Here’s the problem though. A lot of the fatty foods, (I don’t mean Oreos or Doritos here) are “poor people” foods. The rich can afford good healthy food, the working poor generally can’t. Putting a luxury tax on food the poor eats to survive isn’t right.
One difference 'tween tobacco and fatty food/alcohol is that both fatty food and alcohol can be incorporated into a healthy lifestyle, and in certain uses are actually beneficial to health. Tobacco, on the other hand, is always bad for a person, no matter how it is used.
I hate sin taxes and think they are a show of hypocrisy and moral cowardice. If something is so sinful to be taxed then go ahead and outlaw it outright. If it is morally acceptable enough to be legal, then let people enjoy it and leave them alone.
Dunno. I suspect that we’ve done a better job of getting people to stop smoking through raising taxes and limiting the places one can smoke, than we got people to quit drinking through instant prohibition. Gradual changes can be good.
Cite? I find that snacks can blow my food budget out of the water, but beans, rice, and vegetables are dirt cheap. (Not that I support a fat tax.)
I would like to see some statistics on that. The relationship between tobacco and death from from stroke to cancer to heart disease has been clinically studied much longer, and hard statistics are available on the result of smoking. Since obesity can result from many factors, not just junk food, I think it would be much more difficult to identify exactly what foods are causing obesity. That is much less difficult with tobacco; subjects either smoke or they don’t. Everybody eats, and even those who avoid junk food can become obese.
I don’t know where you live, but in my neighborhood, vegetables are not dirt cheap, and are becoming more expensive than ever. Calorie for calorie, [sweets and snack foods are much cheaper than vegetables](Using retail prices at major supermarket chains in Seattle, researchers at the University of Washington found that low-calorie, nutrient-rich foods — mainly fruits and vegetables — were far more expensive, calorie for calorie, than sweets and snack foods.).
If I pay ALL of my medical bills. Why should the governemnt tax my being fat? It ain’t costing them any money. When they scrape of the thick layers of lard out of my arteries, it’s going to be on my dough.
This would make the tax even more regressive, cuz poor people tend to depend more or government healthcare
While it may seem obvious to you, it does not seem obvious to me.
Generally, “fatty foods” are in the good-diet doghouse right now, but if one looks at how difficult it is to make the correlation between diet and individual health, it’s very tough to make an argument for singling out “fatty foods” aside from the impossibility of defining them. Suppose, for example, we tax burgers and shakes and an individual switches to fruits and fruit juices. The thing that makes most people fat is a combination of calories and simple carbohydrates (that’s why a low-carb diet works). You have gained nothing–well, except an even fatter population.
Nor have I ever seen anything to suggest “fatty foods” are worse than smoking. In fact, one of the stupidest things I see is the guy who smokes but who is “watching” his diet or “controlling” his cholesterol or whatever. I can think of no single elective lifestyle that does more physical harm than smoking.
Finally, it is a great service to society to live a productive work life and then drop dead at or near retirement age. For this reason, it’s very hard to make a case that even smokers are a net cost. If it’s true that fatty foods are bad for you, but it turns out they are so bad that those who consume them drop over early, it may well turn out that fatty food eaters save us all money.
The most expensive thing a society can do is maintain a healthy population that lives a long time. Until we are so good at anti-aging that we can eliminate the concept of retirement altogether, a healthy retireee living for 40 years after the age of retirement, and taking forever to kick the bucket because joints and organs are being replaced as they wear out, will cost society a fortune.
The fat smoker who runs up a few bills while he’s a working stiff paying taxes and contributing to his own health-care costs, who then checks out at age 62 from his crummy lifestyle, is a guy who has helped to lower my taxes. I certainly don’t wan’t to discourage his indulgences, do I?
Calorie-per-calorie not only isn’t a good way to measure it, in fact it’s part of the whole problem. The misconception of, in essence, “I’m poor and fat because a sack of potatoes, tinned vegetables, and rice are too expensive!!!11111one” really needs to be addressed by Cecil sometime, along with the “most people are fat because of health problems, not because they can’t control their eating” one. Sure you won’t get the same calories - and that’s the point. And it doesn’t have to be all or nothing either. Folks could fix at least one extra item to make something healthier. For instance - a can of (decent) corn is about $0.49 at my store and has 280 calories. A McDonald’s fries is about $1.00 (right?) and has 570 calories. So grab a Big Mac on the way home, skip the fries, and fix a bowl of corn with black pepper, cayenne, salt, and maybe a bit of fengreek? Skip the non-diet large drink with the meal, instead having diet soda at home and you’ve reduced the calories down from a 1420 disaster (540+570+310) to 820 (540+280).
Eating healthy can take more preparation time. Well that’s life - you make your choices, and some of them are hard. A lot of things take time. I earn enough that I could eat out every single meal at a nice restaurant and it has no noticeable impact on my budget. Hell, I guess I could hire a personal cook each night except that that offends my sensibilities. Yet I still will come home after working all a 50-hour week to make up low-cal vegetable curry, fat-free Jambalaya, or soup or stew. Because that’s what it takes to at least attempt to eat healthy and right. Others are happy ordering a pizza, grabbing some fast food on the way home, or making a Twinkee fondue.
I’m not so sure about that. I’m sure if a person has one cigar every week, then that isn’t bad for his health. The problem is that nicotine is far more addictive than alcohol or fatty foods to MOST people, but that still shouldn’t be used to punish a person who uses nicotine responsibly.
Same way with alcohol: A drink every month doesn’t hurt you; a fifth of whiskey per day will.
Same with fatty foods: One hamburger every two weeks is fine. Eating fatty, greasy foods three times a day will kill you.
It’s all about moderation…
No, it is not. Too few calories is just as dangerous as too many, and it is more expensive to get your necessary calories from “potatoes, tinned vegetables, and rice” than it is from sugary, fatty junk foods. That is the point.
False assumption - no one’s talking about getting “too few” calories in here except you.
Second, if you mean that having an underweight BMI is “just as dangerous” as an obese BMI, then I call “cite?” And just in case you’re thinking of quoting the Flegel study to me as a result of a Google search, you had better read the follow-up to it by the authors first. And I guarantee for every study you post that finds an RR higher for sub-20 BMI versus sup-30 BMI, I’ll find 2 that say the opposite.
I’m talking about a single meal where replacement of one item with tinned corn (cheaper overall), and switching to water instead of pop (even cheaper still), results in a savings of 600 calories. And even then, that’s one meal with 820 calories. People’s energy demands will vary of course, and I’m sure someone will come in and claim “I’m a triathalon runner and 820 calories is too few, fuck you Una”, but considering the average person it’s plenty. If anyone considers a single meal, out of a standard three per day, of 820 calories to be “too few” for the average person then they really should go to a doctor and have them explain to them how many calories they really need to eat per day, because I don’t have the time.
It’s true that fatty fast food is cheap and high calorie, and I never even implied otherwise, sorry. It’s also true that unless you use a lot of imagination and care with spices and herbs that foods made from staples can seem less attractive than a McRib, or all-you-can-eat General Tso’s Chicken. It’s untrue that one cannot have cheap healthy meals that meet the recommended levels of calories for a healthy BMI maintenance so long as one can put in a little sweat equity.
I’m not sure how to interpret “as directed” here.
I smoke about one cigar a month; I believe this has very little tendency to kill me. Am I using cigars in a way that’s not as directed?
And I’d better add, since I’ve already had it used against me elsewhere, that I’ve also read the University of Washington study. I think it’s badly mis-quoted and people (mainly idiot bloggers, usually the same ones that fill the Net and the SDMB with the same, shopworn “hayte teh Bush and teh rich” bullshit) love to cherry-pick things from it. I’m not talking about going all vegetarian and fresh fruit, I’m talking about selected, targeted ways to eat healthier that result in fewer calories and lower or the same cost.
For crying out loud, the UW study claims eating low-fat non-junk food for 2000 calories would cost $36 per person per day - more than $1000 per month. For the two of us, we spend $300 per month on food, and that includes a lot of things like Diet Coke. And you won’t find a junk food in our house, excepting an occasional bag of Doritos.
Just give that that $36 per person per day per 2000 calories figure the “bullshit” test for a minute - I’ve got 3600 calories of “designer rice” here that cost $4. A loaf of bread with about 1500 calories is about $2. Most tinned veggies have about 200 calories per can at about $0.29-$0.50 per can - $5.00 per 2000 calories (unless you buy things like the “Le Soeur Peas”, where you get to $1 per can). And how much is 2000 calories of spaghetti - about $3.00?
Sure, if you are only going to cook with hothouse tomatoes, green peppers, Belgian endives, or all-organic hand-raised potatoes, you can run up a huge tab quickly. That was never in dispute. And try to eat 2000 calories of fresh fruit per day and you’ll likely have other problems aside from the cost.
One can argue that a loaf of bread isn’t very appetizing or nutritious - I’ll give you not very appetizing, sure. But not nutritious? Anyone seen the label on a can of Pringle’s or a bag of Cheetos? How about a Wendy’s Triple with Cheese?
The reasons people won’t eat healthier are time and desire. It takes sweat equity to eat healthier and save money. It’s like the old saw “on time - done right - on budget - pick any two.” I’ve made an alternate version of it: “cheap - healthy - fast - pick any two.”
What you are describing is nowhere near a balanced diet. And a diet that relies heavily on tinned vegetables is going to be very high in sodium also.
Look, I was rebutting a comment that “vegetables are dirt cheap”. They aren’t, and it is disingenuous to argue that they are.
Now that’s just not cricket. You know bloody well I wasn’t laying out complete menu selections and recipes for people, I was giving examples of key staple foods which can be combined to yield healthier diets than fast food.
Second, high in sodium has different meanings for different people. Given that my first example was for replacing French fries, arguably one of the highest sodium fast foods you can get, I think the sodium trade-off in that case was fairly positive. A quick scan of the sodium levels of fast foods shows that for most cases you’d be hard-pressed to increase your sodium by swapping in staple foods, even tinned veggies, for fast foods.
Your point stands - the facts are that vegetables DO have a low energy density; my point is that by itself, your point is of unclear meaningful value to any science-based study on the real drivers of obesity, which is sort of key background for this thread.
Why not just leave the food alone altogether. Instead, offer tax credits and incentives for purchasing exercise equipment, gym memberships, personal trainers, etc.
My personal experience is that it’s not so much one’s diet, but rather a lack of exercise that is most detrimental to health.
Because the poor, who live off of cheap junk food, don’t pay enough tax to take a credit against, and don’t have the disposable income to spend on it in the first place.
Seat belt laws were not instituted to save the life of someone too stupid to save it’s own(though thats a great side effect). They were enacted to protect the public. It is clear that a seat belt wearing accident victim would place a much less severe drain on medical and insurance companies and thereby protect the public from increasing stupidity premiums. In doing this they have said ‘your right to live as you want’ is not as important as the public being saddled with higher health care costs.
How much of a leap is it then to tobacco or butter?
I think it’s a great idea. I’d also like to see a tax on anything packed with salt, like beer nuts and corn nuts.