Tax junk food to address the obesity epidemic?

A new book published by the University of Toronto Press promotes the idea of taxing junk food.

This book, “The Health Impact of Smoking and Obesity and What To Do About It,” suggests that the lessons learned from tobacco can be applied to obesity.

One of these lessons is that economic levers can have an impact. Research has shown that taxing tobacco decreased its use. Therefore, the book states — “One option, then, is to use special taxation on unhealthy, energy-dense foods and/or subsidies for healthy food.”

This idea has a number of very serious problems:

1. As the authors point out, “one of the obvious differences between tobacco and obesity is that people still need to eat.”

Yep, that’s a major problem. With tobacco, the goal is to stop smoking all together. With eating, the goal is for people to eat the correct types and amounts of food for their unique physiology. These goals are so different I would doubt a strategy that worked for one would work for the other.

2. There’s absolutely no evidence that eating “unhealthy” food leads to weight gain. Almost everyone assumes this is true but there’s no data which supports this assumption.

In fact, given the way the body works, there is no reason to even imagine this assumption is true. What matters is HOW MUCH food is eaten — not WHAT TYPE of food. The body doesn’t care if it is being fed refined white bread or whole wheat bread. If the number of calories is the same, that’s how much energy the body has to deal with — either burning it for energy or storing it away as fat.

Therefore, banning “unhealthy” food to address the “obesity epidemic” makes no sense.

3. Who is going to decide what foods are “healthy” and what foods are “unhealthy?” Again, everyone assumes that high fat foods are unhealthy — but then data comes out indicating that pregnant women who don’t eat enough fat have problems and that kids who don’t eat enough fat have nutrient deficiencies.

The truth is that no one knows enough about all the intricacies of nutrition to accurately decide what’s good and bad for each one of us — given that we are all unique in the way our body’s work.

4. Actually, I could go on and on about the problems with the idea of taxing junk food but I’m going to stop here.

I’ll come back to this topic in a later blog.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness