Food for Thought: Should We Tax Junk Food, Subsidize the Good Stuff?
By: Stepfanie Romine,
DailySpark Blogger
7/26/2011 10:00 AM
: 136 comments
: 10,466 Views
We all know that, as a country, we're eating too much salt, sugar, and fat, and not enough "real" and unprocessed foods. We also know that eating right on a budget (especially for Americans who receive public assistance in order to buy food) can be a challenge (though not an impossibility), and that in many parts of the country, food deserts are a sad reality.
But what's the answer? I recently an interesting plan, along with a small-scale example of how we can discourage people from buying unhealthy foods by charging more for them.
In a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, food activist and journalist Mark Bittman proposed taxing junk food to subsidize a healthier diet for all Americans.
Bittman explains:
"simply put: taxes would reduce consumption of unhealthful foods and generate billions of dollars annually. That money could be used to subsidize the purchase of staple foods like seasonal greens, vegetables, whole grains, dried legumes and fruit.
We could sell those staples cheap — let’s say for 50 cents a pound — and almost everywhere: drugstores, street corners, convenience stores, bodegas, supermarkets, liquor stores, even schools, libraries and other community centers."
Recently nutrition professor Marion Nestle wrote about Google's impressive healthy food program on her blog, Food Politics.
Among the interesting takeaways from her blog post:
"The only place on the [Google corporate] campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine. The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan. For the vended products, you pay:
No word on whether the granola bars outsell the Ghirardelli bars--or vice versa.
What do you think? Would you be willing to pay more for unhealthy food? Do you think such a plan would work better on a small scale or as a countrywide initiative?
But what's the answer? I recently an interesting plan, along with a small-scale example of how we can discourage people from buying unhealthy foods by charging more for them.
In a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, food activist and journalist Mark Bittman proposed taxing junk food to subsidize a healthier diet for all Americans.
Bittman explains:
"simply put: taxes would reduce consumption of unhealthful foods and generate billions of dollars annually. That money could be used to subsidize the purchase of staple foods like seasonal greens, vegetables, whole grains, dried legumes and fruit.
We could sell those staples cheap — let’s say for 50 cents a pound — and almost everywhere: drugstores, street corners, convenience stores, bodegas, supermarkets, liquor stores, even schools, libraries and other community centers."
Recently nutrition professor Marion Nestle wrote about Google's impressive healthy food program on her blog, Food Politics.
Among the interesting takeaways from her blog post:
"The only place on the [Google corporate] campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine. The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan. For the vended products, you pay:
- one cent per gram of sugar
- two cents per gram of fat
- four cents per gram of saturated fat
- one dollar per gram of trans fat
No word on whether the granola bars outsell the Ghirardelli bars--or vice versa.
What do you think? Would you be willing to pay more for unhealthy food? Do you think such a plan would work better on a small scale or as a countrywide initiative?
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Comments
The prices for junk food in the vending machines are a creative idea although I would make sugar more expensive than fat. We need some fat in the diet for health but there is no nutritional value to sugar. - 7/27/2011 7:00:30 PM
I might not mind certain temptation foods being priced higher so I'm not likely to reach for it. - 7/27/2011 4:58:22 PM
Nobody is going to include fresh greens in their diet if they have no clue how to fix them or if they don't enjoy them, so subsidizing random healthy expensive foods won't help, either. - 7/27/2011 4:57:08 PM
How bout, easing off on those $80 hammers, phat salaries for politicians, so much aid to foreign countries, and make all food a little cheaper here by helping the farmers out with that money? Think of tha lost crops this year thats drivin prices up.....
Use it toward making the "good for us" foods as easy and accessible as the "bad" stuff....then, maybe all can be happy and learn to be healthy as we go.... - 7/27/2011 4:50:00 PM
I pay more to buy real food at the farmers market and to buy organic when possible, despite being low-income. - 7/27/2011 3:00:31 PM
Too much government interference in all things is what has caused a lot of problems. The people on welfare don't care if they eat healthy since it doesn't cost them anything in the long run. And the rest of us can make our own decisions based on our needs and desires. Subsidies and taxes of any kind only benefit certain people and I can tell you, I am not one of them. - 7/27/2011 12:22:03 PM
I too have often lamented about how my food bill seems to go up when I amm trying to eat healthy. Why does whole grain pasta cost more than white pasta for example? Fat in an of itself does not equal junk food. Many low-fat so-called health foods are high in sugar content, whould these be taxed? Or is it only convenience foods that we are talking about regardless of nutritional content? Does that mean we are targeting working moms and single guys disproportionately? It doesn't seem fair to me that the only people not being taxed would have to be those who do not work all day so they have 60+ minutes each day to prepare dinner from scratch?
Who accounts for different dietary needs? Low carb diets are often sneered at by "healthy eating" proponents because they are high fat, but they work for many who have trouble regulating their blood sugar.
Seems to me that what we should be striving for is to make nutritional education more readily available to all. Deceptive claims on packaging should be removed. And serving size on nutrional labels should be more common sense. For example a can of soup should not be 2.5 servings. 2 maybe... But no one is taking the other 1/2 servings and collecting them to eat at another time. You know that most people eat 2 slices of bread in a sandwich. So list the serving size as 2 slices instead of 1. Then when you're trying to figure out what you are actually consuming you don't have to try to do math when you're hungry. - 7/27/2011 11:31:09 AM
It is time to think outside of the box and find constructive ways to facilitate change. For example the posting of calories, sodium, carbs and fat content on restaurant menus is a great idea and it is already changing eating habits in cities where it has already been implimented.
- 7/27/2011 11:20:22 AM
everywhere you go. Especially unprocessed fresh or frozen seafood.
I like seafood but I am not going to pay $8.00 for a bag of frozen shrimp. - 7/27/2011 10:58:06 AM
On the topic, who gets to decide what is junk. There are people who are low carb or low fat etc. who think the other side is unhealthy. - 7/27/2011 9:40:05 AM
Further, I am so tired of hearing over and over again that crap food is cheaper. With the possible exception of ramen, I say that's a load of crap. I bought a huge pile of produce for $15 the other day. Are you seriously going to stand there and tell me that those boxes of sugary cereal are cheaper than oatmeal from the bulk bin, even after you dress it up with some milk and sugar? Or that eggs are simply too expensive? Or that you can't afford to buy some bags of dry beans? No. Just tell the truth and say you don't know how to cook them and don't want to be bothered to learn, or that you don't like those foods. And don't go comparing the price of processed foods to organic produce, either. That is not a fair comparison at all, because your cheap processed food is not made with organic produce. - 7/27/2011 9:32:16 AM
- 7/27/2011 9:05:54 AM
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