Tax Junk Food?

[tenni]

There is a discussion beginning in my province regarding junk food, obesity and taxes.

This may apply more to societies that have universal health care via general taxes like Canada and Britain.

The argument is that that junk food should be taxed beyond regular sales taxes etc. as it is unhealthy. The cost of healthy food is greater than junk food in my country. This should be reversed as our taxes pay for illnesses caused in part or whole by obesity(heart etc.) and poor food eating habits. The poor can not afford healthier food and tend to purchase junk food due to their cheapness. Junk food should be taxed and the poor should have access to tax subsidies to eat healthier food. If they eat healthier then medical costs will be reduced.

ie- We already have annual free flu shots for anyone in my province paid by the government as a preventative approach to keeping health care costs down from fewer visits to doctors, hospitals etc. due to having the flu.


What are you thoughts about taxing junk food with a special tax?

[fredtyg]

No. Let people be responsible for their own food and health decisions. Besides, who decides what gets taxed and what doesn't? This invites crony capitalism with one company trying to get other company's products taxed but not theirs.

It also leads to the slippery slope, we're already on, with everyone looking at everyone else's behavior, deciding what's bad or good and then what or how to tax things they don't like. In the United States we've had proposals to add taxes to any number of things, including meat, all in the name of "we know what's best for you".

Let's live and let live. This sort of thinking has gone out of control and if not nipped in the bud leaves everybody and the things they enjoy subject to the tax attack.

[darkeyes]

What are you thoughts about taxing junk food with a special tax?
Special tax? It's Vat rated here.. as to putting an extra tax on it ... food of the poor.. so tax it more.. no probs..cheeky getts...

[tenni]

Unprepared food itself was not taxed here. The feds combined the provincial sales tax with the GST(your VAT). I don't think that food is taxed still but prepared food such is taxed with both provincial sales tax and GST called HST(13%). i.e. frozen pizza would be taxed as well as restaurant food.

Burgers and fries would be taxed at 13% and probably proposed to have an added tax if burgers, fries and pop (ie McD) is classified as junk food. Candy and crisp(potatoe chips) would be probably. The Ontario Medical Association is suggesting other tax as well as the below ideas.

http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-physicians-call-for-junk-food-tax-1.1006929

"
Up to 31.5 per cent of Canadian youth between the ages of 5 and 17 are overweight or obese, according to Statistics Canada."

"
Weir estimated that obesity-related health issues-- from diabetes to heart disease -- cost Ontario taxpayers $2.2 to $2.5 billion annually.“This is an unnecessary strain on our health care system that is unsustainable,” Weir said.
"Among the proposed measures, the OMA(Ontario Medical Association) suggests:

*Limiting the marketing of sugary and fatty food to children.
*Placing information about obesity-related health risks on high-sugar and high-fat foods.
*Restricting access to junk food at sports complexes, and other recreational venues that children regularly frequent."

[Annika L]

No. Let people be responsible for their own food and health decisions. Besides, who decides what gets taxed and what doesn't?

Let's live and let live. This sort of thinking has gone out of control and if not nipped in the bud leaves everybody and the things they enjoy subject to the tax attack.

I completely buy the "live and let live" sentiment in theory. But when the diet and health choices of some impact the healthcare costs of others, then "live and let live" meets reality. This is the biggest reason why smoking has been taxed so heavily: because it has clear-cut, well-established health consequences that are expensive for society to deal with in masses. Another way this has been dealt with is requiring cigarette companies to include a health-risk statement on its packaging, and limiting the nature and placement of advertising. I believe the combination of these two approaches has been pretty effective.

This country has an enormous number of people obese to the point where it is causing them secondary health problems, particularly diabetes, which can have some very costly side-effects. Experts disagree wildly about what *does* constitute a healthy diet, so Fred's point about "who gets to decide" is well taken. But I believe experts do *not* disagree about what constitutes an *unhealthy* diet...substances that contribute next to nothing but unneeded calories nutritionally, but spike blood sugar, and often barely satisfy hunger in a meaningful way...although they taste great, because they stroke our evolved weaknesses for fats and sweets (I've had a paranoid fantasy for years that aliens have taken over our nation and are intentionally fattening us up by marketing directly to our evolutionary weaknesses).

If experts *can* agree on a threshold for such nutritionally-barren, diabetes-inducing non-foods, then rather than outlawing such products entirely, I'd prefer to see them taxed heavily (with the tax used to subsidize costs of treating obesity-related problems) as a deterrent, as tobacco products are now. I do NOT think this should be done lightly, with people suggesting taxes on "foods they don't like"; but on the basis of solid research patterns, such as were established with tobacco. I also think that, as with tobacco, there could be both warning labels and limits on advertising, including not targeting children, who are particularly vulnerable to making bad decisions and to being influenced by ads.

Of course, if I'm wrong, and experts *can't* agree, and research shows no clear patterns, then I'm completely with Fred.

To Fran's (quite good) point, I have to say that if nutritionally-barren products are all poor people can afford (and I realize this is to a large extent the case), then I think we need to find a way to get them access to real food: given how much food is produced in this country, it is criminal that we have so many who can't afford to eat anything but crap, and hence are poor *and* obese (I once saw this as an absurd contradiction). But in this case, it should even *more* incumbent upon us to remove the crap from the price range of the poor: as it is, low-priced crap-food provides us with the illusion that the poor really can afford to eat. Raising the price of foods that nobody should eat would put a spotlight on the fact that there is *nothing* worthwhile that the poor can afford...and give those of us in a position to help the perspective we need to really address the problem.

[darkeyes]

Unprepared food itself was not taxed here. The feds combined the provincial sales tax with the GST(your VAT). I don't think that food is taxed still but prepared food such is taxed with both provincial sales tax and GST called HST(13%). i.e. frozen pizza would be taxed as well as restaurant food.

Burgers and fries would be taxed at 13% and probably proposed to have an added tax if burgers, fries and pop (ie McD) is classified as junk food. Candy and crisp(potatoe chips) would be probably. The Ontario Medical Association is suggesting other tax as well as the below ideas.

http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-physicians-call-for-junk-food-tax-1.1006929

"
Up to 31.5 per cent of Canadian youth between the ages of 5 and 17 are overweight or obese, according to Statistics Canada."

"
Weir estimated that obesity-related health issues-- from diabetes to heart disease -- cost Ontario taxpayers $2.2 to $2.5 billion annually.“This is an unnecessary strain on our health care system that is unsustainable,” Weir said.
"Among the proposed measures, the OMA(Ontario Medical Association) suggests:

*Limiting the marketing of sugary and fatty food to children.
*Placing information about obesity-related health risks on high-sugar and high-fat foods.
*Restricting access to junk food at sports complexes, and other recreational venues that children regularly frequent."





Foodstuffs considered necessities are generally Vat exempt. Biscuits are zero rated for vat while cakes we pay Vat on. as they are considered luxury food.. choccie and sweets we pay Vat on as we do on soft drinks and alcohol. Chippies and KFC Macdonalds cafes and restaurants we pay Vat or on hot takeaway food..

There is an argument that junk food is not healthy and contributes to obesity.. but there are other contributory causes. Poor diet generally and inactivity substantially contributes to obesity also. Much of that poor diet is what is in our canned foods, pre packaged meals and other processed foodstuffs we buy from supermarkets. Not all of that is considered junk food although it is just that...Labelling has its place but nothing would serve us so well as educating the population into eating healthily.. and eating less in many instances... becoming more active. In the UK it is not a cheap thing to eat healthily... not when u are on the breadline as millions are increasingly finding themselves.. junk food is cheap, quick and suited to a pressured lifestyle.. as well as a lazy lifestyle... why spend 20 quid cooking for a family of 4 when u can feed them from MacDonalds or burger King or KFC for 15 and all that time u save and of course.. no energy costs on top?

My family does not eat junk food (except for the odd chippie meal and they tell us fish and ships isn't junk food anyway), but have a healthy balanced diet and we are reasonably active in how we live. We have occasional treats but no picking and scoffing bars of choccie, bags of crisps except occasionally and in moderation,and no guzzling gallons of coke or other soft fizzy drinks... I am horrified by some of my friends as their kids don't know what tea or coffee is to taste.. and certainly not water... coke..irn-bru.. doc pepper.. bottles of the stuff and other soft drinks.. a can with brekkie, a can with dinner.. a can with tea.. a can with supper.. and a can or two cos they are thirsty during the day.. or just cos they fancy one.. and the less well off people are the more likely that is to be. It's bloody lunacy..but its the way our world has encouraged it to be... we no longer live in a cheap food world... and it will become less cheap.. whether junk or good quality and balanced.. but the answer is not to put extra tax on junk food to make people accept the need for better diet.. it is a change in the way we live where people no longer have to eat on the hoof, where we take time for family and sit down and enjoy our food. Every evening we spend at least an hour chatting over dinner.. we enjoy it.. it gives us time for and with each other to let stress go and relax and learn each other's cares of the day... too many sit round the telly, gobs shut watching whatever junk is on the box and never an utterance except to tell someone else to shut up.. munching on Burger King or KFC or whatever or a telly meal or froz Pizza (unfroz of course.. usually *laffs*....Good quality food is expensive and is out of reach of the pockets of many of the poor...and family life of the poor is often so disjointed often through no fault of their own because of the demands of holding down several different jobs for very little money just to make ends meet that junk food is almost a life saver for many. So the answer is to put more tax the food they can afford? Jeez.... what is in the bloody pea brains of some people who run countries?

We have been sold a pup of a lifestyle and way of living by decades of junk advertising and aided by decades of pressured junk working and living practices, junk processed food supply we now pay the price... the challenge is to change how we view living and try and change how we live and how we eat. I don't like indirect taxation since there is one sector of the population this kind of tax affects worst of all and is the area where the poorest are defenceless against unfair tax practice... but whatever kind of tax regime we have what we need is to educate people to change how and what they eat.. until people understand what is nutritious and wholesome, and until we have people educated in the preparation of food and the social importance of sitting down to a family meal and provide the conditions for that to occur junk food will reign supreme as the food of the poor and play a greater part in the lives of others less poor than it otherwise should. Junk food is far more extensive than what we think of as junk food and tinned and packaged food manufacturers, telly/microwave meal producers and supermarkets have as much of an obligation for the health of the nation as do we ourselves.. we can only eat what is available and what we can afford.. and these business as well as government should be more scrupulous and responsible for what they offer us for out weekly shop. Salt, sugar, additives, preservatives and God knows what else all contribute to obesity and other health problems.

Education and lifestyle change and also better working practices to allow people time to know about, prepare, eat and enjoy food... how much we eat and when is also important as well as good quality regular exercise. Until we get all of those things right then obesity and health problems will persist... the importance of a balanced diet and exercise cannot be emphasised enough. No matter how we tax or not tax what we eat, or subsidise or not subsidise, the poorest will always eat what they can afford... there are a whole host of factors we have to address before we ever get round to putting tax or extra tax on junk food..