We need to tax sugar like we tax tobacco for the same reasons. It will decrease consumption. Those taxes will pay for the medical expenses of people with diabetes.
When is this going to stop? Endless government regulation is not the solution to everything. Look, there's a huge health movement going on in the country rightnow. Just like there was an anti-smoking movement starting up before the government ever got involved with that. The people who fund this crap aren't looking to do good, they just want more tax revenue (or more grant dollars from those who want more tax revenue). That's what they've always wanted.
Don't believe me? Restaurants are now voluntarily adding calorie numbers to menus, because the lower calorie stuff is higher margin and people buy it. Vitamin water, coke zero, pepsi one/0, izze, baked chips, etc... etc... etc.. take up much more room in the grocery stores than they used to. Trader joes and whole foods are massive businesses now and threatening the big boys like kroger. I'm not saying obesity isn't a problem, but I do think we'll see the trend start changing for the better soon.
There's no need for regulation. The public will shift on it's own. All we need is better education. Almost everyone I know(in my age group and younger) eat much more healthily than their parents do/did simply because they are better informed. Contrary to popular belief, people do make rational decisions when it comes to eating (excluding socioeconomic factors).
> Don't believe me? Restaurants are now voluntarily adding calorie numbers to menus, because the lower calorie stuff is higher margin and people buy it.
Actually, if you are in California then it's more likely because of a 2009 law[1]:
"Putting our heads in the gastronomic sand became a bit harder starting July 1, 2009, when a new law went into effect making California the first state to mandate that chain restaurants--those with 20 or more locations--provide a calorie count for everything on the menu."
I moved from Texas to California and I can confirm that, while there does seem to be a trend toward more and more restaurants voluntarily including this information, you don't really SEE it until you cross the border into California.
This is an example of a business regulation that has had a directly positive impact on my daily food choices... I find that I automatically choose lower calorie foods just because the calorie numbers guilt me into doing so. In fact, this one thing led to a general softening of my hard-core libertarian "no regulations ever let the market decide" stance of the past.
Yeah, I have to say I really appreciate this as well. It's especially eye opening to go into a movie theater and see the large popcorn labelled as 1500 calories (!!!).
Almost everyone I know(in my age group and younger) eat much more healthily than their parents do/did simply because they are better informed.
So basically, everyone you know is rich and either white or first-generation indian/chinese?
The government subsidizes the production of corn syrup, to a huge extent, and that's why it's used in damn near everything, with serious costs to public health (reflected in your insurance premiums and tax bills).
No, we need to stop subsidizing sugar and flour production. I'm visiting the US after living elsewhere, and the #1 thing I notice about the meals is how carbo-loaded and sugar-loaded they are -- including most people's home cooking!
Not to say I don't enjoy some of the sugar-loading, but the carbo-loading is just annoying. When I help friends make a vegetable stir-fry with noodles, I don't want a bowl that's 75% rice noodles. I don't want to feel hungry again 3 hours later despite eating a large meal, because the large meal had little in it other than kilocalories from simple carbohydrates.
I want the kind of veg-and-protein filled meals I've gotten more used to, in which I can measure sugar levels by whether something tastes sweet and I feel full all day/evening because most of the meal's content was "thick" stuff like vegetables, legumes, eggs, meat, cheese, olive oil and/or fish rather than "thin" foods like milk or sauce, or "very thin" foods like bread, pasta, or rice.
No, it would be worth your time to read/listen to Robert Lustig. He explains how and why consuming natural sources like fruit where fructose is encased in digestion-slowing cellulose is normally fine, while extracting the fructose and adding it to other products like soda (and huge amounts of American processed foods) leads to toxicity and liver and metabolic damage.
You can make jokes, but cutting excess fructose from American diets would probably be the #1 easiest thing to do for millions of people to live longer, healthier lives. And Bittman is correct that the FDA should get involved.
It's actually difficult to buy "Healthy, Good for You™!" yogurt in an American supermarket that doesn't contain toxic amounts of added fructose - that is just crazy.
Educate then, don't attempt to socially engineer. Smoking was reduced through education, not taxation. The more people understood the long term consequences of smoking the less people smoked.
I share the views of those who are not fans of processed sugars or fructose, but I am entirely opposed to social engineering.
Not on hand, but you are right to ask for them. I'll further articulate the argument that I should have made above. The demographics of smokers skew towards higher consumption in poorer & less educated brackets while less consumption among wealthier & more educated.
My argument is simple. Taxation has a minimal effect on our behaviors, but our level of education & level of wealth has a much larger effect. Those who are more impacted by a tax on tobacco make up a larger percentage of those who are less impacted by the higher cost.
Nonsense. Social engineering is using the force of the state to modify behaviors. You can say forced education is social engineering, but the act of educating or learning is not social engineering.
> Social engineering is using the force of the state to modify behaviors.
You may think that, but that isn't what it means. Look it up
Wikipedia: Social engineering is a discipline in social science that refers to efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale, whether by governments or private groups.
Google: The application of sociological principles to specific social problems.
Dictionary.com: the application of the findings of social science to the solution of actual social problems.
So whatever you're talking about, social engineering isn't the phrase you're looking for.
Words have meaning, I'm not "wanting" a semantic debate, I'm simply telling you that the way you're using the term is bound to be misunderstood because it doesn't mean that. Take it how you will, but no you didn't use the term correctly even in the political sense as I gave you the political science definition from Wikipedia, that is the political sense.
Wikipedia is not the beginning and the end. The English has a profound ability to change. And yes, I used the term in an appropriate manner that many who debate politics understand it.
Also, go argue that decimate means to destroy 10% versus what it is perceived as to mean today (more than 10%.)
Would taxes on sugary things actually decrease consumption? I doubt you would actually be able to tax a 50 cent drink enough to make anyone reconsider purchasing it, particularly considering people will pay up to several dollars for that same beverage in other contexts. Nobody is going to be doing the "can I afford this, with the tax price included" calculus with things that cheap. (The fact that we seem to always display prices pre-tax only aggravates this)
(The fact that we seem to always display prices pre-tax only aggravates this)
I find this practice of American retailers incredibly pernicious. I really think displayed prices should be out-the-door on everything - you can still put the tax data on the receipt. When I moved to the US from Europe, I found it very difficult to manage my grocery bill for the first year or so until I got used to adding 8% to everything.
