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| No | 70% | 437 votes | Total: 628 votes | |
| Yes | 30% | 191 votes |
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Add to FavoritesThe problem I see with putting a special tax on "junk food" is defining what is "junk". Is anything that the government does not tax, be default, considered healthy?
With each generation we target a different nutritional bugbear. We've gone through fads of low sodium ice cream, fat free candy, low carb bacon and now there is trans-fat free pork rinds. The problem with each of these products is that they never contained the offending substance in the first place, but are high in some other damaging substance. I don't even think my ex-brother-in-law would try to argue that a feast made up of these products would be harmless.
On the other hand, there are many foods I would consider healthful that do contain sodium, fat, carbohydrates, and if not transfats, the unsaturated fats they were derived from in an effort to avoid saturated fat which in excess remains a threat to health. Lean ham, avocados, oatmeal and olive oil, while perhaps not good together, are foods I have seen permitted on a number of diets.
A single measure of the health worthiness of a food does not exist. Even the relatively new glycemic index rates ice cream (not sugar free, not low fat, just straight up ice cream) as "better" than whole wheat bread. That is because the glycemic index is dependent in part on the speed of digestion, which penalizes foods for containing fiber and rewards them for containing fat. Thus the glycemic index excoriates carrots, which are a catabolic food, taking more calories to digest than they contribute to the body. Like the I.Q. test and other standardized measurements that have been applied to people, most single measures of nutrition dismiss too many good guys while elevating a lot of suspect characters.
What, then, is the answer? The USDA has cast about over the last few decades from the 4 food groups to the carb-heavy food pyramid, and in the mid digits released "My pyramid", a more protein and vegetable friendly guide customized by one's age, weight and activity level. I believe their efforts have brought about some improvement in guidance, but also some confusion.
Americans can't rely on the government to make them eat well anymore than they can rely on the Department of Transportation to make them drive safely. The existing Nutition facts already serve the function of the various road markings and signs if we will pay attention to them. But the desire not to be involved in disasters has to rest on the individual. What about tickets and increased insurance premiums? These already exist in the form of medical bills and life insurance premiums that penalize people whose poor eating habits, and more often sedentary lifestyles, cause them to be overweight and have high blood pressure, and the incipient epidemic of type II diabetes.
I believe the main problem we suffer is waiting for science and the government to give us all the answers rather than assuming individual responsibility in the present. If we are to avoid health disasters as individuals and the nightmare of healthcare rationing as a society, we must be willing to treat our diet and lifestyle as a relationship and not as a game whose rules change every January 1st.
Learn more about this author, Tricia V.
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Yes
Of all the developed nations on the planet, only two - the United States and Mexico - fail to provide universal health care. As a result, our health care system is more costly, less equitable, and more corrupt. We have millions uninsured and millions more who can't afford preventive care, leading to vastly increased emergency room costs when minor sickness aren't treated and bloom into major infections.
What does all this have to do with taxing junk food?
As health care looms large on the agenda in the upcoming presidential election, and candidate after candidate presents major health care reform plans, it seems more and more inevitable that the United States will finally bow to reason and compassion and institute a universal system of health care; at the very least, major steps in that direction will be taken.
At that moment, consumption of junk food becomes more than a personal vice; it becomes more than a victimless crime. At that moment, junk food intake becomes a direct expense for each and every tax-payer.
Like smoking, drinking, drug use, driving without a seat belt, and a host of other unhealthy life choices, junk food intake drives up the cost of health care by damaging the bodies and minds of those who ingest it. Making up the cost of providing health care for junk food abusers through taxation is not only fair, it is pro-actively addressing the issue at its root - making junk food more expensive is bound to drive consumers towards real food and the health benefits such food provides. This is also a boon for the local farmer over the industrial farmer, which provides the added benefit of reducing carbon imprint (local produce isn't shipped thousands of miles in gas-guzzling tractor-trailers, nor is it processed in immense factories).
Failing to enact a tax on junk food is failing to account for the true cost of junk food; it is effectively subsidizing poor health habits. The advent of universal health care provides a proper legal and philosophical framework for the special taxation of junk food - and it is about time!
Learn more about this author, Timothy Ellis.
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