How do you feel about a fat tax on fatty foods?

I’m not sure what the proposed rate is, but 10% would make sense—I recently read that 10% of healthcare costs are due to obesity-related issues!

The entire food-processing and delivery system in this country is geared deliberately toward getting you to consume carefully calibrated combinations of fats, salt and sugars. Big Agro and the entire fast-food industry depend upon keeping you addicted to these combinations. Since money is power, and your Congressional representatives are forced to raise money in order to run for office, until we publically finance campaigns and disallow contributions (which will never happen) there will never be a tax on fatty foods.

For those who want to learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax

I, for one, would be in favor of this. A quote from the article: “advocates of the tax point to the effect taxes have had on alcohol and tobacco use. Five studies published between 1981 and 1998 found that drinking declined as the price of alcohol increased. The same holds for tobacco.”

* laughs bitterly *

Yeah.. Great.. More proof that we need an external force to control our cravings because we apparently do not possess the willpower to stay off unhealthy stuff.

I am all for the overall goal of making healthier food more abundant, but I don’t think it’s right to try and control peoples food choices with tax.

I think required disclosure (maybe even in large print on reciepts) of the calories, fat grams, sugars and salts would be more effective in getting people to change their choices. So many calories are just plane sneaky in resteraunts. Vegetables that look healthy but have a bunch of oil, mega calorie salad dressings or salads with half a brick of cheese on them are just a few examples of how people are tricked into consuming more calories than they intended.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you had to sign a calorie disclosure notice before they served you your food? I digress…....

@drClaw I don’t think it was meant to try and control people’s food choices, but rather tax them for contributing to obesity costs. They can still eat it if they truly want to. I do agree with you, healthier food should be more abundant, but I think a tax like this may cause such things to happen. More smaller businesses that perhaps specialize in healthy foods only?

This is a regressive tax and regressive taxes always bother me – no matter what they are on.

Apparently it was never really proven that fat is bad for you so I call BS on this tax. Check out this article for more information

I am tired of the government solving problems by taxing their constituents. How about a little something known as self-control? Education on healthy foods would be money better spent that taxing those people who eat fast food. The majority of people who eat at those kinds of places are in the lower economic levels, so we are going to tax those that can least afford it for their own good? That’s retarded, and more importantly, it is unfair.

I am tired of people thinking we as free citizens need to be babysat by our elected officials. When it comes to the carrot and stick mentality, I for one, am sick and tired of the stick being the more common choice for correcting human behavior.

You can put me in the NO TO A FAT TAX category.

Crap food is a huge industry. How about we tax the companies that make this shit. They can help pay for health care. You wouldn’t be patriotic, or a true American, if you didn’t purchase and consume American products.~

Yes, yes, and more yes.

I would go so far as to say that anything that makes use of your brain’s reward system and is clearly, demonstrably bad for you should be regulated and taxed to pieces. Here we have a product that, when you use it, your brain says MORE! MORE! And it’s cheap, and it’s ubiquitous. And it kills you.

All taxing does is provide an incentive not to do something that’s already bad for you.

@evelyns_pet_zebra: I don’t think this is a problem of education. Does anyone who eats fast food really not know it’s bad for you? And while I agree with your point about punishing the poor, what I hope would come of this would be an influx of new, convenient, popular food chains that serve cheap, healthy food that doesn’t kill you. Frankly, I think we’ve already shown how far self-control will get us and it’s not pretty.

In general I could care less. I haven’t eaten fast food once after super size me. The thought of greasy food and grade d/f processed food make me so sick. However this could potentially put a hit on those less fortunate people in the world. Eating healthy isn’t always the cheapest way to go and more often than not is substantially more expensive. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who struggle to pay for all of their bills and only have $5 at the end of the day to get a meal.

A) I’m against any new taxes
B) This tax will most definately hit lower income people worse than it will hit people who can afford to eat better
C) regressive taxes are hypocritical at best, the politicians who propose and then institute them don’t REALLY want people to stop smoking, eating fast food, and drinking… they’re GETTING MORE MONEY in taxes from these behaviors. But they can stand up there at the lectern and sound like they’re “for the people” and these taxes will do what? are they supposed to work like aversion therapy? Oh, more taxes, no Mickey Dees! (I don’t think so)

I recently heard a story on NPR about a woman who had lost her job and home and moved into a small apartment with a bunch of relatives. She was able to make her utility payments, but the rest of the family members slacked off so she was stuck with no electricity or gas and two little tiny kids to feed. What did she do? She fed them McDonalds, Lunchables, and all kinds of other no prep or simple prep foods that were crappy for her kids. A tax on these types of food is going to make it even harder for a woman like this to keep her family fed. That is just not ok.

@critter1982‘s point is a good one – healthy food is more expensive. Now that I am a single mom and full time student holding down a part time job, I watch every single penny. It is really, really difficult to feed my children decent food on what I bring home in a month.

@tinyfaery makes the best point in my opinion. How about taxing the producers of this crap or giving them some other kind of incentive or disincentive to stop making this stuff garbage.

@evelyns_pet_zebra – Oh, I’m with you. There are too many people out there whose first reaction to any problem is to throw a law or tax at it.

Basically this is not just a tax on fast food and would not be regressive enough to change behavior,

This would increase the price on salad dressing, olive oil, whole milk,avocados, in fact many foods we think of as healthy choices.

Secondly, although pizza is the only fast food I have eaten in years raising the price from $12 to $13.20 (my portion $0.30) will not deter me. If the kid is going to pick a $1 bag of Cheetohs, chaging him $1.10 isn;t going to convert him to oatmeal and the office worker who pays $5 for a capafrapamochachino isn’t going to blink at an extra $0.50.

Look at how we have dealt with cigarettes. We have tripled or quadrupled the prices with real taxation. We have made it inconvenient or impossible to smoke by limiting where we can smoke. We have committed to educating people.

Tripling the price of fats in food might have the added benefit of limiting the number of babies in poor families. (Women must have at least 15% body fat in order to have successful pregnancies, Starving women are infertile women)

We can make laws limiting what you can eat in public or in the presence of children (second hand calories, you know) That may be OK with guys who like to grill outdoors anyway, but picture the poor women who will have to lock themselves in the laundry room to have a dish of Rocky Road. When they try to change prison meals to sauceless vegetables, butterless bread and skim milk, there will be riots and smuggled in canned soup.

Continuing education regarding a good diet including some fats seems like the best and healthiest alternative)

Continuing education regarding a good diet including some fats seems like the best and healthiest alternative) Right on!

No. I am not in favor.

First of all, every time the government meddles in dietary stuff, they get it wrong.

Not all fat is bad. One cause of the current diabetes epidemic is the mandated low-fat craze (later proven incorrect) meant that producers put sugar in everything. Many low-fat or no-fat products are worse nutritionally than the full-fat originals.

The obesity epidemic in the country does have to be dealt with, but not via a tax. An overall approach that increases exercise, rewards people for good choices, educates about and sells things in healthy portion sizes, and makes healthy alternatives available.

What ever happened to land of the free? I am so tired of someone in government deciding what I should eat or smoke or drink. The funny part is congress and the senate surely have their share of fat people, why don’t they cut back on portions in the cafeterias there???

But every time I turn on the television there is another story about the obesity epidemic. Taxing isn’t going to help though, people are going to eat what is convenient when they are hungry, a few cents isn’t going to deter.

You used to buy a candy bar for 5 cents, they are much more expensive now but I don’t think sales have gone down. The problem is with the size of portions. Whenever a company wanted to sneak in a price hike they increased the size of the product thinking that the “consumer” (sorry to those that don’t like that description) wouldn’t complain about the hike if they were getting more for their money. So everything now is so much larger than it was before. I can’t even eat a whole candy bar anymore. I think we have to resize our appetites, wonder how you can tax that???

@SuperMouse Would you still think a regressive tax would be bad if it paid for something that people with lower incomes desperately needed? (like health care, be it single payer or just a public option) I saw a interview with Howard Dean and he was saying that we could help pay for it with a gas tax. He said he thought most people who would be most affected by the regressive tax would gladly pay ten cents extra per gallon of gas for healthcare that would still be there even if they lost their job.

@rooeytoo At least the ice cream companies are doing their bit by downsizing carton size while maintaining prices. Three cheers for Breyer, Dreyer and Lucerne!

This thread actually stayed on my mind when I stopped at the store today. With the rising epidemic of diabetes, lets have a carb tax on potatoes, pasta, bread, rice and the like. I picked up a loaf of low carb bread and checked out. Of course everyone understands that this bread has fewer carbs per slice because it is the same as other bread-just sliced thinner and has more air pockets. It’s like making a sandwich on single ply tissue.

@benjaminlevi I am, on principle against any regressive tax. I just don’t see why those who can afford it the least are asked to give the highest percentage of their income to these taxes.

A gas tax is a regressive tax, but I would guess that the majority of people living significantly below the poverty level do not own or gas up cars of their own. As a broke college student and mom would I be willing to pay a dime more per gallon of gas to guarantee healthcare for my kids? Probably, but it would definitely take a bite out of my income.

@SuperMouse If they added Alli to high fat foods you would have a repressive, regressive, recessive, depressive gas tax and people would voluntarily cut back on cutting the cheese.

@galileogirl lol4rl! That sounds like an interesting plan, it would however most likely cause a downturn in the sale of white pants.

Yeah and there,s that whole global warming thing, but you know how they are turning dairy cow effluvia into methane then electricity?...it’s a thought…

Goes in the right direction. But we’d also need a high-glycemic food tax. A yogurt with some fat (common in Europe) is actually more healthy than one with too much sucrose (common in America).

I saw a new commercial-kind of a phone company/Hallmark card motif-happy families, children playing in sunshiny fields. It was all about the heakth benefits of juice (and soft drinks) The tag line was don’t let the govt tax juice and soft drinks. Of course the govt is looking at faux juice drinks-10% juice pumped full of sucrose. Heaven forbid our little darlings are driven to drinking water.

About time, fatties.