Many to drink less soda

EXCLUSIVE:PETALING JAYA: Over half of Malaysians surveyed in a poll say they would drink less soft drinks once the sugar tax, a move by the government to cut down the obesity level in Asia’s fattest country, kicks in tomorrow.

The poll conducted by international survey agency YouGov for The Star found that 59% out of the 1,022 respondents said they would drink less soft drinks while 13% said they would stop drinking sugary beverages.

Only 25% said they would continue to drink the same amount while 3% said they would in fact drink more.

The poll also noted that 64% of those surveyed were aware of the introduction of the excise duty for sweetened beverages announced by Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng during the tabling of Budget 2019 last year.

Lim had announced the excise duty for sweetened beverages at 40 sen per litre on two categories of ready-to-drink packaged sweetened drinks.

The beverages include carbonated drinks containing added sugar or flavoured, and other sweetening matter which contains sugar exceeding 5g per 100ml.

The tax would also be imposed on fruit and vegetable juices with sugar content exceeding 12g per 100ml.

Asked about how often they take soft drinks, 20% of the respondents said several times a week or month, 6% said several times a day, and 8% said at least once a day.

Only 16% responded that they drink such beverages once a week while 18% said less than once a month.

About 9% said they have soft drinks once a month while 3% said never.

Asked to what extent they felt that implementing the sugar tax would be beneficial or detrimental, about 25% said the sugar tax would be somewhat beneficial while 8% said it would be very beneficial.

However, 23% said the tax would be somewhat detrimental while 12% felt it would be very detrimental.

About 32% said they felt it was neither beneficial or detrimental.

Some respondents felt the sugar tax would have an impact on businesses, with 35% believing that it would have a somewhat negative effect.

About 10% felt there would be “very negative” impact on businesses.

Only 4% believed that the tax would have a very positive impact while 11% felt it would be “somewhat positive”.

Only 38% felt the tax would have “neither positive nor negative” impact.

Based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) classification, the prevalence of overweight and obesity among adults (18 years and above) was 30.0% and 17.7% respectively in 2015, according to the National Health & Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2015, compared to 16.6% and 4.4% respectively in 1996 (NHMS 1996).

The prevalence of overweight and obesity had increased by 80.7% and 302% respectively in just under two decades.

The prevalence in children below 18 years was also not encouraging, with 11.9% being categorised as obese (NHMS 2015).

In 2014, science adviser to the Prime Minister Tan Sri Zakri Abdul Hamid said that new findings from British medical journal, The Lancet, had showed that 49% of women and 44% of men in Malaysia were found to be obese.

In the study, Malaysia was rated heavyweight at 45.3% of its population, followed by South Korea (33.2%), Pakistan (30.7%) and China (28.3%).