A Different Angle on the Sugar Tax
Germany, October 2026: A sugar tax is under discussion and in the media, and it is being debated along several dimensions - but, in my view, not along all of them. One could argue “not along the right ones”, but that would be a value judgement. So I’m throwing in the butterbei.de angle, which has so far been absent from the public debate. Presumably because the topic is little known, or not very popular.
What Is Being Discussed
What I usually see about the sugar tax are remarks like these:
- harmful calorie intake and “empty calories”
- price increases (sometimes: for poor people)
Both are valid topics. On price increases, I have nothing to add or comment on from a butterbei.de perspective, but metabolically, the “harmful calories” miss the point - or rather, they cement the old thinking that calories are everything. Long-time readers will remember that I don’t consider this view very helpful.
Views on the usefulness of calories
Caloric Balance: Cause or Effect?
An invitation to reverse the causality: why explaining weight loss through reduced calorie intake is not very helpful
Read more →An Alternative Mental Model
As already noted in the article on caloric balance: carbohydrates in general, and sugar in particular, affect the body in ways that go beyond their mere energy content. The body has to do a lot of hormonal work (via insulin) to get everything that exceeds the amount currently needed (one teaspoon) back out of the blood. And all of that while the body’s requirement for dietary carbohydrates is zero.
And since insulin is the dominant hormone, a cross-reference to the metabolism simulator is of course unavoidable: it shows how insulin behaves. As a reminder: what matters is not necessarily the height of the (blue) curve, but the size of the area under it - and sugar is one of the substances that reliably make that curve rise.
In table sugar’s favour, one could note that it is half glucose and half fructose - and therefore raises blood sugar less per gram than starch does. However, fructose has its very own metabolic pathway, which makes it clear that calories really should be the least of our worries. Calories could be compensated for elsewhere. The hormonal effects and their health consequences are not so easily compensated - if at all.
After all, the main reason you are not allowed to tip petrol and oil into the countryside isn’t their flammability (calorific value) either, but how harmful and toxic these substances are.
And if you then look at an ostensible reason that legitimised sugar’s mass entry into our diet over the last century, I, for one, am left with no doubt that reducing sugar consumption is a good idea. There’s no need to discuss the absurd DGE dietary guidelines, which allow more sugar than meat per week, in this context. I’ve done that enough in several other places, including here.
Whether a sugar tax helps, and what it leads to, remains to be seen. I stand by my view that sugar does not promote health (quite the opposite!), but we’ll see what the outcome is. One thing is certain: what gets measured will change. I can’t judge (but I’m sceptical) what happens when sugar is replaced by cheap sweeteners. But that is not the subject of this article.
