Happy New Year! 2023 marks the 5-year anniversary of San Francisco’s soda tax.
With COVID-19 here to stay, 2022 brought new challenges to face as a society, like inflation. When time and money are tight, buying cheap food or drinks seems like a smart thing to do to stretch the dollar. But there’s more to deciding what to eat. In her book, How the Other Half Eats, Dr. Priya Fielding Singh explores how and why we eat the way we do. For example, some parents with limited incomes want to feel like they can give their children something special. While they may have to say “no” to a laptop or a trip to Great America, they can afford to say “yes” to a candy bar, a fast food meal or a soda. But the issue is more complicated than “just saying no”, especially when inflation plays a role. Did you know that San Francisco has programs that teach families how to make healthy foods with limited time and budget? The SF Soda Tax funds some of these programs.
SFDPH has heard from the community that they don’t know what the soda tax has funded and who is benefiting from the funding. To address this knowledge gap, our evaluation partners, Raimi + Associates, are developing a data dashboard with online maps and charts that describe how the soda tax funds are serving SF by race/ethnicity, income, neighborhood, and select health outcomes. These data will be regularly updated and will be available to the public.
2022 was a busy year for the Sugary Drinks Distributor Tax Advisory Committee (SDDTAC). This year, the revenue from the tax in Fiscal Year 2022-23 was $13,740,000. After mandated set-asides, the SDDTAC will be making recommendations for $11 million for the Fiscal Year 2023-24 and 2024-25. The Committee always wants to hear from community members; you can attend their online meetings to comment on their recommendations – their meeting information can be found here. The committee is using the Aliah Think Tool to streamline the decision-making process. Once the SDDTAC sends their final recommendations to the Mayor’s Office and the Board of Supervisors, the work isn’t done! The next phase is to meet with policymakers and educate them about the SDDTAC’s process and encourage them to support the recommendations.
Since 2018, soda tax champions like SPUR and the Shape Up SF Coalition have organized these meetings with the Board of Supervisors. If you are interested in joining SPUR, Shape Up SF, and SDDTAC members to promote the 2023 recommendations, reach out to Paloma Sisneros-Lobato or Blythe Young.
We hope that the meetings with the Board of Supervisors and the new maps and data will help show the impact that the soda tax is having in San Francisco.