One of the arguments the soldiers of Big Soda — and sometimes, their well-meaning compatriots — have used against taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages is that they won’t change consumer behavior. And, of course, they’ve been able to maintain that fiction, until now, because they’ve scrapped relentlessly to defeat proposals in the US.

But in Mexico, such a tax was instituted at the beginning of 2014, and researchers from Mexico’s National Public Health Institute and the University of North Carolina and have preliminary data on its effect.