Can Food Taxes Take A Bite Out of Obesity?
August 24, 2009
Is it possible that by placing special taxes on foods that are high in harmful sugars and fats, and therefore contribute significantly to obesity, that Americans could lower consumption of these foods and reduce an epidemic of obesity?
The idea is an intriguing one.
We have long had tobacco and alcohol taxes that were meant to reduce consumption by increasing product cost. In fact, in the area of cigarette taxes, steep sales taxes, a dollar or more a pack depending on where in the country they are purchased, have been credited as being the single most significant effect on reducing the use of cigarettes. But can the same application of a “sin” tax reduce the consumption of Cherry Cokes, Double Stuffed Oreos, and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos? Well that’s a subject for considerable debate and here’s why:
To start with academic opinion on the subject is all over the charts, some saying that a bad food tax is a wonderful idea and others saying that it would never accomplish the true goal of reducing consumption of fatty foods and would punish the occasional ice cream eater as well as the habitual junk food buyer.
Recent surveys such as one taken by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 55% of respondents favored a tax on unhealthful snack foods, up from 52% just a few months earlier, and support for a soda tax rose to 53% from 46%. Part of this increase may well be the result of the current national debate of reforming America’s healthcare system.
One report released last month by the Urban Institute said such taxes are needed to ensure that rising obesity rates don’t cause the average American life expectancy to slide backward. ”We are killing 100,000 people per year, so something needs to get done,” said University of Virginia pediatric cardiologist Arthur Garson, one of the study’s authors.
But as you dig deeper into a sin tax the issue gets trickier. In various states where, for  example, a 10% tax on a product such as Coca Cola has been attempted, no broad change in consumer behavior has been detected. After all with a large 1.5 liter bottle of Coke selling for $1.50, an additional tax of 15 cents simply is not a significant deterrent to the purchase.
On the other hand, in various social engineering experiments where more drastic steps were taken, doubling the prices of snack foods in office vending machines or cutting in half the price of fruits and vegetable side dishes in company cafeterias as examples, significant consumer behavioral changes occurred virtually overnight. Snack food consumption dropped by more than half, while cafeteria consumption of healthy fruits and vegetable alternatives nearly tripled.
The moral in these and other tests appear to suggest that if society wished to create notable changes in reducing the consumption of bad food choices and increasing the consumption of good food choices it would need to be more aggressive and bolder in the implementation of policy than ten percent taxes on various products would ever achieve.
Mexico took an interesting approach, sharply raising taxes on high sugar soft drinks and applying the revenue from those taxes to subsidize the cost of milk.
The logic of  junk-food taxes appears clear. Fattening foods tend to be cheap, and fresh produce and vegetables are often expensive. A tax could help offset that imbalance, pushing people in the direction of eating more of what they should and significantly less of what they shouldn’t.
“This seems an absolute no-brainer to me,” says Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University who has long promoted such taxes.
But then again in a country where the term “social engineering” often ignites bitter debate, solutions that are labeled as “no-brainers” are often much more complicated than they would at first appear. And this is before Kraft Foods, Coca Cola Bottlers, and PepsiCo start spending generously to effect both legislation and public opinion.
Meanwhile, American obesity rates inch ever higher as statisticians predict that America in the coming years will record the first lowering of life expectancy rates since national record keeping began. Leaving us to ponder what is the greater sin, taxing bad food choices, or taking no action at all?
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September 29th, 2009 at 2:54 AM
No. No, they cannot. That’s the simple answer. You see, obesity rates have relatively little to do with how much people do or don’t eat. Depriving people of food is the act of a depraved, tyrannical state, and taxes are a step in that direction. Read “The Obesity Myth” or “Rethinking Thin” for the facts — science does NOT know how to make fat people thin, and many weight-loss programs end up shortening the lives of those who undertake them. Instead, larger people should focus on accepting and loving themselves regardless of size, which includes healthy exercise, making good food choices (freely!) and living full and interesting lives that include love, sex, and looking good.
October 4th, 2009 at 4:40 PM
Additives like High Fructose Corn Syrup and other preservatives are messing with human metabolism. These are food pollutants, what we should do is regulate these additives out of our food system. Go back 30 years and this obesity issue didn’t exist because people didn’t have these in their diet. Not even coke did, it had cane sugar and now it used HFC syrup. We should start protesting the FDA and other corporations to get this out of poor neighborhoods in particular where there are less choices, we should charge corporations that mess with our metabolism for our doctor bills and health care costs, they are profiteering from our loss of health all around.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:52 AM
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