Another Kind of Tax?

Gee, where to start? Everything in that whole article is just wrong or misguided.

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/Stories/0,1413,206%257E11852%257E,00.html is the letters to the editor link. The article mentions the spurious 300K deaths per year figure, and has the assumption that people are fat because of sugar and fat consumption, those seem like good things to hone in on for letters. It'd be nice to have a good form letter to send to these idiots... someone want to post one?

How insane and inane. What cracks me up is thinking about how you'd actually try to implement this....what about all of the low-fat products that are actually high in sugar and high-fructose corn syrup? Guess you'd have to tax Slimfast shakes too...high in sugars AND trans-fats. Then there are all of the people on Atkins...guess they'd get taxed on most of their "diet" foods. And then there are the fats that nutritionists believe are actually GOOD for us, like olive oil, nuts, avocados and some fatty fish. Sheesh, talk about a shotgun approach! ;-)

I think foods should be taxed based on the number of processing steps they go through to get from "raw in the field" to "as purchased." Fresh whole vegetable: low tax. Weird cake-thing made of preservatives and superbleached vaguely grain-origin products and sugar: high tax. Not because of fat, but because the food industry is out of control, and almost NO ONE seems to know what real, "wild-state" food looks like -- or how to prepare it if by chance an untamed vegetable wandered into the dusty end of the kitchen away from the microwave.

That's a lovely idea, CompasRose, but who ultimately benefits and who is ultimately hurt by such propositions? Such a scheme wouldn't reduce the costs for fresh vegetables and other healthy products that lower-income people think (rightly or wrongly) are out of their grasp, would raise the costs for all kinds of products and would do little more than cause hardship and feed governmental coffers. I don't know about you, but the last thing I think we need is revenue from sales of Twinkies going to give congresscritters another self-granted raise. Food doesn't need to be taxed, period. There aren't good and bad foods, perhaps there are good and bad portions. We might need better education so that people are more aware of the ultimate consequences of their food choices, but we don't need confiscatory, punitive taxes to make that happen.

I have to agree with Dreama here. I'm pretty poor at the moment, and I'm trying to move from prepackaged convenience foods to food I have to prepare myself, and it's difficult to wrap my head around the idea that I can eat healthily for not very much money. I made the decision almost a year ago to try to save money by eating convenience foods (Kraft dinner *is* pretty cheap), and only now am I realizing what a toll on my health--and bank account--it's been and looking for alternatives.

taxes for food? this is disgusting. the government is the one with the oversized appeitite. for money and control it is the result of the fat hatred, and the doomsayers who keep pushing it to the fore in the media and constantly putting it under the gov's nose. obesity wasn't a problem until the lawyers and drug companies got involved. the news is bias, they tell half truths and whole lies, they take things out of context in order to push their agenda and to make things appear to be something when they are not. 300,000 people do not die from obesity, that figure was a calculation done by two doctors on factors that contribute to early deaths, it was not based on real deaths and weight was not even consider a factor. I quote "sedetary lifestyles and poor dietary habits" I think I quoted it right, they jumped on the dietary part to mean obesity. and the 300,000 myth was born. the costs of obesity are deliberatly exaggerated to make obesity seem like a serious epidemic when in fact the statistics included obese people who go to the doctor for a sore throat or other problems totally unrelated to weight. also if you are obese and die in a car wreck they count that as obesity caused death too. So the media is a powerful force that cannot be trusted, they are only intersted in ratings not people.