Alright, America. Let's Start Taxing Junk Food.

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bellinachuchina
bellinachuchina Posts: 498 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I was reading The Angry Pharmacist blog (http://www.theangrypharmacist.com/archives/2010/07/why-help-those-who-refuse-to-help-themselves.html#comment-10123), and found one of the responses by a Dr. of 20 years, to be very true & inspiring!

Here's what he had to say :

"There are studies that show (yes, there are, and no, I’m not looking them up for you) poor areas have lower access to healthy food and more access to cheap, fast food. I think everyone would benefit by making crap food more expensive. I’m not a liberal, or a democrat, but I would like to see taxes on junk food, soda, etc. Increasing taxes on cigs did make use go down (another study I’m not looking up). Add another tax for salt levels above a certain point/percentage and just watch packaged food and fast food companies lower the salt content of what they sell to avoid their consumers forgoing it altogether because it now costs more."

That would be great! Even to go the next step & lowering the cost of healthy and natural foods, imagine what it would do for our country's obesity problem! Thought I'd share :) Keep up the awesome work, MFP:flowerforyou:
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Replies

  • jlizgar
    jlizgar Posts: 104
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    I *LOVE* that blog! Its so brutally honest, its refreshing to see someone not at all in any way afraid of saying something that may offend someone else, just says whats on his mind and if it offends you, well, thats on YOU....I love it :)

    and I agree, I think SOMETHING needs to be done about the situation. I like the idea of regulating how much salt can be put in such products, then companies will certainly be sure to lower levels in order to still be able to sell and make money, because it is all about money.
  • Lisamarie1226
    Lisamarie1226 Posts: 335 Member
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    Great topic. Although I think it would be even better to make healthier food less expensive. Fast food is cheap, let's be honest. When I'm out running around and I think, "Hmmm... I want a smoothie" I'm paying close to $5 for that smoothie (if I go to Smoothie King and that's for a small!!!). Even at Jack in the box, a regular smoothie is like $3 but you can get a whole meal off the $1 menu for that same amount.

    I love MorningStar Farms products but they are so expensive compared to other not so healthy frozen food. It's ridiculous!
  • Learning2LoveMe
    Learning2LoveMe Posts: 1,430 Member
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    How about first build access to healthy affordable food in poor areas before taxing them to death. Or better yet, start taxing the companies to death that are producing the crap food.

    I was very poor a couple years ago, and I lived off of 89 cent burritos from taco bell and the free pizza I got at work (when I was lucky to get a freebie). Sad, but true. It really sucks to have to go through that.

    Crap food is already expensive (minus the dollar menus), and they have already enacted a tax on soda (sweet beverage tax).
  • Photoplex
    Photoplex Posts: 49 Member
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    * If poor people, in poorer neighbourhoods, were charged more for their fast food - they would still buy fast food. They're not suddenly going to decide to eat grilled chicken and salad. The net outcome would be the poorer people, becoming poorer. The issue is one of education, not accessibility or pricing.

    * Higher tax and duty rates on petrol (gas) has not curbed peoples use of their private vehicles

    * Higher taxes on travel (airfare especially) has not curbed the number of flights

    * Higher tax rates on alcohol has not curbed consumption

    I'm waiting for a response along the lines of "well, people are travelling less!" etc. That's an issue of global recession, not of actual fare prices. Pre-recession the travel industry was booming, and taxes and surcharges were at an all time high.
  • bellinachuchina
    bellinachuchina Posts: 498 Member
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    How about first build access to healthy affordable food in poor areas before taxing them to death. Or better yet, start taxing the companies to death that are producing the crap food.

    Agreed, healthy and affordable food is hard to find anywhere, let alone in low-income areas, what can be done about it? An economical healthy fast food restaurant would be great. And I'm all for taxing the companies ;)
  • Bryan190
    Bryan190 Posts: 54
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    Sorry, I've got a problem using tax code for behavior modification as defined by politicians. I want to lose weight for my own reasons, I don't need some politician punishing me for not adhering to his goals.
  • misspenny762
    misspenny762 Posts: 279 Member
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    I think it's a great idea, personally. I'd rather pay extra for junk food than for health care as a direct result of too much junk food.
  • fxst78
    fxst78 Posts: 221 Member
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    Miss penny hit the nail on the head. If the Tax revenue is used for health care then it is a good thing. Obesity costs $billions a year in health care and it is a totally preventable issue. (I am currently obese, BMI of 31 and admit that it is totally my fault).
    Taxing Cigarettes, Alcohol and any other things that are proven to be a health hazard is a good thing as long as the revenue goes back into health care.
  • lee112780
    lee112780 Posts: 419 Member
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    I think they should make healthy food CHEAPER instead! It's EXPENSIVE to eat right!
  • amy1612
    amy1612 Posts: 1,356 Member
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    Im guessing you guys live in the US....so is fruit and veg more expensive than junk food? It may take more efffort to make a meal out of it,but its like a £1 over here for a bag of veg,and you can make a meal for a family (a a few meals flor a single person) with a nice hearty healthy soup. Cerrtain fruits are quite pricey, as are certain pre packaged veg, but markets have great deals.
  • ivyjbres
    ivyjbres Posts: 612 Member
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    Part of me agrees, but then, the larger part of me doesn't. Penn and Teller did an episode of their show Bull****! on hating fast food, and one of the points one of their guests pointed out was that many of the people who eat fast food a lot of the time are lower income. Taxing fast food won't make healthy food any cheaper, it will just make it harder to make ends meet. The cost of a lot of good food is made artificially high by government subsidies, and if those were done away with, the food that people should be eating would also be the food they could afford.

    PS. I work in fast food, and you wouldn't believe the amount of people who come through my drive through with kids unbuckled, small children out of their car seats, beer in their cup holders, smoking a blunt (usually only one or two of these at a time), and any other illegal and dangerous activity they can do in a car. If you really want fast food companies to do something good for the communities they're in- make us report drunk drivers and everything else we see to law enforcement!
  • fxst78
    fxst78 Posts: 221 Member
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    I would also argue that it is not as expensive as people think to eat healthy! Not sure on the prices in the states, but I hear it in OZ aswell and I put this comparison forward.

    To feed a family of 4 for dinner.

    macdonalds would be around $24 (4 meal deals at $5.95 each)

    Or you could buy 500g chicken breast for $7 ($14/kg)
    Some white rice for about $2
    Packet of frozen stir fry vegies $4
    And some stir fry sauces from the pantry say $2 becasue you only use a small amount out of a large bottle/jar (soy and garlic etc)
    So now you have fed a family of four a healthy meal and quite filling for $15. $9 cheaper than macca's.

    So I do not agree with the people saying that healthy eating is expensive! It just takes a little bit of education and effort.
  • lee112780
    lee112780 Posts: 419 Member
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    I would also argue that it is not as expensive as people think to eat healthy! Not sure on the prices in the states, but I hear it in OZ aswell and I put this comparison forward.

    To feed a family of 4 for dinner.

    macdonalds would be around $24 (4 meal deals at $5.95 each)

    Or you could buy 500g chicken breast for $7 ($14/kg)
    Some white rice for about $2
    Packet of frozen stir fry vegies $4
    And some stir fry sauces from the pantry say $2 becasue you only use a small amount out of a large bottle/jar (soy and garlic etc)
    So now you have fed a family of four a healthy meal and quite filling for $15. $9 cheaper than macca's.

    So I do not agree with the people saying that healthy eating is expensive! It just takes a little bit of education and effort.

    Education? O.K, Can you explain why low fat versions of everything are NEVER on sale? Baked lays vs 99 cent UTZ chips,
    The price of ground beef vs ground turkey, Im not evern going to bring up the price of fish. And that $24 McDonalds meal feeds a family of 4, while a healthy sushi dinner cost $24 a person! Crystal light compared to koolaid, Organic ANYTHING is also more expensive. I get what you are sayuing...it CAN be done, but to I am middle class, and I'm pretty much limited to turkey burgers and chicken, once in awhile I can have some fish.
  • lee112780
    lee112780 Posts: 419 Member
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    Im guessing you guys live in the US....so is fruit and veg more expensive than junk food? It may take more efffort to make a meal out of it,but its like a £1 over here for a bag of veg,and you can make a meal for a family (a a few meals flor a single person) with a nice hearty healthy soup. Cerrtain fruits are quite pricey, as are certain pre packaged veg, but markets have great deals.

    Some fruit is cheap, but I have spent $6 on grapes before...when I looked at the receipt, I was fuming! Theres a lot of cheap crappy junk food out there.
  • Equilibrium
    Equilibrium Posts: 37 Member
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    I agree with several posters here that taxing junk food will only make things harder for poor people.

    I disagree strongly, though, that healthy food has to be more expensive than fast food. I am on a tight budget, and there's absolutely no way that I could afford to feed the 4 adults in my household (I have two full-board lodgers) on fast food. Instead, we have a home-cooked meal just about every night made from scratch. It is probably more time consuming than going through a drive-thru but it is most certainly cheaper. I do the kind of shopping that would have caused an old boyfriend to say, after the food was unpacked, 'but there's nothing to eat!'. What he meant was that I only buy ingredients, not quick, shove into the oven/microwave meals.

    It takes more effort and a bit more expertise to properly cook, though, which is why education is important. Another thing about which people need to be educated is buying in-season food -- that's why sometimes grapes are just ridiculously priced, if they've been flown halfway around the world rather than coming from your own country. I also want to point out that another way of stretching your food dollar/pound/euro is to reduce the amount of meat per person. That's why I make a lot more casseroles instead of having big slabs of meat on the plate.
  • MzBug
    MzBug Posts: 2,173 Member
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    I agree with many of the other posters, taxing the fast food is not the way to do it. I still have a hard time understanding how a fast food restraunt can make a burger using the same ingredients I use at home and have it come out 300+ calories higher than the home cooked one! The home cooked one usually has more meat too!

    It has been a while since high school, but didn't people come to America to avoid the high taxes elsewhere?? I seem to remember a thing called the Boston Tea Party...
  • rockinmomto3
    rockinmomto3 Posts: 97 Member
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    My husband and I were just talking about this last night. We were at Wal Mart doing a cost comparison (and getting me a new scale!), and a small container of Naked Juice was around $5 while a gallon of Sunny D was $2. That is why people with low incomes, or even moderate incomes (like we have) have a hard time eating healthy. It's just SO expensive! I'd love to be able to go out each week to Whole Foods and grocery shop there, but it's not possible. I think that if junk cost more, people would buy it less, and in turn be more healthy. Why do you think the US is the fattest nation in the world? Because of the food that's available to us.
  • meokk
    meokk Posts: 787 Member
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    My two cents.........

    The solution is not to tax fast food at the consumer level, it's to stop subsidizing the big food companies and huge farming operations. It's those government subsidies from the outset that allow the fast food companies to charge $1 for a burger and for processed food meals to be cheaper than cooking your own.
    If just half of those subsidies were applied to fruits and vegetables, healthy whole grains and local meat/fish, THEY would become the new cheap option.
    If on top of that, there were financial incentives for growing & buying locally and in season it would completely change this country.

    The net result, in theory and over time would be more expensive fast food, and hopefully less of it, but very cheap fruits and veggies.
    It SHOULD be cheaper for you to buy fresh organic veggies and traditionally raised chicken or beef products to make a home cooked dinner than to buy a Mcdonalds meal or a microwave meal, I WISH that were the case today.

    Having lived in low income areas for about 7 years in my life I know there is more to this than pricing, it's a whole other huge and complicated subject that I'll not be getting into now.
  • bellinachuchina
    bellinachuchina Posts: 498 Member
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    My two cents.........

    The solution is not to tax fast food at the consumer level, it's to stop subsidizing the big food companies and huge farming operations. It's those government subsidies from the outset that allow the fast food companies to charge $1 for a burger and for processed food meals to be cheaper than cooking your own.
    If just half of those subsidies were applied to fruits and vegetables, healthy whole grains and local meat/fish, THEY would become the new cheap option.
    If on top of that, there were financial incentives for growing & buying locally and in season it would completely change this country.

    The net result, in theory and over time would be more expensive fast food, and hopefully less of it, but very cheap fruits and veggies.
    It SHOULD be cheaper for you to buy fresh organic veggies and traditionally raised chicken or beef products to make a home cooked dinner than to buy a Mcdonalds meal or a microwave meal, I WISH that were the case today.

    Having lived in low income areas for about 7 years in my life I know there is more to this than pricing, it's a whole other huge and complicated subject that I'll not be getting into now.

    Very well said!
  • Mirlyn
    Mirlyn Posts: 256
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    Not jumping into the debate but I have to voice my love for TAP! The Angry Pharmacist rocks my world :).

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