Voters in California to decide whether to pay more for high-sugar drinks

WATCH ABOVE: Two American cities head to the polls in an effort to trim waistlines. Crystal Goomansingh reports.

TORONTO – People in two California cities will decide Tuesday whether they want to levy a new tax on sugar-heavy drinks like soda or pop.

And Canadian health experts are watching closely.

“I think it’s an excellent idea,” says Bill Jeffery, the national coordinator at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

“The evidence is very compelling that increasing the prices of unhealthy foods and beverages and decreasing the prices of healthy foods and beverages will lead to beneficial changes in the population.”

WATCH: Should Canada place a tax on drinks with high amounts of sugar? The Global News panel debates.

Jeffery says here in Canada, decreasing prices of healthy foods is essential. In some provinces, like Ontario, he says fruit salad is taxed while some sugar-laden breakfast cereals are not.

“I think there would certainly be a benefit to applying a higher tax to sugary soft drinks and removing the tax from some nutritious foods like low fat milk and bottled water that are currently subject to tax,” Jeffery says. “We shouldn’t be applying taxes to nutritious foods and exempting junk foods.”

READ MORE: How much sugar should you be eating? How to follow WHO’s guidelines

Berkeley and San Francisco wouldn’t be the first in the country to dissuade people from drinking sugared water: Michael Bloomberg banned the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces (453 grams) while he was mayor of New York City. A court overturned the ban in June.

Just as in New York, those opposing the proposed policy are making sure their voice is heard. According to Time Magazine, the American Beverage Association has spent more than $10 million to defeat the levies.

“When the government decides they want to tell you what you should and shouldn’t be eating, where does it end?” Roger Salazar, an association spokesperson told Time Magazine says. “Do they decide at some point that eating too many burgers is bad for you, so all burgers are going to be taxed?”

In Berkeley, the proposition is a 2 cent per ounce tax but just 1 cent per ounce in San Francisco.

The revenue from the tax, believed to be upwards of $54 million, has reportedly been earmarked for nutrition and physical activity programs.

But if the idea is to make people choose healthier options, will the tax work? It could. British researchers at Oxford University found so-called fat taxes on junk food can work if they are at least 20 per cent.

READ MORE: Fat tax would have to be hefty to work, UK research suggests

Anything less likely wouldn’t present enough of a burden to make people choose something else.

Dr. Sean Wharton, a specialist in internal medicine, supports the tax but admitted it might not help the fight against obesity. He says there’s no question sugar-laden drinks are implicit in the obesity epidemic but says the opposite – that not drinking them will make you lose weight – is not necessarily true.

That being said, he says people choosing not to drink sugar-laden drinks could present a number of other health benefits.

“It may not have a huge impact on obesity rates but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not going to have a huge impact on health,” he says. “We can decrease the diabetes risk, the insulin resistance risk, so there’s multiple other factors in terms of health that can get better.”

– With files from Crystal Goomansingh