Rod Lew, Executive Director of Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment, Advocacy and Leadership (APPEAL), discusses how the negative health impacts of sugary beverages can be best understood in the context of a long history of racism and structural oppression as well as toxic relationship building between industry and marginalized communities. Building on this, Rod makes the case for systems change and calls for equity based policy processes in SSB taxes and building community power through reinvestment to challenge the negative health outcomes caused by sugary beverages. From APPEAL's work on tobacco, Rod also draws parallels between the tobacco industry and the beverage industry in their tactics regarding claims of regressivity in opposition to taxes on their products and threats to their profits. This episode of In Praxis is a part of Season 2: Sugar Sweetened Beverage Taxes.

The information, opinions, views, and conclusions proposed in this episode are those of our podcast guests.