A gold mine for government?
Tobacco and alcohol have long been subject to "sin taxes" used by state and federal governments to pay for children's and health programs. Now a new sin may join the list: Fast food.
Before you dismiss this agenda as the pie-in-the-sky wish list of wannabe social engineers, consider the trajectory of the Twinkie tax, which has gone from reductio ad absurdum to serious policy proposal in just a few years. In a June 1994 newspaper ad that criticized proposals to sharply raise tobacco taxes, R.J. Reynolds said: "Today it's cigarettes. Will high-fat foods be next?" Anti-smoking activists traditionally responded to this sort of slippery-slope argument by insisting that cigarettes were unique, "the only legal product that when used as intended causes death." To suggest that anti-smoking measures might pave the way for attacks on cheeseburgers and ice cream, they said, was just silly.
Yet six months after R.J. Reynolds tried to scare people with the outlandish prospect of a tax on fatty foods, Yale University's Kelly Brownell endorsed the idea on the op-ed page of The New York Times, citing the precedent set by cigarette taxes. He said "taxing foods with little nutritional value" would deter consumption and help raise money for bike paths, running tracks, and nutrition education. "Fatty foods would be judged on their nutritive value per calorie or gram of fat," he explained. "The least healthy would be given the highest tax rate."
If the low “cost” of eating fast food is adding to the obesity problem, the solution involves increasing the cost, even in a nominal way. How do we give individuals the incentive to pay a little more — increased physical exertion, lack of convenience — to get their food? This is where a drive-through tax comes in.
We could tax the drive-through purchases at, say, 10 percent, while leaving the purchase of walk-in meals alone. At the very least, it may entice some to park and walk rather than waiting in the car.
Now, this may seem an invasion of personal choice or another step toward a nanny state. Maybe. But there are other arguments to be made. We tax cigarettes in part because of their health cost. Similarly, the individual’s decision to lead a sedentary lifestyle will end up costing taxpayers. In 2001, the surgeon general issued a report noting that obesity and its complications cost the nation $117 billion annually, much of it through Medicare and Medicaid.
Imposing a drive-through tax would be one way of recouping future taxpayer outlays — perhaps revenues could go directly to government health programs. And who knows, it could help the environment, too: with one move, we could fight obesity and reduce emissions from all those cars idling in the line at Burger King.
Will they be healthier?
Put down that french fry.
Boston health regulators this week approved a ban on artery-clogging trans fat in restaurants and grocery stores, similar to a ban instituted in New York City. The first phase of the ban goes into effect in September and will apply to the use of cooking oils, shortening and margarine that contains artificial trans fat. The makers of baked goods will have a year to eliminate trans fat from their products.
The New York City Health Department's regulatory move appears to mark the first time a health agency has taken action against safe, legal foods -- in this case, certain margarines and cooking oils -- instead of disease-causing organisms. The regulatory demonization of trans fats and the underlying "trans-fat-phobia" reveal a good deal about how the media and consumers react to a health scare, how scientists respond (or do not), and what lies ahead for other food ingredients.
Most of the trans fats in our diet are derived from man-made partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (trans fats also occur naturally in beef, lamb, and dairy products). In recent years, trans fats have accounted for about 3-4 percent of our total calorie intake, but given the food industry's race to get trans fats out of many foods, the percentage of our total calories today that is trans fats is probably more like 1-2 percent.
This is a situation in which you have a demonstrably harmful substance that eliminating will make absolutely no difference whatsoever to anybody's experience. Why wouldn't the city want to get rid of something that's harmful? It won't taste any different. It won't cost any more. Nobody will notice it.
People have to wear seat belts. You can't smoke on airplanes. This is in the same category, but this is one that nobody is going to notice. Because it makes absolutely no difference, except to health. And it's the best kind of public health intervention, because it's one that people don't have to think about.
This is healthy. You're probably not eating it.
Here's an interesting thought: What if you're not to blame for your weight problem?
What if the fault could be laid squarely at the feet of food manufacturers and marketers, grocery store managers, restaurant operators, food vendors -- the people who make food so visible, available and mouth-watering?
Several recent studies, papers and a popular weight-loss book argue that eating is an automatic behavior triggered by environmental cues that most people are unaware of -- or simply can't ignore.
What makes you fat? Eating cheesy-poofs while watching Sex in the City reruns? Wolfing down a Wendy's "Baconator," comprising a double cheeseburger with six strips of bacon that could feed everyone in Darfur for a week? How about when you get the urge to exercise you lie down until it goes away, as one CEO famously put it? Yes, to all of the above. But these are all specific contributors to obesity driven by larger forces that are making us, well, larger.
Turns out, obesity is contagious.
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.
