In the interests of transparency I shall make a declaration of interests.

I am in favour of the government getting as much of its revenue as possible by taxing goods and services I never or rarely use. So, from my perspective, sky high taxes on cigarettes, alco-pops and Big Macs are the way to go.

But would a tax on unhealthy foods (A "Big Mac Tax" or BMT) improve the health of the nation as some are now suggesting?

See:

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26233022-2682,00.html

Quote:

"TAX breaks for grocers selling fresh fruit and vegetables, and tax rises for fast food should be imposed to make people healthier, an Adelaide health expert [Prof. Mark Daniel] says."

I am sceptical. A far bigger cause of disease is not the food we eat but our sedentary life styles. To quote Doctors Diane Dahm and Jay Smith, both from the Mayo Clinic:

"When it comes to risk factors for cardiovascular disease, an inactive lifestyle ranks high...Poor physical fitness was a greater cardiovascular risk factor than were high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity AND family history." (Emphasis in original)

"...Moderately fit SMOKERS with high cholesterol ... lived longer than did healthy but sedentary non-smokers" (Emphasis added)

(p35 of MAYO CLINIC FITNESS FOR EVERYBODY)

Bear in mind that cardiovascular disease – which includes stroke – is Australia's single biggest killer.

Exercise inter alia also reduces the risk of getting diabetes, slows down age-related cognitive impairment and increases bone density. If there ever was a wonder drug it's exercise. (ibid, p34)

Using the same logic as Prof. Daniel it follows that we ought to tax those things that make us sedentary such surfing the internet or watching TV or just sitting in chairs.

So let's forget about the BMT.

Impose an internet, TV, cinema and chair tax instead.

An added advantage of a TV tax is that kids would be exposed to fewer fast food ads. So we could kill two birds with one stone

More seriously,

For the sake of our kids:

--More phys ed in school

--More walking and less being taxied around

--Set an example for your kids by being physcially active - go for walks with them

--Wouldn't if be GREAT if we had safe cycle tracks separated from the cars so that kids could cycle to school?

The above will achieve much more than a Big Max Tax.

Wasnt that the premise behind the "oh so difficult" wholesale sales tax that was replaced by the GST. Luxuries and damaging products could be taxed higher than health foods and necessities.

Sounds like a good idea to me. A soft drink tax was being proposed in the US to help reduce both their obesity and their deficit but I think "free marketeers" squashed it as "distorting the market" and unfair.

I preferred the way things were when I was a kid and soft drinks and fast food were treats and appreciated. Now its just normal and everyone takes it for granted and it is killing us. Another example of capitalisms greed driven destruction of our health and societies.

Mikk “Another example of capitalisms greed driven destruction of our health and societies.”

So you are in favour of sucking on the teat of the nanny state whilst some faceless bureaucrat spends your taxes and a remotely located “expert”, who has never met you and does not know you, makes your dietary decisions for you?

Personally, I would rather make my own way through life and sack all the bleeding experts…

especially the “experts” who proclaimed the danger of chicken eggs as a source of cholesterol (are chook eggs on the list of damaging foods?) but did not understand the benefits of chicken eggs for vision protection and as a source for a host of other vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

I also recall the well known “expert”, William McBride recommended thalidomide for pregnant women in the 1960s… with disastrous results

Somehow I cannot bring myself to blame “greedy capitalism” for the failings and gullibility of weak minded individuals who will not deal with their own slothenly pursuit of convenience food.

Actually we eat extremely nourishing food extremely cheaply.

Eggs
Fruits
Mixed Vegies

When we eat out it is usually steaks with light sauces

It is like this.. obesity is 30% exercise, 70% food intake…. Reduce the intake and you reduce your weight.

I have not been into a Maccas or KFC for a long time but do find myself occasionally buying the “fast food” delights of Subway… but we always go for modest portions and eat earlier in the day, rather than late at night.

It is all about people making sensible choices about their lives, instead of thinking government should make the choices for them.

Btw… Russia still reflects the legacy of the old USSR who oversaw high levels of alcoholism and there the government told you what you would eat (which was very little because the collectives could not grow enough food) hence USSR produced the unhealthiest of individuals still with an average life expectancy of 66 years versus Australia (81 1/2) or UK/USA (78).

Without the capitalist driven advertising and marketing industry "experts' misleading us that fast food etc is fine and the denial that they dont try to maximise the amounts we eat, maybe we wouldnt need the "experts" from the "nanny state' to try to change our ways. The reality is that obesity and bad health are endemic, rising and costing us all a fortune. And for what? So Maccas and KFC can make the big bucks. Their whole reason for existing is to maximise profits and the only way they do that is by selling more burgers. If they cant make us eat more (even if its unhealthy) then they will fail and go out of business. Its just the way capitalism works.

They use our psychology against us and use lies and distortions to fool us that they are not into profiteering and they only care about our satisfaction and happiness. And people like Col rouge accuse anyone who falls for it as "the failings and gullibility of weak minded individuals". Well good for you for being so strong willed Col but to say that everyone who is not like you is some "weak minded individual" is to be blind to human diversity and ignorant of reality.

Nobody ever got fat from not eating.
Are you being forced to eat.
Family values have gone out the window.
Nobody knows how much you eat or when.
Blame it on some unknown medical condition.
Do you have will power, or won't power.
obese people cost everybody higher medical costs, and insurance.
Now we have truck type ambulances with lifting gear.
Blaming a food supplier or taxing them won't do a thing, the solution has got to come from within.

Desmond wrote:

"obese people cost everybody higher medical costs, and insurance."

I don’t mean to be pedantic Desmond, but on average fat smokers are least burdensome to taxpayers. It's true their medical costs are higher but:

--Taking lifetime medical expenses and cigarette taxes into account, very roughly, for every dollar in extra medical expenses they pay $20 in cigarette taxes.

--They tend to die relatively quickly so they are less likely to need the types of long term expensive care that eg dementia patients require.

--Most importantly, they tend not to be around long enough to collect much in the way of old age pensions.

Fatties who don’t smoke don’t pay cigarette taxes and live a bit longer than fat smokers so the position is less clear. I SUSPECT that, on average, they are less of a lifetime burden than their leaner compatriots because of savings in dementia care and old age pensions.

NB: This may sound counter-intuitive. On average fatties are MORE likely to get dementia than lean people.

However fatties' shortened life span means that fewer of them make it to the age where dementia is a problem. Also, once they have dementia, they are likely to die faster than lean people with dementia.

Note I am talking about really fat people (BMI* > 30) not merely people who are a bit overweight. (BMI between 25 and 30). There is some evidence that the bar has been set a bit too low so that people with BMI of 25-29 are quite healthy while people with BMI < 20 should put on a few pounds.

BMI is a rough measure. It may be that waist measurement is more important than BMI.


*See: http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/body-fat-measurement for discussion of BMI and body fat.

Blaming a food supplier or taxing them won't do a thing, the solution has got to come from within.
Desmond, you're right. However, authorities are due for blame just as much as, after all, it is via the authorities that control economics that much decent nourishment is prohibitive in cost to many. let's face it, the reason why junk food is a multi billion $ racket is because people can afford it. Just go to a delicatessen (which btw Is standard food in other parts of the world) with $ 20 in your pocket & look at the prices. Then look at the prices of junk food & see what you can get for your 20 bucks. It doesn't get any clearer than that I'm afraid.

When BMT tax gets to around 400% of the current prices, as with tobacco taxes, our omniscient health professionals should see enough revenue to continue funding their medical experiments now that most sensible tobacco consumers have left the country for more civilised places or died from health-industry-induced poverty.

It is now well known that the purpose of eating is not to gain energy from the kilojoules per dollar, but to look the part with our basket full of 97% fat free gourmet tv dinners at the checkout and starve ourselves for the sakes of our children and our fellow taxpayers. Less is more?

When the monthly health insurance instalments collected by our friendly drive-thru MacDonald's attendants for a weekly happy meal, fries, and small pepsi finally make it to around $300 per month, (as is the taxation on normal tailormade tobacco products over a month in Australia now), and everybody learns to accept such a draconian system of taxation apartheid as the normal Aussie way of life, then we can start raising the taxes on petrol in the same way.

That should be easy, since we know that the smoke from petrol and diesel engines cause far more smoking-related diseases as well as crash deaths and long-term injuries than tobacco ever could, and driving the kids to school in a car is far more likely to make them get fat than telling them to walk or ride a push-bike.

In fact, the best thing we could do to help the health professionals get their deserved income would be to just tax EVERYTHING at 400%, as it has proven such a clever money-spinner for tobacco.

Why not ban TV remotes, or the internet or the other 'necessary' diversions that cause adults to say "I'm too busy now" to children who want to be taken out to play?

Better still, tax or ban the know alls who have nothing better to do than tell us all how to live and nag, nag, nag.

That is a thought, has anyone ever done any research into the health effects of controlling SOBs and their continual nagging? Must add up to billions every year and probably why so many others drink, smoke and take up other dangerous pursuits.

forget tax...use whips...

how dare people think..they got a choice..just pay ever more tax..you dumb goyum...fuc ever more tax/..use whips...that works in hell

quote
http://www.angelfire.com/ne/newviews/gonewest2c.html#2c16

“My master was delighted..by the success of these operations,..and I urged him on to attempt..something similar..against a young priest whom he hated.

This man had denounced him..as being in league with the Devil,..which was largely true,..and therefore angered my master the more.

“We plagued him,..but though we caused him much annoyance..by disturbing his sleep and so forth,..we failed to hurt him much.

Then I inspired one of the prettiest village maids to fall desperately in love with him...This refused,..I turned her love to anger,..and she spread all sorts of ugly rumors..concerning him.

“Then we attacked him again more fiercely.

We scoffed at his religion..and told him it was false,
or else the good God..would not allow us to come to him.

We told him he was about to be disgraced,..and we urged him to escape the consequences of his evil life..by suicide.

“(The poor devil had had a remarkably innocent life,..as a matter of fact,..and was not quite such a fool..as not to know it.)

“We persecuted him like this for weeks until,..at length one night he cried,..‘I believe you are sent..by that wretched old man whom I denounced..as in league with the Devil.

I’ll go and tell him what I think of him now.’

“At once we urged him to do so,..for,..once there,..it would be strange...if our master could not finish him off....

oh..the whip thing..scroll up

as usual the left display double standards. They blame the advertising of the 'evil' corporations who employ thousands of people for obesity and then deny the promotion of porn has any affect on people. The way our current Government has mismanaged taxes it is a very bad idea to give them any more.