Advocacy letter

Advocacy Letter Congressman Collin T. Peterson 2204 Rayburn HOB Washington, DC 20515 Dear Congressman Peterson, I am a nutrition major at a major university, and I admire the work that you do as Minority Leader at the House Committee on Agriculture. Like you I care deeply about the food we eat and the impact of our food choices on our health. Nutrition issues are at the heart of current debates relating to the correlation between processed food and disease, and you will no doubt agree that unless we change the status quo more and more Americans will succumb to chronic conditions like obesity and diabetes.
I am therefore writing to ask for your support for HR 5279, also known as the Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Act of 2014, or the Sweet Act, which was introduced Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro from Third District of Connecticut.
The Sweet Act makes an amendment to the Internal Revenue Code in the form of an imposition of an excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages applicable to the beverage producer, importer or manufacturer, at the rate of one cent for every 4. 2 grams of sweetener in a beverage. The act places revenues from the excise tax exclusively into research as well as programs to mitigate the economic an human toll tied to such diseases as obesity, teeth caries, diabetes, and other diseases and conditions tied to sugar consumption.
Various studies have established direct correlations and causal relationships between the consumption of sugary beverages on the one hand and obesity and the onset of metabolic diseases such as diabetes on the other hand. The negative health effects of sugary beverages extend to heart disease, to such an extent that the American Heart Association itself has stepped forward to recommend restricting sugar consumption to help prevent heart disease.
The Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health has also stepped forward to point to the large and growing public costs of obesity and its health consequences, and has singled out sugary beverages as responsible in large part to the escalation of the epidemic of obesity. National spending on care related to obesity and related conditions has been pegged at $190 billion per annum, highlighting the gravity and the urgency of the problem. Sugary drinks negatively impacts American society in profound ways, and therefore there is a need to intervene.
Taxes on sugary beverages have been shown to effectively curb sugar consumption. If the Sweet Act passes, therefore, we can expect large and dramatic positive consequences:
We will be able to allocate more funds from the taxes to programs that target obesity and its health effects
We will be able to reduce obesity rates in the long term by curbing sugar consumption in the general population, due to higher prices brought about by the tax
The long-run effect will be the substantial reduction in health care costs and the improvement in health outcomes of the American public
Through your strong support for the Sweet Act, you will be helping reverse the rising tide of obesity and its attendant diseases and helping cut health care costs for the government and the general population. It is my fervent hope that you will join us in championing this bill and in securing better nutrition and health outcomes for our fellow Americans.
Sincerely
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1 Works Cited
Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “ Sugary Drinks and Obesity Fact Sheet” Harvard. edu. 2015. Web. 2 March 2015. Library of Congress. “ H. R. 5279 – SWEET Act113th Congress (2013-2014)”. Congress. gov. 2014. Web. 2 March 2015. Malik, Vasanti et al. “ Sugar-Sweetened Beverages, Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, and Cardiovascular Disease Risk”. Circulation. 2010. Web. 2 March 2015. Malik, Vasanti et al. “ Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Risk of Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes: a meta-analysis”. Diabetes Care 33 (11). 2010. Web. 2 March 2015.