Jeff Ritterman, cardiologist and board member of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility working to combat medical racism and climate change, discusses his experience and lessons learned from proposing the first municipal soda tax in Richmond in 2012 and his work on the tax in his time serving on Richmond's City Council. Though the 2012 measure did not pass, it would be followed by successful sugar sweetened beverage tax efforts in other parts of the Bay Area, including Berkeley and San Francisco. Jeff highlights the importance of collaborating with and centering Black and Latinx community members who carry the disproportionate health burdens caused by the beverage industry's predatory marketing of sugary drinks and uplifts other measures, such as removing sugary beverages from health centers, to decrease sugary drink consumption. He breaks down some of the literature on the mechanisms by which excess sugar in sweetened beverages lead to diabetes and cardiovascular disease, as well as touches on the ways the beverage industry contributes to poor health and environmental outcomes in its production and distribution. This episode of In Praxis is a part of Season 2: Sugar Sweetened Beverage Taxes.
The information, opinions, views, and conclusions proposed in this episode are those of our podcast guests.