Taxing damaging foods and drinks….

Today's Post, Tuesday, 5-19-2009

The good news is that the recent efforts to reduce the cost of health care & to pay for it by the United States government now include proposed taxes on soft drinks and on alcohol.

The bad news is that the efforts may fail despite being one of the key elements in doing the job intended.

The average person in the United States drinks about a gallon of soft drinks a week. This makes the people who drink that much soft drinks, or more, fatter and helps cause a larger number of cases of type 2 diabetes and heart disease than the people get who drink no soft drinks at all. Drinking that many soft drinks per year also tends to cause bone loss while a recent study found that drinking more than that as many do lowers potassium in the blood causing still more health problems.

Unfortunately, as this huge consumption in part shows, 95% of these people still haven’t a clue that they are being harmed at all let alone that a good chunk of the high health care costs they are angry about or frightened by and experiencing go to treat the harmful effects of this soft drink consumption.

Other than the soft drink companies who are now getting paid to harm our health, taxing soft drinks is a superb way to raise money for health care that does NOT harm the economy as something like an income tax or general sales tax would do. (Taxing health benefits is totally nuts and should NOT be considered. It will increase real health care costs to everyone.)

And, without simply banning soft drinks immediately and bringing soft drink companies to instant ruin, only taxing soft drinks will cause the people who have to pay more to drink and buy less and fewer will get fat and sick than do now. That will lower health care costs. (Given the effects soft drink consumption has had and continues to have on making people fat and sick and boosting avoidable health care costs, the soft drink companies should be thankful that their products are not banned completely and only taxed instead.)

But since most people really don’t know how harmful and fattening soft drinks really are and everyone they know drinks them or even offers them to guests, it may be hard to get the taxes to fly politically.

So, even though taxing soft drinks is a brilliant and extremely desirable idea, I suggest some of the following steps be taken.

1. Make sure to pass some kind of national soft drink tax but make the initial tax small and have it start slowly. Then use some of the proceeds to publicize the health effects of drinking soft drinks. At first, even a penny per 8 ounce serving would help.

2. Then use the leverage gained by this increased knowledge by the public to increase the taxes until soft drinks become used about 5 or 10 % as much as they are now. A tax of one to two dollars per 8 ounce serving would be justified by the health effects; but even 50 cents per 8 ounce serving would reduce consumption by a good bit. (People have come to accept or even support taxes on cigarettes and tobacco in part because they do now know these products are harmful.)

3. Separately tax BOTH high fructose corn syrup AND sugar -- AND tax refined grains. Over-consuming these things has very similar effects to consuming regular soft drinks. This would have similar benefits to taxing soft drinks. In addition, by taxing soft drinks AND both high fructose corn syrup and sugar as well, regular soft drinks would pay not one but two taxes.

And, it would also sharply reduce consumption of the junk foods and snack foods containing these items which together produce as much harm as the soft drinks do.

4. Taxing alcohol is a good idea. But since, moderate consumption has health benefits and alcohol is already taxed, in my view the taxes on alcohol should be much more moderate.

Some taxes alcohol would raise badly needed revenue and help prevent the high consumption levels of alcohol that cause accidents and health problems. So it’s a good idea.

But not only should the initial taxes be very low indeed, the amount they should be raised is far less than for soft drinks and for health damaging food components.


On a personal note, if you want to be free of excess fat, never drinking soft drinks, never buying a product with high fructose corn syrup, discontinuing eating almost every food made with refined grains, and eating foods with sugar only occasionally instead of several times a day, will help do the job. It will save you money and help you lose fat or prevent gaining it without making you more hungry, particularly if you eat health OK protein foods or nonstarchy vegetables and drink water, tea, or coffee instead.

Then if these things are taxed, you’ll pay no more than you do now. And, if you have trouble doing this, the increased cost of these foods and drinks will make it easier to avoid them. So you’ll be less fat and healthier than you would have been otherwise.