Last summer, a study out of Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco found that nearly 700,000 Americans would be saved from obesity or Type 2 diabetes during the next decade if the federal government made just one tiny change.

Stop letting people buy sugary soft drinks with food stamps.

That’s it. Nothing complicated. Just acknowledge, as we have with tobacco, that sugary soda encourages expensive public health problems, so we’re not going to use tax dollars to encourage its consumption.

The suggestion went nowhere.

The reason, of course, has to do with political influence. Beverage manufacturers and corn growers profit from the sale of sugary sodas and the high-fructose corn syrup that makes them so fattening, and they have powerful lobbies to make sure Americans, rich and poor, continue to drink up.

Never mind that chugging a typical 12-ounce can of cola is like gagging down 10 heaping teaspoons of sugar. And never mind that low-income people suffer from obesity and Type 2 diabetes at far higher rates than the rest of the population.

Soda manufacturers and their allies have argued, among other things, that if sugary soft drinks can’t be bought with food stamps — formally known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program throughout the country — then the government is somehow discriminating against the poor.

That’s nonsense. Effective nonsense. Year after year, heroic efforts to stem the tide of junk drinks to the poor have gone down to defeat, partly because of this bogus argument.

Now a California statewide poll of people on or eligible for food stamps offers hard proof that recipients don’t think junk drinks should be subsidized, either — 60 percent of the people surveyed said that stamps should only be good for the purchase of beverages like juice, water and milk.

In all likelihood, the survey, by Oakland-based California Food Policy Advocates, will come to rest in the same circular file as last summer’s study. At some point, though, there will be no escaping the mounting evidence.

Sugary soft drinks, like cigarettes, are harmful to our health in costly ways. And most of us, rich or poor, are fine with doing something about that.

It’s not complicated. It’s just a fact.