January of 2018. The data set represented 45% of all food store sales in the city for 2017, 2018, and 2019. As a control, researchers obtained the same data for the nearby city of Portland, Oregon, which doesn’t have a soda tax. They found that the total amount of sugar sold through taxed drinks dropped by 23% in Seattle compared to sales in Portland, one year after the soda tax was implemented. That decline held for the following year as well.

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