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Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables
Mark Bittman writes about food for the opinion section of the New York Times.
What will it take to get us Americans to change our eating habits? The need is indisputable, since heart disease, diabetes and cancer are all in large part caused by the Standard American
Diet. (Yes, it's SAD.) Though experts increasingly recommend a diet high in plants and low in animal products and processed foods, ours is quite the opposite, and there's little disagreement
that changing it could improve our health and save tens of millions of lives. And - not unimportant during the current struggle over budgets and spending - a sane diet could save tens if not
hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs.
Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. And whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn't matter, because the fixes are not really their problem. Their
mission is not public health but profit, so they'll continue to sell the health-damaging food that's most profitable, until the market or another force makes them do otherwise. That "other force"
should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good.
Rather than subsidizing the production of unhealthful foods, we should do the opposite and tax things like soda, French fries, doughnuts, and hyper-processed snacks. The resulting income
should be given to a program that encourages a good diet for Americans by making healthy food more affordable and widely available.
The average American consumes 44.7 gallons of soft drinks annually. (Although that includes diet sodas, it does not include noncarbonated sweetened beverages, which add up to at least
17 gallons a person per year.) Sweetened drinks could be taxed at 2 cents per ounce, so a six-pack of Pepsi would cost $1.44 more than it does now. An equivalent tax on fries might be 50
cents per serving: a quarter extra for a doughnut. (We have experts who can figure out how "bad" a food should be to qualify, and what the rate should be. Diet sodas would not be taxed.)
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.
Right now it's harder for many people to buy fruit than Froot Loops; chips and Coke are a common breakfast. And since the rate of diabetes continues to soar - one-third of all Americans
either have diabetes or are pre-diabetic, most with Type 2 diabetes, the kind associated with bad eating habits -and because our health care bills are about to become truly insurmountable.
this is urgent for economic sanity as well as national health.
1) According to the author, what is the estimated annual consumption of all kinds of soft drinks per person in the US?
A. 61.7 gallons
B. 27.7 gallons
C. 17 gallons
D. 44.7 gallons
2) What health issues are largely caused by the Standard American Diet (SAD), according to the text?
A. Respiratory problems and heart disease
B. Mental health disorders and diabetes
C. Heart disease, diabetes, and cancer
D. Infectious diseases and cancer
3) How does the author propose to use the income generated from taxing unhealthful foods?
A. Promote healthy eating by making nutritious food more affordable
B. Allocate funding to the food industry
C. Support research on food marketing strategies
D. Provide subsidies for the production of unhealthy foods
4) According to the tovt why is addroccinn the iccup of unhealthy eating hahite urnant for economic canity?
