Obesity tops tobacco as biggest health threat

[Simon_Jester]

In other news, the calorie numbers on packaging in the US tend to be off by 10 to 20 percent. As in, 10 to 20 percent less than what the real number is. This is certainly not helping the obesity problem.

Is there any indication as to how they're managing to shave calories off the estimate? Not including condiments, maybe?

Allow me to weigh in (ha!) here as a person who eats too much fucking food and too much shitty food on top of it: a tax on junk food would be far more effective in getting me to cut back on what I eat and to eat better food. The thought process goes like this:

"Fuck, I'm hungry. Maybe I'll dash down to the Wawa and pick up a meatball hoagie."

JUNK FOOD TAX: "What? Holy shit, twenty bucks for a fucking sandwich? I don't want it that much. I'll go back home and reheat the vegetable soup."

OBESITY TAX: "Well, fuck, one sandwich won't hurt my BMI that much. This will be the last one. And I'll start jogging. I have months before the bill is due anyway."

The thing about being overweight, you know it's bad for you, you don't want to be that way, but making a lifestyle change involves making the right decisions dozens or hundreds of times a week, and it's easy to rationalize a bad decision while promising yourself that next time, you'll do better. That's how you can ignore the long-term disincentives to eating unhealthfully--you just tell yourself you'll start fixing it tomorrow. For that reason, I can't imagine a "fatass tax" would work even if it's absolutely ruinous. If hypertension, strokes, diabetes, joint damage, heart disease and a lifetime of being embarrassed by your own body aren't enough disincentive to skip the meatball hoagie, I can't imagine how losing a chunk of your tax return is going to be any more effective.

As a person who's had comparably large (heh) problems on this, I'm going to have to agree. There are already lots of good reasons to lose weight. If people don't do it even with all those reasons in play, adding one more isn't likely to change the equation.

Where I start having doubts is when we start penalizing things like avocado or even salad dressings. High-fat doesn't automatically translate to "bad". A good starting point here would be to leave "whole foods" alone. The trend you'll notice towards things labeled as unhealthy is the amount of processing they undergo - HFCS, trans-fats, white bread, and so on, all that stuff has been processed by food industries. It's rare to find a food item in a near-natural state that's qualified as "bad".

If the issue with foods like avocados is that they're good for you in moderation and bad for you if you overindulge, wouldn't a tax on them work out well? Double the price or whatever and you can still have one occasionally with little difference to your budget but it makes it less preferable to buy them in large enough amounts that it's unhealthy.

Trouble is, avocados aren't like potato chips in that regard. It's easy and cheap to buy enough potato chips to make yourself fat. Getting fat by gorging yourself on avocados is already more expensive and less likely than that; you don't see people doing it all the time. Taxing avocados won't make nearly as much of a dent in the problem as taxing potato chips.

If, after having taxed high fructose corn syrup and potato chips and the like, people are still getting obese because of their ridiculous avocado consumption, then we can talk about taxing those too.

[RedImperator]

Where I start having doubts is when we start penalizing things like avocado or even salad dressings. High-fat doesn't automatically translate to "bad". A good starting point here would be to leave "whole foods" alone. The trend you'll notice towards things labeled as unhealthy is the amount of processing they undergo - HFCS, trans-fats, white bread, and so on, all that stuff has been processed by food industries. It's rare to find a food item in a near-natural state that's qualified as "bad".

If the issue with foods like avocados is that they're good for you in moderation and bad for you if you overindulge, wouldn't a tax on them work out well? Double the price or whatever and you can still have one occasionally with little difference to your budget but it makes it less preferable to buy them in large enough amounts that it's unhealthy.

The trouble with going down that road, in addition to Simon_Jester's point, is that you could easily wind up taxing healthful foods out of reach of the poor. Nuts are a pretty good example of this; they're good for you in moderate amounts and they're a versatile ingredient that turns up in a lot of dishes, but they're terrible if you overeat them. A punative tax would prevent people from overeating them, but they could price the poor right out of the market.

Plus, from a practical implementation standpoint, it's a lot easier just to slap a tax on HFCS than it is to start sorting whole foods into "good" and "bad" categories for taxation. As it is, you're going to be in for the fight of your political life just wresting with the corn lobby for any kind of fat tax; adding the rest of the agro industry to the fight on corn's side isn't what you need.

[PainRack]

So one method that picks one method of addressing a problem with many causes and mandates that people use that one is better than one that invites people to pick a solution which works for them? My proposal is a penalty on being fat that's intended to both recompense society for the additional costs it bears when people are fat and to encourage them to get fit.

Discriminator taxation doesn't provide direct incentives to change. Its as simple as that.
Have you seen a smoker give up smoking because his health insurance is increased?

Or do price no longer play any role in purchasing behaviour?

You obviously haven't thought at all about my proposal. I'm sure it has its problems, but none of your criticisms seem to apply, and claiming that this is a problem only with fat and sugar and that those ingredients should be taxed doesn't address the scale or scope of the proposed food tax. How do you tax an avocado? It has no added sugar and no added fat. Do you tax its fat content? That's plausible, and seems to be what Darth Wong would advocate, but that's essentially the same as a calorie tax, which makes little sense for a whole bunch of reasons to me. People have different metabolisms and those with high metabolisms or who are highly active are penalized completely unfairly under a calorie tax system, for example. A tax on obesity, by comparison, gets to the root of the problem directly and offers choices in how individuals wish to address their own situations (I can eat less junk food, I can exercise, I can change my lifestyle to be more active, etc.). Moreover, because it's applied to people instead of as an excise tax, it can be tied ot the individuals' marginal rates, if we so desire.

Excuse me. Who said ANYTHING about YOUR proposal?
You asked, how would you tax junk food. My reply is simple. I don't.
I simply tax fat and simple sugar instead. This way, manufacturers who use high quantities of such ingredients, have to increase their product prices to match. I admit that this will have an inflationary push on all processed foods including healthful foods but this has the benefit of making unprocessed foods even more attractive.

[ThomasP]

I simply tax fat and simple sugar instead.

Given that most Western diets are very deficient in healthy fats, this wouldn't be the best of ideas.

There's more to the negative effects of a food item than its mere fat content.

[General Zod]

I'm pretty sure sugar is already taxed fairly heavily, which is why all the major soda companies switched to HFCS.

[Darth Wong]

It seems to me that most of the attacks on the junk food tax idea come from the standpoint of proving that it would not be absolutely perfect, ie- it would not ensure that 100% of situations in which healthy food is consumed are exempt, or that 100% of situations where unhealthy food is consumed are covered. I don't see why that's a reasonable expectation of any social policy.

[Axis Kast]

Taxing "junk food" is often attacked for many reasons which have nothing to do with the perfection of anti-obesity measures, or the lack thereof.

My parents, who are both quite fit, and buy sodas only when entertaining for guests, regard the "junk food" tax as a cynical attempt by government to wring its way back to solvency at the expense of the average consumer.

The "junk food tax" can also be opposed on grounds that it may price some people right out of the market for the only foods which are accessible to them: in many inner city neighborhoods such as Spanish Harlem, for example, grocery stores are comparatively rare. Smaller convenience shops rarely stock wide varieties of green stuff. For want of other choices, shoppers are forced to purchase unhealthy foods.

[Mayabird]

The price of HFCS would shoot up if the corn agricorps weren't massively subsidized. As it is, tax money is going to encouraging people to be fatasses by making the calories artificially cheap. Just cutting the subsidies without even adding a junk food tax would go a ways to reducing the problem.

[Stark]

My parents, who are both quite fit, and buy sodas only when entertaining for guests, regard the "junk food" tax as a cynical attempt by government to wring its way back to solvency at the expense of the average consumer.

Who gives a fuck? If it reduces obesity AND the government makes money during the procedure, so what? Or is 'government gets more money' an instant deal-breaker for your critically thinking challenged 'parents' (who are clearly you in disguise)? Motive is IRRELEVANT if it would work, and apparently it works for tobacco products.

Sorry, 'evil government makes money' is a shit reason to not do something. You sound like whiners who complain about being busted by 'profiteering' speed cameras.

[wolveraptor]

The "junk food tax" can also be opposed on grounds that it may price some people right out of the market for the only foods which are accessible to them: in many inner city neighborhoods such as Spanish Harlem, for example, grocery stores are comparatively rare. Smaller convenience shops rarely stock wide varieties of green stuff. For want of other choices, shoppers are forced to purchase unhealthy foods.

So? A junk food tax would be incentivizing the stocking of healthy foods in inner city areas. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

[ThomasP]

It seems to me that most of the attacks on the junk food tax idea come from the standpoint of proving that it would not be absolutely perfect, ie- it would not ensure that 100% of situations in which healthy food is consumed are exempt, or that 100% of situations where unhealthy food is consumed are covered. I don't see why that's a reasonable expectation of any social policy.

I can't speak for anyone else, but the only objection I can raise is the desire for a reasonable and preferably evidence-based definition of "junk food". When I see things like avocados being (potentially) labeled "bad food", that makes me wonder what standards would actually be used for that definition.

Other than that I see no problems with the concept.

[Axis Kast]

So? A junk food tax would be incentivizing the stocking of healthy foods in inner city areas. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

Only if junk food and green stuff were indifferent, excepting cost and nutritional value, which they are not. A convenience store is ill-equipped to sell fresh produce. A slight rise in the cost of junk food items would not necessarily provide a sure incentive for store owners to invest in refrigeration.

Who gives a fuck?

Mike doubted that anybody opposed the proposed tax on grounds other than its inevitable imperfection.

If it reduces obesity AND the government makes money during the procedure, so what?

If it reduces obesity, which is far from a sure thing. People who become obese are already making a lifestyle choice which requires them to spend more than everybody else. They wear bigger sizes; they eat more in a single sitting; they pay social penalties that sometimes hamper their careers. Who's to say they won't absorb the cost of this new tax? At that rate, the government will be earning more money, without the desired policy incentive. Ergo, an innovative new tax in disguise.

Or is 'government gets more money' an instant deal-breaker for your critically thinking challenged 'parents' (who are clearly you in disguise)? Motive is IRRELEVANT if it would work, and apparently it works for tobacco products.

While Americans are demanding more and more of their government, they are also increasingly distressed over their tax burden. Whether or not it is fair to criticize the obesity tax on grounds that it's another way for the government to make money -- and it isn't fair -- the very idea still prompts people to begin thinking about government efficiency. On the face of it, a tax on obesity sounds ridiculous to many. Therefore, they suspect ulterior motives.

The policy works for tobacco products, but tobacco products are not identical to junk food, which is in far greater demand, and may be defined to cover unhealthy staple foods.

Sorry, 'evil government makes money' is a shit reason to not do something. You sound like whiners who complain about being busted by 'profiteering' speed cameras.

And you sound like a whiner all the time. It's your "shtick," or so I'm told.

[Broomstick]

I suppose we could start with anything with an addition of HCFS or transfats.

After that, perhaps fried foods that do not require heating or refrigeration (crisps, potato chips, Doritoes, corn chips, etc.)

After all, you don't have to start with an intricate and complex program. Start with something simple, see if taxation has an impact, and go from there.

I still think that taxing restaurant portions above a certain caloric content makes sense.

The system doesn't have to be perfect in order to have a positive effect.

[Simon_Jester]

It seems to me that most of the attacks on the junk food tax idea come from the standpoint of proving that it would not be absolutely perfect, ie- it would not ensure that 100% of situations in which healthy food is consumed are exempt, or that 100% of situations where unhealthy food is consumed are covered. I don't see why that's a reasonable expectation of any social policy.

Hey, don't look at me, I'm just objecting that avocados shouldn't be taxed as junk food. Likewise nuts, certain types of meats, and in general anything that is not a major contributor to the obesity problem. It stands to reason that if the purpose of a tax is to fight obesity, then we should only target things that are major causes of obesity, not things that could conceivably be fattening but don't actually get people fat by themselves.

The price of HFCS would shoot up if the corn agricorps weren't massively subsidized. As it is, tax money is going to encouraging people to be fatasses by making the calories artificially cheap. Just cutting the subsidies without even adding a junk food tax would go a ways to reducing the problem.

My impression is that HFCS delivers more calories per unit of sweetening effect than sugar; is this impression unfounded?

[wolveraptor]

Only if junk food and green stuff were indifferent, excepting cost and nutritional value, which they are not. A convenience store is ill-equipped to sell fresh produce. A slight rise in the cost of junk food items would not necessarily provide a sure incentive for store owners to invest in refrigeration.

No shit, the tax would have to be high enough that it would encourage such changes. It could even be combined with some sort of subsidy on businesses selling healthy foodstuffs. This doesn't really refute the overall concept.

[RedImperator]

There is a genuine problem with getting good food into the inner cities. Remember, these are neighborhoods where the residents often rely on public transportation (so no hauling a weeks' groceries for a family of four in one trip), and the chain supermarkets (usually nationally owned, with a business model built around the suburbs) have no real presence there. Little corner convenience stores are, in many places, actually the only place where locals can buy food without hiring a taxi or taking a long bus ride to the suburbs. That's something that's going to have to be addressed (it needs to be addressed anyway; it's perverse that food is more expensive for poor people than it is for middle class suburbanites).

[Darth Wong]

Hey, don't look at me, I'm just objecting that avocados shouldn't be taxed as junk food.

What the fuck is this obsession with avocados? Since when did the idea of a junk food tax necessarily result in an avocado tax? Since when did everyone agree that avocados are junk food? Nobody buys avocados in bulk anyway; if you eat avocados, you should know that they spoil fairly quickly, and only an idiot would buy great big bags of them.

Yes, anything is potentially unhealthy when consumed in huge quantity. How the fuck does this make everything potential junk food? Is there some reason we can't look at actual consumption habits and identify culprits? Why does everyone have to "lawyer up" in these situations and envision some idiotic situation where "junk food" is defined in precise legalese and then worry about people finding loopholes?

[Darth Wong]

My parents, who are both quite fit, and buy sodas only when entertaining for guests, regard the "junk food" tax as a cynical attempt by government to wring its way back to solvency at the expense of the average consumer.

The government should wring its way back to solvency at the expense of the average consumer. How else is it going to accomplish this feat? Thanks to Reagan-esque idiocy, it's already stupidly given away gobs of money to the rich, who promptly moved it to overseas shelters where no one can get at it. It certainly won't get it from the poor. It's running out of its ability to steal it from future generations.

Frankly, those "average consumers" are the same exact goddamned douchebags who voted for all of these idiotic tax cuts. They should absolutely be made to pay to get the government back to solvency. I'm so sick of right-wing rhetoric like this.

Mike doubted that anybody opposed the proposed tax on grounds other than its inevitable imperfection.

And your criticism was an example of a mindless knee-jerk anti-tax argument which could be applied (literally without changing a single word) to any kind of tax. It's a red-herring.

The "junk food tax" can also be opposed on grounds that it may price some people right out of the market for the only foods which are accessible to them

That's idiotic. If poor people can only afford to buy junk food, then someone should change that situation rather than saying "let's make sure the poor can continue to buy cheap junk food!" Also, you're ignoring the fact that the proposal includes taking the junk food tax and using it to subsidize healthier foods, which would make the good food affordable for low-income families. The whole objective of this scheme is to get that shitty junk food away from poor people, and you're saying that if this happens, it will be a failure. Do you honestly not understand that?

[Simon_Jester]

What the fuck is this obsession with avocados? Since when did the idea of a junk food tax necessarily result in an avocado tax? Since when did everyone agree that avocados are junk food? Nobody buys avocados in bulk anyway; if you eat avocados, you should know that they spoil fairly quickly, and only an idiot would buy great big bags of them.

Yes, anything is potentially unhealthy when consumed in huge quantity. How the fuck does this make everything potential junk food? Is there some reason we can't look at actual consumption habits and identify culprits? Why does everyone have to "lawyer up" in these situations and envision some idiotic situation where "junk food" is defined in precise legalese and then worry about people finding loopholes?

Yes. That was my point, only with less swearing and apparently less clarity.

[aieeegrunt]

The government should wring its way back to solvency at the expense of the average consumer. How else is it going to accomplish this feat? Thanks to Reagan-esque idiocy, it's already stupidly given away gobs of money to the rich, who promptly moved it to overseas shelters where no one can get at it. It certainly won't get it from the poor. It's running out of its ability to steal it from future generations.

Frankly, those "average consumers" are the same exact goddamned douchebags who voted for all of these idiotic tax cuts. They should absolutely be made to pay to get the government back to solvency. I'm so sick of right-wing rhetoric like this.

Fuck. Ya. I'd shrug and let the Americans pay the inevitable price for their idiocy, except that I guarentee (and it's already happening) that they can and will drag everybody else down in their wake. I imagine that once they finish depleting their fresh water reserves to water golf courses in Arizona they'll be coming after the Great Lakes. I think Canada needs to explore closer ties to the EEC or something, it's not healthy for us to have our economy so closely tied to the lunatics south of the border.

I love the irony that it's government subsidized corporate welfare that is a big contributor to the problem of obesity in the form of cheap corn syrup being pressure injected into everything, while a suggestion to try and amelorate this with a tax is knee jerked as TAXES BAD.

Taxing one of the main sources of the problem at the source in the form of sugar, corn syrup etc. is a simple elegant solution. If it becomes expensive for business to load food up with fructose corn whatevers, they'll stop doing it.

[RedImperator]

Oh, God damn it. Could a mod please delete the previous post?

I imagine that once they finish depleting their fresh water reserves to water golf courses in Arizona they'll be coming after the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes states have sixteen senators between them. The Great Lakes aren't going anywhere. Arizona can roast.

EDIT: Five seconds of Googling turned up the Great Lakes Compact, which prohibits water from being diverted from the Great Lakes watershed in anything larger than a five gallon container. Incidentally, the proposal that sparked the creation of this compact? That came from your side of the 49th parallel--some cockamamie scheme to ship Great Lakes water to Asia in tankers. Source. So, um, yeah. You can go ahead and blow me now and hum Yankee Doodle Dandy while you do it.

[Axis Kast]

The government should wring its way back to solvency at the expense of the average consumer. How else is it going to accomplish this feat?

As usual, you behave as if taxation is the only solution to cost overruns, and blame anybody who questions high taxes of favoring the wealthy. There are a number of methods for cutting costs, rather than raising tax. The government should balance its budget and work to curtail pork-barrel spending. Individual citizens should amend their expectations of the services government can, and should, provide.

And your criticism was an example of a mindless knee-jerk anti-tax argument which could be applied (literally without changing a single word) to any kind of tax. It's a red-herring.

It wasn't a criticism. I shared with you a pair of objections that weren't consistent with the criteria you offered.

That's idiotic. If poor people can only afford to buy junk food, then someone should change that situation rather than saying "let's make sure the poor can continue to buy cheap junk food!" Also, you're ignoring the fact that the proposal includes taking the junk food tax and using it to subsidize healthier foods, which would make the good food affordable for low-income families. The whole objective of this scheme is to get that shitty junk food away from poor people, and you're saying that if this happens, it will be a failure. Do you honestly not understand that?

Somebody should. Will they? I doubt it. If they don't, and this tax is pushed through -- which seems far more likely than the alternative -- then the burden would be placed on the malnourished urban poor.

Will subsidies for the sale of healthier foods help turn convenience stores into supermarkets? What kind of subsidies are we talking about here? Green stuff -- fruits and vegetables -- requires refrigeration and frequent restocking. Can smaller stores survive according to that kind of business model? Can supermarkets thrive in city centers, where cars (and trunks) are comparatively rare? Have you honestly failed to take these obvious problems into account?

[Lusankya]

As usual, you behave as if taxation is the only solution to cost overruns, and blame anybody who questions high taxes of favoring the wealthy. There are a number of methods for cutting costs, rather than raising tax. The government should balance its budget and work to curtail pork-barrel spending. Individual citizens should amend their expectations of the services government can, and should, provide.

How does a non-balanced budget, pork-barrel spending and unrealistic expectations of the government's role in life increase obesity rates, and how would fixing those problems decrease obesity?

Will subsidies for the sale of healthier foods help turn convenience stores into supermarkets? What kind of subsidies are we talking about here? Green stuff -- fruits and vegetables -- requires refrigeration and frequent restocking. Can smaller stores survive according to that kind of business model? Can supermarkets thrive in city centers, where cars (and trunks) are comparatively rare? Have you honestly failed to take these obvious problems into account?

I don't know about the US, but in Australia, IGAs - stores that range from 1/8 to about 1/4 the size of a supermarket and stock a variety of foods including fresh fruit and vegetables - are relatively common and solvent. They usually just service people who live within easy walking distance, because if you had to drive for anything more than maybe a carton of milk, people would just go to a proper supermarket. They kept their prices competitive by being socialist commie traitors and basically collectivising their supply so that they could get bulk wholesale discounts. I imagine that if there was a proper push from the government to make unhealthy foods more expensive and healthy food less expensive, then they would be able to stock even more fresh fruit and vegetables, since more people would be buying them, which would decrease the issue of shelf-life immensely.

[PainRack]

Given that most Western diets are very deficient in healthy fats, this wouldn't be the best of ideas.

There's more to the negative effects of a food item than its mere fat content.

I was referring to fat ingredients rather than foods containing fats. However, a quick purview of manufacturing practices suggest that this may be very complicated to carry out.
Fine then, then tax sugar. Simply tax the raw stuff. So, your fruits? They're not going to have an increased tax. Fruit drinks, which are essentially flavouring plus sugar will.

[PainRack]

I still think that taxing restaurant portions above a certain caloric content makes sense.

The system doesn't have to be perfect in order to have a positive effect.

Its hard to enforce dear.... Who's to say that your sample meal submitted to the inspectors will tailor to the actual caloric content?