Basically, soda (or pop, if you are Canadian) accounts for 4 BILLION dollars in subsidized nutrition spending (food stamps, now referred to as SNAP) per year. Being that obesity with all of its associated health risks is now considered an epidemic in North America, is it right for tax payers to contribute to the buying of this particular junk food - or any, for that matter? There are already bans on what the article refers to as "hot prepared foods" or fast foods. Should we stop there?
I really do feel people should have the right to choose which product they buy, but when they're products that just do harm, I have trouble justifying that. I'm not saying no one should ever drink soda pop again, but people in lower income brackets have much higher obesity rates and I feel like poor people are somehow targeted. If you're getting so much more quantity-wise for your money, it is hard to say no to things that are maybe a lot less nutritional, especially if you are supporting a family.
Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to have a tax on junk foods, for everybody. You have to pay high taxes on things like cigarettes and alcohol. I don't see why things loaded with trans fats (which should already be banned IMO), high fructose corn syrup and any number of synthetic chemicals and dyes that cost people their health and take a toll on the health care system should be able to slip by.
Article here: Should Taxpayers Subsidize Soda? ~ Newsroom ~ News from CSPI ~ Center for Science in the Public Interest
Basically, soda (or pop, if you are Canadian) accounts for 4 BILLION dollars in subsidized nutrition spending (food stamps, now referred to as SNAP) per year. Being that obesity with all of its associated health risks is now considered an epidemic in North America, is it right for tax payers to contribute to the buying of this particular junk food - or any, for that matter? There are already bans on what the article refers to as "hot prepared foods" or fast foods. Should we stop there?
I really do feel people should have the right to choose which product they buy, but when they're products that just do harm, I have trouble justifying that. I'm not saying no one should ever drink soda pop again, but people in lower income brackets have much higher obesity rates and I feel like poor people are somehow targeted. If you're getting so much more quantity-wise for your money, it is hard to say no to things that are maybe a lot less nutritional, especially if you are supporting a family.
Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to have a tax on junk foods, for everybody. You have to pay high taxes on things like cigarettes and alcohol. I don't see why things loaded with trans fats (which should already be banned IMO), high fructose corn syrup and any number of synthetic chemicals and dyes that cost people their health and take a toll on the health care system should be able to slip by.
Article here: Should Taxpayers Subsidize Soda? ~ Newsroom ~ News from CSPI ~ Center for Science in the Public Interest
Basically, soda (or pop, if you are Canadian) accounts for 4 BILLION dollars in subsidized nutrition spending (food stamps, now referred to as SNAP) per year.
Being that obesity with all of its associated health risks is now considered an epidemic in North America, is it right for tax payers to contribute to the buying of this particular junk food - or any, for that matter? There are already bans on what the article refers to as "hot prepared foods" or fast foods. Should we stop there?
I really do feel people should have the right to choose which product they buy, but when they're products that just do harm, I have trouble justifying that.
I'm not saying no one should ever drink soda pop again, but people in lower income brackets have much higher obesity rates and I feel like poor people are somehow targeted. If you're getting so much more quantity-wise for your money, it is hard to say no to things that are maybe a lot less nutritional, especially if you are supporting a family.
Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to have a tax on junk foods, for everybody. You have to pay high taxes on things like cigarettes and alcohol. I don't see why things loaded with trans fats (which should already be banned IMO), high fructose corn syrup and any number of synthetic chemicals and dyes that cost people their health and take a toll on the health care system should be able to slip by.
Eating healthy is expensive, and I don't see how rising up taxes on bad foods would help the obesity rate.(Besides maybe that people go hungry because they can't afford food?) Maybe give tax breaks for healthier foods, that would seem like a more logically approach.
Many states already exempt basic foodstuffs from sale taxes. I note you are in Georgia (I used to live there) and GA is one of those states. Unfortunately, when I lived there, it wasn't except from SPLOSTs. That is a good first step anyway. I agree with your point about the cost. Raising the cost of junk food does nothing to reduce the cost of healthy food, which is the root of the problem.
My family is on food stamps, and I try to get my family to buy healthy,( I really would like not to get fat because of being poor lol) but it is damn hard. You can't buy enough food for a family to last a month buying really healthy food while on food stamps. It just cost too much.
My family is on food stamps, and I try to get my family to buy healthy,( I really would like not to get fat because of being poor lol) but it is damn hard. You can't buy enough food for a family to last a month buying really healthy food while on food stamps. It just cost too much.
Nah - corn syrup itself isn't the reason so many are fat.
it's that they're getting it *in* soda and *in* snacks and everything else you don't need to eat, anyway.
People just don't want to be told 'you don't need to eat that' - I guess - eventhough people by the millions prove they're incapable of determining what htey *really* need.
If people were capable of determining what they really needed and acting accordingly, we would have no need for most laws and regulations, but the fact is that we cannot.
Exactly - and people just refuse to accept that. Many haven't a clue. The human body is prone to too many cravings and other faults - it's amazing we've survived this long.
I am pretty much in agreement. We evolved to deal with a very different world than what we have now (foodwise meat was rare and there was no such thing as candy, so our emotional responses evolved to deal with fruit, so the response to sugar was amplified) and our bodies and brains have trouble dealing with a world of plenty. We have to social engineer ourselves, there is no way around it.
jamesrage said:I do think that you should not be able to buy junk food with food stamps. If you want that stuff on food stamps you should have to make it from scratch by buying the flour,yeast, sugar, vegetable oil and so on. I am opposed to additional taxes on junk food, it just give the government an excuse to spend more money.
I am pretty much in agreement. We evolved to deal with a very different world than what we have now (foodwise meat was rare and there was no such thing as candy, so our emotional responses evolved to deal with fruit, so the response to sugar was amplified) and our bodies and brains have trouble dealing with a world of plenty. We have to social engineer ourselves, there is no way around it.
I just don't see us evolving much between say 1775 and today. The only thing that's evolved is our lifestyle. We're basically the same people who were around back then - farming from dusk until dawn. What's changed is our social and moral values (they've evolved), as well as our standard of living. We're much more used to having "too much" whereas back then, there was never enough. Things like sugar, salt, pepper, fruits ... were not easy to come by. Our bodies only have these cravings because such things are provided to us as toddlers and children. If these things were not given to us and we did not grow up on them - there would be less of a chance to want these things.
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