Many manufactured food and drink products contain high levels of sugar which causes many health problems Sugary products should be made more expensive to encourage people to consume less sugar Do you agree or disagree

Concerns are growing when people believe that many processed foods and beverages contain excessive amounts of sugar, which causes a superabundance of health issues. Thus, the surge in prices of these products is a solution to reduce their consumption. In my opinion, I do not completely assent to this idea because of a couple of rational reasons that I will discuss below.

On the one hand, price adjustments have an effect on regulating consumer behavior, especially an increase in cost, which changes the choices of the consumers to other commodities. This is based on the terms of tobacco and alcoholic beverages being taxed as excise duty in many countries whereby people decrease consumption of these things. Take Vietnam as an emblematic example, one of the countries with low prices of alcohol, in a report published in 2018, WHO rated Vietnamese consumption of alcoholic beverages as higher than other countries in ASEAN. 0.9 litres per person per month as recorded during this period before increasing to 1.3 litres by 2020. However, the endeavor to change consumer behavior through overtaxing or boosting prices is sometimes unsuccessful and ineffective.

In some cases, as I mentioned above, however, consumers cannot change their manners because their demands are deeply ingrained in these commodities. For example, alcoholics cannot give up drinking just because of the high price, the similarity for those who have a sweet tooth. When people eat sugar, the brain releases dopamine and serotonin, the mood-boosting hormones, which subsequently stimulate the nucleus accumbens – the area of the brain associated with reward, which is why they get sugar cravings. Cutting down on sugar by replacement of fructose sugar in processed foods and drinks with glucose in natural or drinking sparkling water instead of soda or coke are some effective strategies to improve health.
In conclusion, raising the price of sugary products is just one of the numerous ways to improve consumers' health. People need an explicit attitude, and manner of self-control in their diet.