The Fat Tax

I am an over-weight, fairly low-income person, and I am in favor of the fat tax being debated for empty-calorie, high-sugar and high-fat items such as sodas and junk food.

Before the modern era of quick and cheep fast food and junk food, obesity was a problem of the rich and wealthy, who never wanted for food and could eat to excess, whereas the poor were generally the underfed and malnourished.

That has changed, in America, at least.  The cheapest calories today are the least nutritious and most fattening and dangerous. Healthy food, particularly fresh produce, has a tendency to be both hard to obtain in some areas, and ridiculously expensive when it is available.  (For instance, I have switched to using extra lean ground turkey instead of beef in some recipes, but the turkey tends to run almost $2-3/pound more than the higher-fat ground beef.)

With everyone, including the poor, moving away from high-activity manual labor jobs, people are exercising less, or not at all. While things like walking and running remain free, access to weight-loss support systems and guided and supported exercise programs are increasingly expensive.  Good health is for the wealthy.

While any type of luxury tax (such as the taxes on alcohol and tobacco now) has a tendency to prey heavily on the poor, it would at least act as a discouraging factor by raising the prices on these items.  The money raised can then be put into nutrition education and establishing those support programs that, right now, the poor have little to no access to.

With support and assistance, and a little hand-holding, lack of motivation can be conquered. Making it more attractive and less expensive to buy healthy food items rather than junk food can only help.  The fat tax itself would only be one thing out of the many that would need to be implemented for it to succeed, but together they would lower the number of people with those diseases that are brought on due to unhealthy behaviors.

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