Posted on 09/07/2014 3:57:47 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
If most foods created by the food industry are unhealthy, why not place a stiff tax on all of them and use the revenue to subsidize healthier food?
This bold proposal, from Boston-area researchers, appears as commentary in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
The researchers from Tufts University, Harvard University and Boston Children's Hospital wrote that their plan would surely meet strong opposition from both the food and restaurant industries but that it could help people make meaningful dietary changes and substantially reduce health care costs.
At issue is the higher cost of healthy food, such as fresh fruits and vegetables and lean meats and fish, which cost on average about $1.50 more per person per day compared to unhealthy fare, the researchers said. [12 Tips for Eating Healthy on a Budget]
The researchers propose a 10 to 30 percent tax on foods from chain restaurants and on all packaged foods essentially, all foods except products directly from a farm.
"With a modest 10 to 30 percent tax on most packaged foods, healthy foods such as fruits, nuts and vegetables could be subsidized to cost pennies to consumers," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, lead author on the JAMA commentary and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. "This would dramatically reshape the food supply, help to reduce nutritional and health disparities amongst the poor and other disadvantaged Americans, and potentially save billions of dollars a year in health care costs for diet-related diseases."
The researchers noted that the economic burden of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, predominantly caused by a poor diet, is approaching $700 billion annually in the United States alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
'Healthy taxes' turn federal EBT funds into state tax receipts.
And its not going to stop here.
I think that if the government would only declare farming illegal and close down all grocery stores, they could eliminate the problem of obesity. If you don’t have food to eat, then how can you become obese.-—Problem of obesity solved. (sarcasm, but with liberals, it might become fact)
Hmmm, let’s see how can we get the pResident to “weigh-in”
on this issue. Oh, I know. Let’s turn ALL golf courses
into gardens - to help the children...
On the bright side, it will be easy to find the Whole Foods market: just look for all the cars with Obama bumper stickers.
If they were serious about this issue why do they allow food stamp moochers to buy junk-food and sugar loaded colas with taxpayer dollars? IMO, the government should start removing these items from the freeloaders FIRST!
I warned the idiots whining for $15 per hour for fast food workers the other day that they were just doing exactly what Obama wanted and eliminating their own jobs.
EBT purchases are not sales taxed now- however “healthy taxes” are GOOD things, ‘for the children’.
Or the taxes could be collected by the state from the producer/wholesaler and passed through in the price.
Actually it’s such a stupid idea that, like Obamacare, it would end up a federal tax I suppose.
they will just give out more ebt money, and tax all the people who don’t eat them to pay for the ebt increase.
how about those on welfare like food stamps stop being able to get junk food and only get fruit and veggies. After all most of them are obese anyway, and it looks like they don’t need any more junk food
Sure. Just raise taxes across the board, and we’ll all starve to death.
could taxing abortion reduce abortion?
punitive taxation always reduces whatever is being taxed.
almost all taxes are punitive.
Half of the people here cheat still for cigarette taxes. Nanny state does what it does. Couldn’t tell people that during the smoking debate.
Because if you’re going to offer ‘health care’, you definitely have the right.. in fact the moral obligation to monitor and control everything a person does. It’s only fair to the common good don’t you know.
Now kneel.. and eat your peas.
There is a competing article that says the sit down family dinner is an idealized dream that forces women to slave over a hot stove to make unhealthy meals because picky eaters won’t eat healthy.
And now we have a proposal to tax pre-prepared frozen meals.
OK, liberals, make a decision.
If you tax the pre-prepared foods, you’ll get more eating out by poor people who don’t have time or even facilities to cook healthy raw foods. And that punishes fast food workers liberals think should make $15 an hour.
If you demand family meals that are ultra healthy AND raise the prices of pre-prepared meals that may be healthy, you need women to leave the workforce so they can spend hours chopping, dicing and cooking healthy meals - and I thought that was tyranny.
OR we have the government providing healthy dinners as well as lunches because people can’t be trusted to feed themselves the right foods.
Cheer not cheat. Damn auto correct. Nanny state for some will turn to nanny state for all.
Lets tax crime, that’ll reduce it!
Have any of these POS moron democrats thought about trying to tax husband/wife night time "activity?" If not, some dip stick liberal will try.
Could reducing taxes eliminate government obesity?
If liberals stopped subsidizing ethanol, grain and meat prices would fall because a third of the corn crop wouldn’t be wasted in gas tanks. Lean meat, eggs and dairy then become cheaper.
If we stopped subsidizing non-producing farmland, we’d see lower food prices for what could be raised on that land.
Get rid of milk price supports, and the price of milk and cheese drop.
Eliminate the raisin management program, and that healthy snack becomes cheaper. (Source, Institute for Justice)
Stop sending California water down the river for salmon and smelt, and we’d have much higher vegetable production in California’s central valley. Fruits and vegetables then become cheaper.
A lot of the high food prices we see are the result of federal programs and subsidies, and once those are eliminated, prices for consumers will drop.
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