WHO urge price hike sugary drink in Obesity fight.

As part of the World Health Organization’s activities to bring down whopping Obesity, The UN health agency on Tuesday has urged countries to start taxing sugary beverages as they fight against an obesity epidemic, pointing to evidence that price hikes can dramatically reduce consumption, with one in three adults overweight. WHO also concluded in a new report that there is reasonable and increasing evidence that appropriately designed taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages would result in proportional reductions in consumption, especially if aimed at raising the retail price by 20 percent or more. In other words, a 20 percent price hike leads to a cut in consumption by 20 percent, while a 50 percent hike cuts consumption in half, the agency explained. Douglas Bettcher, who heads WHO’s Prevention and Non-communicable disease department also insisted that if Governments tax products like sugary drinks, they can reduce suffering and save lives, WHO estimated in 2014 that 39 percent of adults globally were overweight and more than half a billion people over the age of 18 were obese.
Last year, it found that 42 million children under the age of five were overweight or obese and increase of about 11 million in 15 years. At the same time, the number of people living with diabetes worldwide had quadrupled since 1980, from 108 million to 422 million in 2014.