Is it time for a 'Fat Tax'?

This is already done in Ontario (maybe the rest of Canada). Snacks are taxed, food is not. There are some peculiarities to the system - in that 1 muffin is a snack, 6 are food - but it generally makes sense. Apples are not taxed, potato chips are. This came along about, hmmmm, 15 years ago.

Ironic, given your current avatar! :wink:

I just wanted to sound out my idea. Any government needs a certain amount of income, especially if they keep waging expensive wars on behalf of foreigners who don't want them.

My basic idea was that unhealthy foods should be significantly more expensive than healthy ones, to pay for the treatment of weight-related diseases, and encourage healthy eating.

Re: Is it time for a 'Fat Tax'?

From a strictly financial point of view, yes. I don't know if it's a good idea to look at the subject from a strictly financial point of view. But if you do choose to apply it, the outcome of the calculation is not what you expect it to be.


Because they believe that being fit and slim is good for me -- and they are right as far as it goes. But the pleasures of eating and slacking off are also good for me, so I voluntarily trade off some of my health for some more food. I don't think most doctors, dieticians and nutritionists are really getting this part. It doesn't fit into their mentality.

On top of this, these fine people may also think that my being fat imposes a net burden on society -- much like the one paper factories impose by polluting rivers, thus justifying the effluent taxes they have to pay. But smokers, drinkers, and fat people don't impose such a net burden. The dieticians, doctors, and nutritionists simply have not basis for claiming they do. Note that economists and accountants are conspiciously absent from the list of experts you referred to.


We already pay the cost of our unhealthy lifestyle. We pay it in the form of short breath, reduced attractiveness to the opposite sex, and early death. Payments to the rest of society are only justified by a net cost we impose on society, which is negative. There just is no ethical basis for such a tax -- just like there is none for tobacco taxes.

(Apologies for the many edits)

Okay, you got me. You're argument, like my nicotine-stained lungs, is full of holes.

Thanks to D'artagnan and ehBeth for seeing through my waffle to the kernel of my idea. I'm pleased to see that Canada is doing something like what I had hypothesised.

Iv'e said this before and I'll say it again. The government is there to protect your basic human rights. Like, if a man kills you or your family, justice should be evenly mitigated by that government and punishment served.

The government is not and should never be your mother. If you don't want to eat carrots, that's your prerogative.

Re: Is it time for a 'Fat Tax'?


Touche!



I agree. So do we tax fatty foods, or scrap tax on booze & cigs and increase income tax? I'm all for this actually - tax the rich and let people kill themselves with booze, cigs, pizzas if they want. Freedom of choice.



No worries mate. It took me 10 minutes to write, edit, and re-edit my opening post, which you all so kindly pulled to pieces!

I give up. Let's all get fat, smoke, booze and die young - screw the governments...!

Actually, I have one last point.

If Thomas wants to eat what he wants because he enjoys it, fine. He's obviously an educated man making a conscious decision (judging by the strength of his argument).

But what about the less-well-educated members of society? They eat crappy foods because they know no better. Why are there seat-belt laws? To protect those who won't protect themselves. Maybe this should be applied to food as well?

Re: Is it time for a 'Fat Tax'?

You're a nutritionist? Oops!


Scrap booze & cig taxes, but raise other sin taxes instead of the income tax. I actually like the idea of sin taxes, but they should be imposed on real sins, not ficticious ones. For example, pollution-inducing gasoline is ridiculously cheap in America, and I'd like to see drastically increased taxes on it. (Here in Germany, we pay over $5 per gallon.) I already mentioned effluent taxes on water pollution. I think your basic idea is good, but the target is ill chosen.


Thanks for the compliment, but my education has nothing to do with my food intake. I'm simply acting out animal instincts that would have been perfectly appropriate in our evolutionary caveman past, but which have become a liability in the civilized world. But "I just kinda feel like eating" isn't much of an argument, so I phrased it in terms of a conscious tradeoff.


Judging by what I saw on a recent visit to the USA, it's hard to keep a TV running for long without seeing someone giving me free nutrition and excercise advice. I don't buy your "they know no better". But even if you're right about it, I'd say the proper response to a lack of education is teaching, not confiscation of money. The option to coerce rather than persuade is much more useful for people who lack persuasive arguments than for those who have them, so it would be a sad testimony to your cause if taxation was the best tool available to it.


Good question. Beats me.

As a slim smoker, I first viewed Grand Duke's grand scheme with simpathy.

But then came Thomas's reasoning, about the societal harm.

The social reason why cigarettes are taxed so heavily is because of the damage done to passive smokers. Non-smokers won a political battle against smokers (and in some places they're almost criminalizing them) and their freedom.

I can't smoke near a 300 pounds lady, who is eating a dozen hot cakes with bacon, because she says it affects her health and would scream to the waiter to take me out of the non-smoking zone. "How hypocritical of her: she's also killing herself", I think.
Yet I marginally worsen her health. Her fat food overindulgence does nothing to my health.

Re: Is it time for a 'Fat Tax'?


Are these statements really necessary (the ones I bolded, above)? I get you when it comes to taxing junk food. Hey, go for it. But keep in mind that one of the biggest consumers of junk food I've ever known is a woman who was as thin as a model. But I was overweight even when I was a vegetarian. Yes, fewer calories tend to ensure that you are slimmer. But which calories do you cut out? Advice is conflicting. Take out the carbs? Take out the fat? Eat only before 6 PM? Eat combinations of foods? Drink protein shakes? All of these ideas have been thrown out there. Which is right? Which works? The answer, of course, is that it depends. Some ideas work for some people, others work for others.

Weight is a complicated issue. Quick fixes don't exist because body type, weight gain, weight loss, weight maintenance, etc. are almost as hard to predict as the weather. Maintenance is the hardest thing out there. Estimates are that something like fewer than 10% of all dieters can maintain their weight loss. Those are abominable statistics! What's driving that? Is it metabolism? Temptation? Weakness? How about, instead of blaming these people, scientists work on some way to help them. After all, there's a patch to help people quit smoking. Why isn't there a patch to help them lose weight, or keep it off? Yes, there is surgery, but it's dangerous. So why isn't there something that's safer that people can do to help themselves with this extremely difficult task?

Another thing, yes, you can't turn on the TV without getting a bunch of nutritional advice. You also can't turn on the TV without seeing food everywhere. Don't believe me? Fast for a day - not even water or drinking anything (don't worry, unless you're anorectic or diabetic, this won't kill you) and watch TV all day. Work the remote and hit every channel several times. I guarantee you that you'll see food in -
* commercials
* billboards at sporting events
* sitcoms
* dramas
* films
* science fiction shows
* news programs

Oops, unless you want to watch a test pattern, the temptations are everywhere. And why should you fast when doing this (I have done this)? Because it makes it a lot more obvious. If you're well-fed, you might not notice that the sporting event you're watching is showing an athlete downing Gatorade, or the family show that's on has everyone sitting down to dinner or the news program has a consumer segment on cooking or shopping for food.

Good points, Jespah!


This reminds me of a true story about my employer, a big global tech company. A few weeks ago, they had two booths near the exit of the cafeteria. One of them handed out free Krapfen to celebrate Mardi Gras. (Krapfen are a German carneval specialty, somewhat like donuts without holes, but filled with jam and covered with tons of sugar powder.) The booth right besides it offered free blood sugar tests to foster a healthy lifestyle.

Oh, the irony

How about this for an answer. How about you tax McDonalds, Burger Kind, and Hershey's? Why don't the big f*cking corporations that are providing the world with all this crap being taxed extra? Why is it the citizens that have to bear the financial burden?

If McDonald's is taxed, don't you think that cost will be passed on to the consumers? Of course, it will. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but it still comes down to the same issue:

Should junk food/fast food be taxed (at some level) to discourage consumption?

I wouldn't like it, for two reasons. For one, it wouldn't work. There is plenty of junk food offered by non-franchise restaurants, many of them mom'n pa shops. Under your scheme, we'd simply get our calories from those instead of McDonalds. Remember, modern humans are the product of 7 million years of evolution. For 6.9998 millions of those years, "get fat & sugar wherever you find it, and don't bother too much with fibers" was an excellent nutrition rule. At any time before the Industrial Revolution, Jespah and I would have been the doctors, and we would be giving you good advice about taking better care of your fickle, anorexic bodies.

The second point is pride. We don't crave junk food because McDonald's advertises for it. They advertise for it because we crave for it, we would always buy it from someone, and they want us to buy it from them rather than from Burger King. I refuse to adopt a victim's mentality about my obesity and pretend it's all other people's fault.

I've quoted this a few times, but I really like it; "We are a species that has evolved to survive starvation, not to resist abundance."

That quote, and more of the interesting article it is from, here:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=273320#273320

I was being facetious. I realize that it wouldn't work. And to answer D'artagnan's question, no we shouldn't be taxed to discourage any behavior. Taxes should not be connected with social engineering, period.

Mmmmmh, Sozobe, that was a yummy article! I'm as much of a geek about these things as you said are in the other thread, so I just got some muchly appreciated food for thought. Thanks!

I remember a "60 minutes" show with Andy Rooney back in the 80s. (I loved Andy Rooney by the way. Is he still around?) His feature was about a hospital which conducted the following experiment. 50 (or so) people were assigned to eat whatever they wanted for a month, and keep logs about it. If you wanted a triple BigMac with cheese fries, fine, you'd get one, but you had to account for it in your log. By that method, people lost a little weight over that month, but not much. I think it was a pound or two.

Immediately after that month was over, people were put on a slightly different diet. This time, they were fed whatever their logs said they had eaten a month ago. In theory, the outcome should have been the same as the month before. In practice, all subjects lost nearly 10 pounds, with no deficiencies whatsoever. All their vitamins, minerals etc. were fine.

The moral of the story was that we all know what not to eat if we don't want to get fat. We know it as well as what not to do if we don't want to get pregnant. The problem isn't not knowing how to be reasonable about food. It's not wanting to be reasonable on some deep, subconscious level. There's tons of good diet advice out there. But in the end, as Jespah indicated, it's little more effective than the Religious Right's "abstinence only" approach to curbing teenage pregnancies -- and for similar reasons. It's possible to control our animal instincts, but it's also extremely hard. And it's probably not worth the trouble.

Here's the article itself:

http://www.lifelinewls.com/ftp/New%20Yorker%20Article.pdf

Really worth reading (well at least if you're as geeky as Thomas and I... :-P)

That's the sole purpose of taxes (depending on the way you look at it).

I support tax premiums on societal banes (e.g. my cigarettes).

I would welcome a junk food tax premium in America with open arms. In other nations (e.g. Brazil, where fresh juice is cheaper than coke and a home cooked meal cheaper than McD) I'd think it unecessary.