Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables!

WHAT will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits? The need is indisputable, since heart disease, diabetes and cancer are all in large part caused by the Standard American Diet. (Yes, it’s SAD.) Though experts increasingly recommend a diet high in plants and low in animal products and processed foods, ours is quite the opposite, and there’s little disagreement that changing it could improve our health and save tens of millions of lives. And — not inconsequential during the current struggle over deficits and spending — a sane diet could save tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs. Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. And whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn’t matter, because the fixes are not really their problem. Their mission is not public health but profit, so they’ll continue to sell the health-damaging food that’s most profitable, until the market or another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good and establishing a bold national fix. Rather than subsidizing the production of unhealthful foods, we should turn the tables and tax things like soda, French fries, doughnuts and hyperprocessed snacks. The resulting income should be earmarked for a program that encourages a sound diet for Americans by making healthy food more affordable and widely available.

politrics.org...

This is very long so I won't post it all. I think the idea's an interesting one, and I'm slapping myself because it never crossed my mind. I understand there will be many against this, but given the current economic crisis and health issues - amongst the working class and poor, noticeably - this could be hugely beneficial.

What say ye?

reply to post by NadaCambia


I eat healthy and am lean and mean. With that sad what rights does the goverment have to tell me what i cant and can eat! why do they think they know better then me? its my choice to eat good or bad. I eat good because i know eatting good makes me feel better and have more energy. But i will fight for the right for those to eat bad.

Plant "Victory Gardens". During the rationing in ww2 alot of people grew their own things at their house and i believe they called them victory gardens. I actually just started my own business creating and tending gardens around my area and i`d encourage others to do the same. Alot of people dont have the time or knowledge but they are willing to pay someone a small fee to do it for them. Do some research and find out what grows best at what time during the year and just go door to door or print some flyers out. Even if its not the right time to plant you can still offer to prep and till the ground, and people that live in apartments can still grow small plants on their balconies. Once i get more experience i want to start building greenhouses so things can be grown year round.

Originally posted by camaro68ss
reply to post by NadaCambia

 

I eat healthy and am lean and mean. With that sad what rights does the goverment have to tell me what i cant and can eat! why do they think they know better then me? its my choice to eat good or bad. I eat good because i know eatting good makes me feel better and have more energy. But i will fight for the right for those to eat bad.

Well this isn't about not being allowed to eat what you want. It's about increasing the cost of junk food, which is ridiculously cheap as it is, to lower the cost of nutritious and beneficial food, which is over priced and out of reach for most.

It's about making proper food available and affordable to all. Because allowing market forces to dictate food prices hasn't really helped or improved anyone's life. Your right to a $1 pizza is trivial.

Originally posted by StratosFear
Plant "Victory Gardens". During the rationing in ww2 alot of people grew their own things at their house and i believe they called them victory gardens. I actually just started my own business creating and tending gardens around my area and i`d encourage others to do the same. Alot of people dont have the time or knowledge but they are willing to pay someone a small fee to do it for them. Do some research and find out what grows best at what time during the year and just go door to door or print some flyers out. Even if its not the right time to plant you can still offer to prep and till the ground, and people that live in apartments can still grow small plants on their balconies. Once i get more experience i want to start building greenhouses so things can be grown year round.

There's tons of free produce all over the shop too, if you know where to look. My Grandma used to take us down the canal to go raspberry picking all the time. Got in a bit of trouble when the bailiff caught my Dad trying to take Pike home for dinner

reply to post by NadaCambia


It is so much cheaper to synthetically produce food from waste materials that more than likely all natural foods will be taxed to discourage their use over the mind killing, unhealthy, fake foods.

Thats just the world we live in.

Actually we tax food every single day - its called inflation.

If it moves:Tax it .... if it keeps moving:Regulate it .... it and when it stops moving:Subsidize it.

reply to post by NadaCambia

I think your main problem is high fructose corn syrup. It was when this replaced sugar that obesity and diabetes sky-rocketed over there. Is it not weird that USA has much bigger obesity problems than rest of the west even though we don't eat that healthy here either?

Here in Norway we are even the highest soda consumers in the world, eat alot of fast food but yet we are one of the slimmest populations in Europe.

Either way it is wrong for government to force them to eat specific foods, which is basically what will happen to the low income population if they tax "unhealthy" food higher.
And btw, there is no consensus on what is healthy and the guidelines keep changing over time. What was healthy 10 years ago is unhealthy now and so on.
I am convinced that alot of products like bread, milk and even fruit is worse for you than government food guidelines claim and will most likely lead to worse problems. I know of plenty of people who lost weight by ditching bread products while eating "unhealthy" otherwise with loads of red meat and fat,
Plenty of studies that show that the fructose in quite a few fruits can actually lead to insulin tolerance as well as obesity as well.

Originally posted by juleol
reply to post by NadaCambia

 

I think your main problem is high fructose corn syrup. It was when this replaced sugar that obesity and diabetes sky-rocketed over there. Is it not weird that USA has much bigger obesity problems than rest of the west even though we don't eat that healthy here either?

Yes, it was not just the high fructose corn syrup - it was the cause of its roll-out which was labeling fat as evil and pushing people on to low-fat/high-carb diets. To restore the taste in the low-fat alternatives they laced it with high fructose corn syrup to the point that today it is nearly impossible to find certain foods (like Bread) which is not made with it. The corn syrup is processed by the body and turned in to stored fat.

This is an excellent explanation from the University of California:

I have a question about bad food; what is really bad food when comparing something that is filled with sugar, sweeteners etc or "healthy" stuff that is genetically engineered ?

I would rather take the junk food than take anything coming from Monsanto and the like.

On a side note where do McDonalds, Burger King etc get there potatoes from is it Monsanto free ?

reply to post by NadaCambia


Farming is way better than foraging, but i do miss being a kid in the woods and coming across a big patch of blackberries. Kind of like a treasure hunt.

The fed is a big part of the problem, namely the FDA. If the FDA says certain foods like sucralose(splenda) is healthier than sugar due to no calories, it will make things with real sugar in it, or the sugar itself, more expensive as they will tax the sugar. We all know sucralose is horrible for you for many many reasons. As others have stated the government has no place telling us what we can and can't eat via taxes, but they already do it by FDA regulation and tariffs on certain items. A better way would be for the fed to help would be to drop the ridiculous laws on people growing gardens. Any sin tax is just another way for the fed to squeeze more money from its every dwindling tax base and its only function is revenue, not the greater good.

Originally posted by NadaCambia

WHAT will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits? The need is indisputable, since heart disease, diabetes and cancer are all in large part caused by the Standard American Diet. (Yes, it’s SAD.) Though experts increasingly recommend a diet high in plants and low in animal products and processed foods, ours is quite the opposite, and there’s little disagreement that changing it could improve our health and save tens of millions of lives. And — not inconsequential during the current struggle over deficits and spending — a sane diet could save tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs. Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. And whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn’t matter, because the fixes are not really their problem. Their mission is not public health but profit, so they’ll continue to sell the health-damaging food that’s most profitable, until the market or another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good and establishing a bold national fix. Rather than subsidizing the production of unhealthful foods, we should turn the tables and tax things like soda, French fries, doughnuts and hyperprocessed snacks. The resulting income should be earmarked for a program that encourages a sound diet for Americans by making healthy food more affordable and widely available.

politrics.org...

This is very long so I won't post it all. I think the idea's an interesting one, and I'm slapping myself because it never crossed my mind. I understand there will be many against this, but given the current economic crisis and health issues - amongst the working class and poor, noticeably - this could be hugely beneficial.

What say ye?

I say sterilize/reduce to slavery people who try and use taxes(something that should only exist for revenue purposes only)to force people to conform to their standards.

reply to post by SirMike


The only statement in all o f this that makes sense and is true. Well done.

Why must the solution always be steal from one guy to bribe another? Pretty obvious by now how immoral and ineffectual this thinking is...

How is it immoral? The only reason we have rich people is because they profiteer on the misery and poverty of others.

Haven't you Americans understood yet? Your lifestyles, wealth and happiness are built on the back of the poverty and suffering of most the world.

I mean jeeze if we want to talk about morals wage-labour and Capitalism would be illegal.

How is it immoral? The only reason we have rich people is because they profiteer on the misery and poverty of others.

Are you absolutely certain that every rich person in the world is rich because they have exploited and stolen from those who are less wealthy? Are you comfortable stating this as an absolute?

Isnt it equally possible that a wealthy person has become so via his voluntary exchange of value with others, who appreciate his offering and are therefor willing to trade with him?

Do you feel particularly exploited by Bill Gates if youre currently running MS? If so, why have you voluntarily chosen to buy his product and use said product to rail against his exploitation of you?

If you have such a problem with Bill Gate's Microsoft, why do you continue to consume his 'exploitive' product?

I do sympathize and share your objection to *actual* exploiters, though.

Haven't you Americans understood yet? Your lifestyles, wealth and happiness are built on the back of the poverty and suffering of most the world.

Although I do find what particular piece of dirt I reside on to be totally irrelevant, I must correct your assumption that I am an American.

In fact I am a Canadian. (which means nothing to me, but it might to you) But the ideas of freedom, liberty and virtue are universal, and are not limited by imaginary lines on a map.

And if I may offer another correction: the wealth of the western world, and specifically America, was not 'built' on the suffering of the rest of the world. The unprecedented explosion of wealth that early to middle America enjoyed was generated via the free market and the nearly unfettered principle of individual freedom and private property. The exploitation that you probably refer to was an effect of this massive expansion of wealth that was co-opted and preyed upon by the American state, who sat upon the largest taxation (theft) base the world has ever known. This nearly unlimited source of funds was, and is used by the ever corrupting state to subjugate and oppress much of the modern world, (near unlimited funds pay for a near unlimited military) and so while 'capitalism' (better known as freedom) was and is indeed the engine of empire, the driver is those in government, who use their stolen funds to commit the atrocities that you and I both hold to be abhorrent.

Thus the problem is not freedom, but is instead institutionalized violence. (better known as the government, or more specifically the 'monopoly of the initiation of force.')

I mean jeeze if we want to talk about morals wage-labour and Capitalism would be illegal.

If we properly define 'capitalism' as the voluntary exchange of privately owned goods, I think you might have a hard time describing 'capitalism' as evil. That is unless you think if I buy your bike off of you for an agreed upon amount to be 'evil'. If you extend your definition universally, you will find that every one of your voluntary trade actions (such as buying the computer and net access youre using to debate me) is evil, and since Im fairly sure every item in the room youre currently sitting was acquired via voluntary trade, you must define yourself as 'evil', renounce all your worldly possessions and go live in the woods somewhere, if you wish to be 'good', by your own definitions. But even in the woods youll have to claim ownership over the rabbits you kill and eat (thus claiming possession over) and the water you draw from a stream and consume.

If 'capitalism' (private property + voluntary trade) is evil, your very existence is evil as your life is predicated on you owning stuff and getting stuff via some sort of trade.

I think the more specific word you might think about using in your critique is instead 'corporatism', or 'mercantilism', which is indeed a twisted and corrupted version of capitalism that enables a parasitical class to feed off, involuntarily, the production of the voluntary, capitalist class. In that more accurate description, you and I are brothers in opposition to exploitation and subjugation.

But I think its *very* important to use the proper words, if we wish to not throw out the baby with the bathwater.