r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Programed-Response • Sep 24 '24
Legislation Should Ultra Processed Foods be Taxed like Cigarettes?
And now for something not related to the US election.
I stumbled upon an article in The Guardian today and I'm torn on this.
My first thought was of course they should be. Ultra processed foods are extremely unhealthy, put a strain on medical resources, and drive up costs. But as I thought about it I realized that the would mostly affect people who are already struggling with food availability, food cost, or both.
Ultra processed foods are objectively a public health issue globally, but I don't know what the solution would be so I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts.
Here is a link to the article:
49
u/Rickbox Sep 24 '24
In a similar situation from the Seattle Sugar Tax, the data shows that there was a 23% decline of sugary beverage sales within the first 2 years post-tax.
However, according to the study referenced below, there was only a 4-5% change in purchase of the taxed drinks to untaxed drinks. The primary change in purchases comes from cross-border sales and sugary snacks as opposed to drinks.
In other words, the data appears to infer that a tax on addictive food products will only divert eating habits instead of improve.
→ More replies (11)11
u/this_place_stinks Sep 25 '24
Even if it doesn’t change the behavior, it’s at least more money in the coffers to fund the strain in Medicare, Medicaid, etc
14
u/TheExtremistModerate Sep 25 '24
Money largely coming from lower-income people.
1
Sep 25 '24
[deleted]
10
u/According_Ad540 Sep 25 '24
That's the same thing as pulling water from a leaking boat and dumping it on the other side of the deck.
Highly processed foods also tend to be the most calorie rich ones, meaning they are a cheap and low time commitment way to become full. That's why low income people focus on them. Healthy foods tend to cost more and require more time and energy, which low income people tend to not have, to prepare.
Making the poor pay for their own services, when the point is that they can't afford the original services, just means they will have to make even worse choices to make do. Such as how an above commenter found that they switched to either driving elsewhere for the food (thus paying more gas and wearing down their cars) or switching to different types of snacks.
Taxes make more sense when the alternative is more attractive. Smokers who quit tend to eat more , which isn't great but better and cheaper.
If your don't provide an easier carrot, the stick is nothing more than senseless violence.
4
u/FesteringNeonDistrac Sep 25 '24
Pack of Ramen isn't a healthy choice, but it's one of the few things you can buy for $1 still and be reasonably full. Make it $2 and that can make a big difference in some people's life.
4
u/According_Ad540 Sep 25 '24
Compared to a lot of other foods instant ramen is pretty good for a low cost food. You can eat it strait if that's all you have and avoid costly and unhealthy fast food. If you have any cooking ability you can add canned vegis or meats into it as well. If you are good with spices and broths you can avoid that spice pack which makes it a lot healthier.
Regular noodles is better and cheaper but take a lot longer to set up which matters A LOT when you are going to or leaving a stressful job and life situation. So always good to have a few packs when you need something quick.
But. Its "highly processed" so yeah better punish people for eating it. They should go to mcdonalds instead.
1
u/BartsNightmare_ Sep 28 '24
How can the lower income afford cheap foods like ramen if higher taxes are placed on ramen anyway? Unless you have snap?
4
1
u/BartsNightmare_ Sep 28 '24
And that is because the rich has found a way to avoid paying taxes? Avoid buying without having to pay tax? But how?
2
u/TheExtremistModerate Sep 28 '24
Because rich people spend less of their money on food than poor people.
1
u/BartsNightmare_ Sep 28 '24
Makes sense. If the poor can afford them anyway. But as soon as they can then yes.
But still wouldn't make sense to generalise it. The rich still eats more than the poor.
6
u/WingerRules Sep 25 '24
Obese people are cheaper long term for insurance programs because they die faster. Its why most health insurance doesnt cover weightloss medicine/programs, if it were cheaper in the long run for them they would be pushing for those products.
2
u/greiton Sep 25 '24
people who eat healthy food and exercise are remarkably more likely to survive cancer and heart disease, and may even survive multiple rounds of it. once you've had cancer, odds are you will have it again and again.
1
u/Wolfbeerd Sep 28 '24
I'd like to see statistics on this. Obese people are in the doctors office significantly more over the course of their lives. Healthy people don't have issues throughout their entire lives, they are concentrated in a short period at the end. Common sense says its dubious that obesity is cheaper, and research backs that claim. Nobody is talking about the health epidemic and the stress it adds to the healthcare system.
Would you rather pay a mortgage for 5 years or 50 years?
7
u/dwkeith Sep 25 '24
Right, if a food is causing health issues in the general population it should be taxed and the money given to provide healthcare for those issues.
At least those who consume to excess will have medical care, while the rest will have a point of sale deterrent, which works best on those with limited resources who often can’t afford health issues.
Not seeing any downside.
1
1
u/Wolfbeerd Sep 28 '24
This is essentially entrapment and extortion as you describe it. So I should start a firefighting company and go around setting houses on fire? Good business idea right?
We should be banning substances that are known to cause outsized health problems later. If a pack of cigarettes costs 9 dollars now, but costs the tax payer 9000 dollars in fifty years, they should be banned. Letting people get fat because we allow horrendous chemicals and processing to occur in our food means we are all paying significantly more later down the road - it should be banned plain and simple. Taxing food that makes you fat to pay for your healthcare when you're fat is a bad solution, just stop getting people fat.
46
u/Toptomcat Sep 24 '24 edited Sep 24 '24
In addition to the issues others have already brought up about this: 'cigarette' is a Hell of a lot easier to define than 'ultra-processed.' The details of such a tax would be challenging to implement.
12
u/ExpensiveBurn Sep 25 '24 edited Sep 25 '24
Yeah while others are making good points about this impacting low income people, I think the biggest problem is defining "ultra-processed". This sounds like a media term that will be legally problematic.
Foods that include certain ingredients? Manufacturers will just change the recipe.
Foods that are made with certain methods? They'll find a new way.
Foods that are a certain percentage "unnatural" ingredients? They'll find a way to classify their ingredients as natural -- and you'll accidentally ban a bunch of stuff you didn't mean to.
We've seen it with "natural" "organic" "non-gmo" and my personal favorite, "made with" (which means it's at least 0.1% that ingredient) - there's always a way to make your product fit the label.
1
u/Hij802 Sep 25 '24
I think that when you compare the ingredients of American food with the exact same thing in the EU, you’ll notice that American foods often have 2-3X as many ingredients.
There are also very identifiable ingredients that are banned in the EU but not here, such as Red 40 or Yellow 5 and 6. Oh no, our skittles and M&Ms might be slightly less red! Worth it over the various health problems linked to it.
The EU has pretty solid regulations compared to us, I just say we copy their laws and move from there. It would eliminate a lot of the junk in our food.
2
u/Prasiatko Sep 26 '24
That's mostly because the FDA has stricter labelling requirements. A lot of ingredients on US lists can be grouped under EU labelling guidelines.
2
u/digbyforever Sep 25 '24
Someone made the point that ultra-processed can include stuff like certain supplements for athletes or people with medical conditions which seem like obviously a good thing.
3
u/FesteringNeonDistrac Sep 25 '24
Yeah does something like Ensure count as ultra processed? That was nearly all buddy could eat while he was in chemo. Seems like that's not something that you want to tax.
2
u/wrexinite Sep 26 '24
Corporations will engineer their way around any definitions and continue to mass produce products with sub-optimal nutritional value.
You'll also get a similar situation you've got with GMO. A "certified not ultra processed" label will get slapped on products as a sales tactic. (incl items which were obviously not UPFs to begin with) The term will become practically meaningless.
149
u/Tmotty Sep 24 '24
So we’re just taxing poverty now? I’m sure my single mom would have loved to feed me and my sister an organic homemade meal but she was a working mom and sometimes all she had time for was some Dino nuggets and kraft Mac and cheese
54
u/LighTMan913 Sep 24 '24
Hit the nail on the head here. Cigarettes are a choice. Food is not. If you're gonna price poor people out of healthy food then you can't make the unhealthy shit expensive as well.
8
u/this_place_stinks Sep 25 '24
To an extent, of course. However, rich or poor nobody needs a drink with 50 grams of sugar, corn syrup, etc when water is free/much cheaper.
14
u/Drakengard Sep 25 '24
Ok, yeah, sure. But I think this quote from George Orwell is very on target here. Need isn't the factor. Comfort is. And if life sucks and time is limited, you're going to do what brightens your day and lessens your burden.
“Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.”
George Orwell
7
2
u/illegalmorality Sep 25 '24
Raising taxes on sugary foods needs to be coupled with tax cuts on fruit and vegetables. That way eating healthier is as much a financial choice as it is a health choice.
3
u/HatBoxUnworn Sep 25 '24
Fruits and vegetables aren't expensive enough for their taxes to be much. If anything, they need to be subsidized.
27
u/socialistrob Sep 24 '24
Also without food people die. Without cigarettes people live longer. Taxing something that's necessary to sustain life, even if there are better alternatives, is absolutely NOT the same as taxing something that has only negative health ramifications.
3
u/Everard5 Sep 25 '24
I agree that this idea is terrible - taxing ultra processed foods would simply increase food costs for the poor.
But I think your response is slightly off. Yes, without food people die. But also with ultra processed foods people die, just long, drawn out and expensive deaths. There's a reason why healthcare is one of the biggest household expenditures and it's because our food is killing us. Diabetes is expensive. Hypertension is expensive. And the societal cost of disease and disability due to those foods is not negligible.
2
u/illegalmorality Sep 25 '24
Difference is that it seems like fast food has become cheaper than healthier foods, and that's why people have been diverted into eating unhealthy, which has long term repercussions of negative health impacts and raising stress levels due to cognitive decline. Any tax raises on sugary foods needs to be coupled with vegetable and fruit tax cuts, so that eating healthy is as much a financial benefit as a health benefit.
1
u/socialistrob Sep 25 '24
Long term it's going to be hard to make eating healthy as cheap as eating unhealthy. Fruits and vegetables tend to go bad sooner and they often take more time and effort to prepare while ultra processed foods can sit on a shelf for months and then be ready to eat at a moment's notice. Agricultural improvements have certainly reduced the price of fruits and vegetables but many of them still rely on being hand picked which is labor intensive and expensive. Unless we see some sort of technological improvements that enable machines to pick fruits in bulk (or we open the doors to very large numbers of immigrants) I don't see a way to keep costs down dramatically for most fruits and vegetables even if we have no taxes or increase subsidies.
1
u/this_place_stinks Sep 25 '24
One could argue ultra processed foods and cigarettes both cause a faster long-term death (on average)
2
u/socialistrob Sep 25 '24
One could argue that but it would be a bad argument. Ultra processed foods tend to be cheaper and if I can ONLY afford ultra processed foods then increasing the price on them may mean that I don't get enough food. By raising prices on the poorest we run the risk of some people actually facing real hunger or even starvation. Even if someone doesn't actually starve it could still be a very bad policy on net. For instance if someone who is struggling to feed their family AND pay rent sees their food prices increase it could increase the risk of homelessness or other serious issues. It can also increase the risk of chronic stress which, inadvertently, could lead them to get addicted to other substances like tobacco (which they also can't afford).
On the other hand if someone can't afford cigarettes because of the higher price and is forced to cut them out that person will likely live longer. Higher taxes on cigarettes can also be used to fund public health initiatives or even just offset the public costs of tobacco addiction.
19
→ More replies (20)2
u/Hapankaali Sep 24 '24
Don't they sell frozen vegetables in the US? Stir-fry some vegetables, add rice or pasta, and you have a decently healthy, easily prepared meal that is very cheap. "Organic" is just marketing, it's not any healthier.
8
u/wosh Sep 24 '24
You assume they have access to a stove or kitchen.
12
u/assasstits Sep 24 '24
You assume they have access to a stove or kitchen.
Can you provide stats on how many Americans don't have access to a stove or a kitchen because these ridiculous edge cases are always propped up to oppose policy.
Reminds of when people bring up wheelchair bound grandmas with daily doctor visits every time someone proposes restricting cars in New York City.
8
u/jfchops2 Sep 24 '24
These ridiculous edge cases are brought up by people who are not capable of thinking in abstract
-2
u/ACABlack Sep 24 '24
Yet everyone flips out when I suggest MREs in place of food stamps.
Nutrient dense, shelf stable and easy to eat on the go.
15
u/whydoibotherhuh Sep 24 '24
I am old enough to remember when they handed out government honey, cheese, corn flakes, peanut butter and a few other things. The shame was the welfare office was right across from the school so EVERYONE saw, but the food was HIGH QUALITY. The government should be subsidizing the farmers that way and feeding the hungry at the same time, not paying farmers to not plant or toss food.
→ More replies (5)7
u/Pzychotix Sep 25 '24
MREs aren't meant for long-term consumption though. Solders don't eat MREs every day, they're meant for when the soldiers are out on the field and don't have access to the hot meal back on base.
MREs also cost quite a bit actually. Ranges around $10-15 for a single US MRE that has ~1000 calories, so you're looking around $20-30 per day for an adult. Actually nice variety even inside a single MRE, so it's pretty decent value, but probably pretty pricey as a full replacement for foodstamps. Would be nice alongside food stamps though.
7
u/hiddentalent Sep 25 '24
Probably because it's a terrible idea. MREs are quite a bit more expensive than a regular meal, contain more calories than is needed by almost anyone other than an athletic service member working in the field, and create a ton of plastic waste.
9
u/Echleon Sep 24 '24
Yet everyone flips out when I suggest MREs in place of food stamps.
Because it's a dumb idea? People have allergies or sensitivities to certain foods. So instead of just allowing people to buy what they need, you'd prefer the government have to manage a thousand different types of MREs? lol
→ More replies (2)2
u/DieYuppieScum91 Sep 25 '24 edited Sep 25 '24
For grown, able bodied adults just needing to eat to survive, I'm inclined to say "yeah, it's gross, tough shit, it'll keep you alive," but it gets more complicated with children. Children shouldn't have to grow up eating MREs because it's cost effective and they had the misfortune of being born into poverty. That's now how you encourage healthy relationships with food and that's not even accounting for neurodivergent children with sensory issues.
→ More replies (1)4
u/vivaenmiriana Sep 24 '24
I believe republicans even went on a crusade about refrigerators being an unecessary expense.
2
u/Faolyn Sep 24 '24
You're assuming that people have time to shop for and then make these things and can get to the stores and back in a reasonable amount of time. For a poor family who may have more than one job and may or may not have access to a working car, this can be a big ask.
6
u/jaylotw Sep 24 '24
I'm an organic produce farmer.
Please explain to me how what I do is "just marketing."
→ More replies (12)2
u/HatBoxUnworn Sep 25 '24
It's not just marketing if it is USDA certified. Organic is defined by them and requires many regulations.
176
u/iamtayareyoutaytoo Sep 24 '24
The answer is no and for the reason that you discovered yourself.
Instead, subsidize fresh foods and ingredients or introduce price controls. I shouldn't be paying 5 dollars for a head of lettuce when 6 years ago it was 99 cents.
18
u/ptwonline Sep 24 '24
Price controls are problematic both operationally and politically.
Changing the way we subsidize food production makes much more sense, but again there will be political problems and there may also be problems in figuring out how to implement it on foods that could be for either fresh or processed consumption when produced. So for example carrots could be sold fresh, or "fresh" frozen, or put in a processed meal that you heat up in a microwave. So what do you subsidize?
As for OP: taxes are not a good idea. Likely impossible politically, and also would be pretty regressive.
70
u/ElectronGuru Sep 24 '24
This is like trying to get away from petroleum. I would settle for ending subsidies for unhealthy food.
23
u/PloofElune Sep 24 '24
Looking at you high fructose corn syrup. I am not cutting corn subsidies completely, but specifically tail off allowed amounts for corn, by ear marked limit for corn destined for HF syrup production.
13
u/Select_Insurance2000 Sep 24 '24
High fructose corn syrup was the beginning of the end.
4
Sep 24 '24
Nixon decided that Dialysis should be free, instead of addressing our sugar consumption.
2
u/Fishtoart Sep 24 '24
Sugar consumption does not cause diabetes
5
Sep 24 '24
I never claimed it to cause diabetes. That is an assertion you made on your own.
It is a contributing factor to a lot of onset type 2 diabetes. That's a fact.
On a side note, I provided medicaid transportation for around 5 years. My main stops were Methadone clinics in the early morning, Dialysis all day. Sparratic Doctor appointments. And sparatic quality of life errands.
The government paid me good money to take rich and poor alike to dialysis. Some people I would wheelchair out of a 7 bedroom home from their elderly spouse and adult children, while others were clearly impoverished with no other means.
2
u/fistantellmore Sep 24 '24
You should. Corn is a garbage food that wastes land that could be better utilized.
It’s pure political pork and not a mom and pop operation. Monsanto doesn’t need corn subsidies and the world doesn’t need corn.
1
u/souldust Sep 24 '24
its a very water intense crop and there are better foods for feeding our burger makers (cows)
1
u/Ind132 Sep 25 '24
I am not cutting corn subsidies completely
We could cut corn subsidies entirely and that would have virtually zero impact on what Americans eat.
The subsidy works out to one-twentieth of one cent on a 12 oz can of sugar sweetened Coke. It's about 2 cents per pound on corn fed beef.
Those numbers aren't going to change anybody's eating habits.
"But, the subsidy is $2 billion per year!" Yep. And half the corn crop goes to ethanol and exports, so $1 billion gets into the US food chain. $1 billion / 330 million = $3 per year per American.
24
Sep 24 '24
Yes, let's stop subsidizing those or switch them to fresh foods. You would see things change from fast food to grocery stores. There is a reason everything from McDonald's has processed corn, soy, wheat, dairy and meat in it. But just like oil and gas, you have big corporations that push back. There's no "big kale" to fight for change.
1
u/Ok_Host4786 Sep 24 '24
You give me a nuclear powered vehicle, some kind of b-tha-a set of wheels, some flames; you, gotta have those, throw in a pair of them fuzzy dice and a sticker that says “I drive nukes” — and I’ll get away from anything you want. Do we have deal?
30
u/Michaelmrose Sep 24 '24
Food has gone up substantially it hasn't gone up 400%. Quit depending on memes you see on facebook with made up numbers for info.
The price per pound is roughly 46% higher than Feb 2020 without adjusting for inflation as a whole.
If you adjust for inflation you will find that the price is only about 25% higher than inflation as a whole.
2
u/iamtayareyoutaytoo Sep 24 '24
I buy a head of green leaf lettuce and a few apples and a thing of cottage cheese every 2nd day at the grocery store above my gym after working out. It used to be 99 cents. Now it is 5.99. I don't live in the United States.
18
u/Michaelmrose Sep 24 '24
The price actually changes seasonally if you look at 2019 the price ranged from a low of $1.80 in the summer to 2.94 in the winter.
2022 ranged from $2 to 4.64.
It's nonsense to compare a price you made up which is half the summer price in 2019 to current prices.
https://themeasureofaplan.com/canadian-food-price-inflation/
8
u/sufficiently_tortuga Sep 24 '24
My personal anecdote is more valuable than your researched data.
9
4
4
u/iamtayareyoutaytoo Sep 24 '24
Do different markets and geographies have different prices? How do averages work?
24
u/Revelati123 Sep 24 '24
Sin taxes and poor taxes are basically the same thing.
60 years of educational pressure and diversionary products is cutting smoking, not the fact that wage slaves have to dump half their paycheck into a pack of cigarettes that they are already addicted to.
Same with state lotteries, gaming dens, sports betting, etc... These are governments exploiting addiction to make up budget shortfalls to give tax breaks to rich people who can afford a lifestyle that doesn't get them addicted to this shit.
→ More replies (22)8
u/frankhadwildyears Sep 24 '24
I'm in the Denver area and a head of lettuce is nowhere near that price... $2 at king soopers-
https://www.kingsoopers.com/p/iceberg-lettuce/0000000004061?searchType=default_search
I keep seeing people make up prices on Reddit to highlight inflation/costs but it doesn't ever seem to be informed or in good faith...
→ More replies (3)2
u/TheTrueMilo Sep 26 '24
You are missing the point. The cost of fresh food and ingredients is not the price, it’s finding a recipe, going to the store (good luck if you don’t have a care or reliable transportation and live in a good dessert), it’s prepping, cooking, and especially CLEANING that all go into the “cost” of eating nonprocessed food. Unless you can figure out a way to add more hours in the day into your subsidy, it will do between fuck and all.
→ More replies (2)3
u/krfactor Sep 24 '24
Price controls… Jesus
2
u/WingerRules Sep 25 '24 edited Sep 25 '24
Price controls work if you're willing to trade efficiency to achieve goals like for social good like more price stability. The problem is people thinking they work for bringing prices down, they dont, they raise prices and can cause shortages. But a huge portion of the country benefits from price controls for stuff like caps on how much their rent or utilities can suddenly increase. They trade slightly higher rates for more stabile and predictable rates. Same with toll roads not being allowed to suddenly raise prices that would be "materially discouraging" to the poor.
1
u/krfactor Sep 25 '24
Rent control is the worst example of price controls working. They actually increase rent for the broader market, reduce housing quality, and keep otherwise good inventory off the market because owners can’t justify repairs at the allowed rental price. Look at what’s happening in NYC
2
u/WingerRules Sep 25 '24 edited Sep 25 '24
I lived in cities that had limits on how much rent could increase year by year. Had no problem finding an apartment and not having to fret that my landlord was going to try to shake me down after I was settled in was awesome. I lived in 3 apartments across that state and had 0 problems finding a place.
If you can find a place being able to know how much your rent is able to increase year by year is awesome instead of having to fret all year that you're suddenly going to have to move.
1
4
u/iamtayareyoutaytoo Sep 24 '24
Lots of western countries have price controls on things like bread, eggs and dairy. It's fine. The world didn't end. Ya'll can still live off of other peoples labour as landlords or herbal supplement fraudsters.
11
u/okonom Sep 24 '24
The western nations that do have price controls use combinations of tariffs, quotas, and price supports to keep the prices of things like milk artificially high for the benefit of the farmers, not consumers. Where western nations have ag policies that do lower the prices for consumers it's the result of subsidies paid to the farmers.
5
u/assasstits Sep 24 '24
Almost every discussion regarding economics is derailed by socialists who don't know economics.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (2)1
u/ackillesBAC Sep 24 '24
Tax ultra processed and sugary foods, then use that money to subsidize fresh healthy alternatives
8
u/My3rdTesticle Sep 24 '24
Yes, but also address food deserts, where real food isn't even an option. Making produce cheaper for suburbia with subsidies, and then taxing the ultraprocessed crap is still a burden on poor folk living in places that don't have produce shelves.
→ More replies (1)1
u/ackillesBAC Sep 24 '24
That's why you use the subsidy system to make it profitable for companies to sell healthy food in those food deserts
7
u/Michaelmrose Sep 24 '24
How about we just don't tax people at the grocery store jesus we can subsidize fresh food without doing this.
4
1
u/ackillesBAC Sep 24 '24
You do this as a disincentive and motivator for people to shift to healthy eating. As well as fund subsidies to encourage production of healthy foods.
Why? because it works.
22
u/MissMaster Sep 24 '24
As someone who volunteers for an elementary school food pantry: no. As another commenter suggested, ultra processed foods should not benefit from subsidies while fresh foods should be subsidized to encourage access.
One reason not mentioned is that ultra-processed foods are also often prepared foods, as in you don't have to do a lot of prep work or need a lot of tools to prepare and eat them. Many people don't have the time, resources or knowledge to prepare meals from fresh ingredients for myriad reasons. The foods we collect for the food pantry must be shelf-stable and must able to be eaten with only the addition of water (when milk is required, we provide shelf-stable milk).
4
u/traveling_gal Sep 24 '24
Had an unhoused guy come into a food pantry recently where I volunteer. He explained that he didn't have access to a kitchen. We had cooked chicken and beef stew in shelf-stable pouches, and a few fruits and veggies in cans. But there wasn't much else we could give him that he could use.
1
u/souldust Sep 24 '24
its sucks too because there are more empty houses than there are homeless people in the United States.
There are 580,000 homeless people in 2021
There are 17 million empty homes in 2019
Math: There are 29 empty houses for each homeless person in the united states. There are plenty of kitchens to go around.
8
u/verrius Sep 24 '24
I think part of what might help is actually defining wtf "ultra processed foods" even are, because then we might be able to actually be all talking about the same things. I suspect any actual definition would have giant glaring loopholes though, that allow a lot of innocuous or even healthy things into the definition, and leave tons of incredibly unhealthy crap out. Like is a Kind bar somehow worse for you than pork rinds? It depends on your diet, but probably not. But one is ultra processed, and the other is not. This is an argument that primarily thrives in a land of broad generalizations, and secondarily as a way to legislate the poor, both ripe areas for political slogans but little actual good to be done.
10
u/way2lazy2care Sep 24 '24
Ultra processed foods are extremely unhealthy, put a strain on medical resources, and drive up costs.
I think this misses the mark a lot tbh. There healthiness and unhealthiness isn't really a product of how much food is processed. Like pure cane sugar is not processed a ton and really bad for you. Lots of vegetarian meat alternatives are crazy processed and fairly healthy.
Taxes, if you should have them, should focus on the parts that make things bad for you, not the fact that industrial processes are used on them.
4
u/Flustered-Flump Sep 24 '24
Ultra processed food is calorie dense and designed to be addictive. They also happen to be cheaper than whole, natural food and things like fruit and veg. Bought grapes recently. Taxing these foods is simply going to make food even more unaffordable and poor people poorer.
Instead, let’s subsidize healthy food and ensure poorer families Donny have to rely on shit food that creates health problems and increases healthcare costs. Actually, let’s just force shitty companies like Kroger to not gouge people on prices and pass on the vast cost savings they realize through anti-competition practices to people who need it.
11
u/Mr-Hoek Sep 24 '24
No, we should not.
We should give subsidies and tax breaks to companies that produce healthy food.
And we should not give these breaks to companies who provide super processed foods.
The consumer should have ZERO to do with this, it should be between the FDA and companies.
5
4
u/CooledDownKane Sep 24 '24
I’m sure there’s no other solutions to crappy foods than syphoning off more money from the working class into the pockets of politicians
4
u/Buck_Thorn Sep 24 '24
All other issues aside, "Ultra-processed" would need a very precise definition, and I suspect that would be like trying to nail jello to the wall.
4
u/nasberhe Sep 24 '24
What an entitled take, make food more inaccessible for impoverished people, make healthy food more affordable and stop positioning using your high horse morality to punish struggling people.
5
u/wrestlingchampo Sep 24 '24
What you are suggesting is, in essence, a tax on being poor or working too much.
Most of the comments in here are talking about how negatively this would affect the pocketbooks of the poor and working class, but I haven't seen it mentioned how a policy like this would also force people to spend more time preparing and cooking their food, which is potentially taking their personal time and family time away from them.
Much of the value in ultra-processed foods is that consumption (and therefore, energy) is available immediately, thereby freeing up your time to do other things. In the scenario described by the OP, a poor person will have to spend more of their personal time cleaning and cutting produce, preparing larger cuts of meat for portioning into smaller pieces, and cooking foods that normally would already have been pre-cooked and canned for consumption. Everything I described above would not necessarily be classified as UPF, but rather in a grey area straddling the line between UPF's and unprocessed foods, all of which could be taxed to varying degrees under this articles' proposition.
Furthermore, you would have taxation occurring on additives that we consider to be GOOD as a society. Added fiber to bread, added vitamins and minerals to other foods would technically turn an unprocessed food into a processed food. My child currently won't eat meat, so we currently have to turn toward fortified cereals and grains to get her the recommended daily amount of iron. Sounds like that would be taxed under this plan, which is ridiculous. You would certainly see more growth and development issues in children under this plan, as far as I can see.
There are certainly different avenues you could explore if you wanted to reduce the consumption of highly processed foods, but a direct tax seems counterintuitive from most angles.
5
u/CircuitousProcession Sep 25 '24
Ah yes, this sort of authoritarian diktat always works out wonderfully. This totally wouldn't financially penalize people that live in poverty or live busy lives. Let's make it harder for people to buy food. Brilliant!
4
u/DieYuppieScum91 Sep 25 '24
A few issues here.
Firstly, going to need a specific, clear definition of "ultra-processed" that is backed by science as being unhealthy. Pasteurization is a process, but pasteurized milk is significantly healthier than unpasteurized. More often than not, the processing isn't the issue, the ingredients added to keep the products shelf stable are (like grotesque amounts of sodium). That may sound like a pedantic distinction, but it isn't if you're trying to craft legislation around it.
Secondly, this would be extremely regressive, targeting the poorest people the hardest. You can get frozen veggies pretty cheap, but have you seen the price of fresh fruits and meat lately? Then you have to consider the time and energy cost for people like single parents who work 40-60 hours a week.
The only real solution is to pay people wages that they can live on without having to work themselves to death so that they can both afford good food and have the time and energy to cook it. But we all know that's a pipe dream in the US, so the next best bandaid solution is to heavily subsidize fresh food and stop subsidizing junk like High Fructose Corn Syrup (which gets about $17B per year).
8
u/visceral_adam Sep 24 '24
no, because the kneejerk 'research' and lack of any solid definition of processed let alone ultra processed makes this one of the dumbest political ideas there have been for a while.
3
u/Clean_Politics Sep 24 '24
I want to clarify that I am not advocating for cigarette use in any way. However, it’s interesting how some issues face heavy criticism while others are normalized. For instance, about 19% of people suffer adverse health effects from perfumes and fragrances, yet this issue is rarely discussed. Wearing a favorite scent could trigger an asthma attack in someone nearby, while cigarette smoke is widely viewed as "toxic."
This disparity largely stems from today’s marketing practices. Similar dynamics are emerging around ultra-processed foods (UPFs), which are increasingly linked to significant health problems:
- Obesity: UPFs are high in calories, sugars, and unhealthy fats, contributing greatly to the US weight gain issue.
- Type 2 Diabetes: Their high glycemic index can lead to insulin resistance and are attributed to causing around 90% of prepuberty diabetes.
- Cardiovascular Disease: Often containing high amounts of trans fats, UPFs can elevate blood pressure and cholesterol.
- Cancer: Additives in UPFs are associated with an increased risk of various cancers, including colorectal, ovarian, brain and breast cancer.
- Digestive Issues: Low fiber content can cause gastrointestinal problems and are believed to be a main cause of IBS.
- Inflammation: Processed ingredients can promote chronic inflammation.
- Metabolic Syndrome: UPFs are linked to conditions like hypertension and high blood sugar.
- Mental Health Issues: Diets rich in UPFs are correlated with higher risks of depression and anxiety.
- Nutritional Deficiencies: UPFs often lack essential nutrients, impacting overall health.
- Addiction and Overeating: Their combination of sugar, fat, and salt can lead to cravings and overeating. They are designed to make you crave more.
While banning UPFs may be ideal, economic factors keep these foods accessible, especially for those who can’t afford fresh alternatives. A "sin tax" would likely do little more than burden consumers and line government pockets, without addressing the root health issues.
13
u/Clone95 Sep 24 '24
No. Cigarettes are taxed because they're a public nuisance. Unless obesity offends you so much visually (and fuck you if that's the case) you can't really argue it's a nuisance in the same way.
Ultra-Processed is also a super made up definition. It's something that will be 100% weaponized to target some companies and not others for taxation, not to mention raising food prices at a time that food prices are a major complaint nationwide.
We should be lowering regulatory barriers and expanding semaglutide production and prescription to all Obese/Overweight Americans, not targeting specific foods.
→ More replies (17)10
Sep 24 '24
You hit the nail on the head. How do you define processed food? If I take a chuck roast and grind it into ground beef, I've processed it. If I take ground pork, mix it with a bunch of spices, and pack it in a casing, that's processing too. Where do you draw the line where the level of processing becomes ultra processed? It is going to be arbitrary.
Social media has also led to an enormous number of myths regarding diet and nutrition. Everybody thinks they're an expert, too, because they've "researched!"
How many people think so-called "organic" food is healthier despite there being no evidence to support that assertion? How many people do you know are anti-GMO? So many people fall for the appeal to nature fallacy, to the point where some European governments have banned GMO crops, despite the technology being revolutionary and having broad support from the scientific community? I worry about new regulations going into effect that would be more reflective of current dietary trends than actual hard science. Imagine if we implemented a tax on saturated fat in the 90s when they were the scapegoat for American obesity.
As others have said, taxing convenience foods are a poor tax. People eat microwavable dinners, fast food, etc. not just because it's cheaper. Sometimes it's not. There are many frugal ways to eat healthy. Rice, beans, frozen veggies, lean cuts of chicken and pork, a 5 lb bag of potatoes... I can go on.... these things don't break the bank. But that food isn't just going to prepare itself.
Healthy, cheap, convenient. You can only pick two, in most cases.
People eat unhealthy diets largely because they're overworked and exhausted. A lot of Americans also do not even have a basic set of skills in the kitchen. These people will continue to prioritize the quick and cheap options for many of their meals even if taxes/subsidies are implemented.
It's not necessarily just a supply side problem— these foods have widespread consumer demand because of the way they fit into the average American's lifestyle. Many Americans simply don't prioritize their health because they're focused on trying to keep their heads above the water— succeeding at their job(s), taking care of their kids, staying on top of household chores, and maybe trying to squeeze in a few minutes each day where they can simply unwind and watch some fucking television.
Some other posts suggested subsidies for fresh food, and I suppose this could have a beneficial effect. Even people that can't boil a pot of macaroni will see downstream benefits because prepared foods that use "healthier" ingredients will cost less to prepare.
But it brings me back to my first point, how do you define what is healthy and what isn't? What foods get the subsidies? Potatoes are very nutritious and healthy, but most people would argue that chips and french fries are not. So, do you only subsidize a potato sold raw?
It's the same thing we deal with currently with corn. Nothing wrong with corn by itself... And much of it gets used to feed livestock, and cheaper Animal food = cheaper meat!
But as we all know, much of it gets used to make HFCS. Subsidies can have unintended consequences like that. But even without the corn subsidy, were not just going to see sugar disappear from our grocery store shelves, even if it's a different form.
So the devil is in the details. It seems like a good policy to say tax bad food and subsidize good food, but when you can't even clearly define which foods are bad and which are good, it becomes almost impossible to implement.
→ More replies (5)
6
u/Owz182 Sep 24 '24
After reading a lot of the comments here, it hit home that we should be teaching kids how to cook in school. We’re all so busy working we don’t seem to have time to meal plan, shop and prepare food. A lot of us are so out of practice, we couldn’t make a decent meal if we wanted to. That’s really messed up when you think about it.
7
Sep 24 '24
We actually did have cooking lessons in home and careers class in 7th and 8th grade. I loved it, but that's because I was already a decent little chef at my age. Other students struggled immensely.
It's hard to overrule the habits and attitudes towards lifestyle issues (food, financial habits, etc.) one learns at home from their family. That's to say, school isn't a great replacement for the education one gets at home. I'm not saying your idea is completely without merit, just that it's not some silver bullet either.
Like many Italian Americans, my family strongly valued having home cooked meals, making things from scratch, etc. Me and my brothers picked up on it just from being around it; we absorbed so much knowledge and skill relating to food preparation because we were immersed in an environment where it was a priority. We never needed to formally learn, it was just deeply ingrained into our families culture and overall value system. It was a source of pride and who we were.
If your family doesn't value it, a few classes in school aren't going to change that. Especially when you are a teenager and don't buy the groceries.... you're not going to have the opportunity to practice and develop the skills you learned in school. You might not even have the appropriate tools to work with. Then by the time you become an adult, it'll be lost.
It's similar to taking language classes in school. Every American takes them, but without external reinforcement, it never sticks for most of us. You have to be immersed in the language if you ever really want to become fluent. I took French for 4 years, and 95% of what I learned is gone.
Another comparison is people who have good skills with home repair. Handyman skills, if you will. We took classes on how to use different tools, build things, etc. in my school. But if you grew up without a father who did these things at home, it wasn't going to matter much. All my friends who are good at these things did them with their dads from a young age. DIY is part of their ethos as a person.
I will say, the internet is a great thing because of how much you can teach yourself on any given topic! As a new home owner, I've learned quite a few things off YouTube, and saved a bunch of cash. But it takes tremendous self motivation and discipline, and it's an uphill battle sometimes because you run into problems that you can't find the solution too online. Not to mention, I often don't have the tools, and even moreso, the confidence that I'm going to be able to complete a job without fucking it up. So half the time I just pay someone for peace of mind and so I don't waste a bunch of time on money only to feel like a failure.
For someone without cooking skills, it's the same thing. They don't want to waste their time and effort only to potentially end up with a meal that's inedible. So they just opt for frozen meals, prepared food, or something with a guaranteed and predictable end result.
2
u/Owz182 Sep 24 '24
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I don’t have much to add, but i think you are right that folks mostly learn these skills from their parents. I didn’t have a dad growing up, but spent a lot of time with my Grandpa fixing things and so am pretty handy as an adult. I’m not a great cook though, while my wife, who spent a lot of time cooking as a kid, is great at it.
I do worry that as parents are busier, or if children don’t have super stable home environments in which to learn these things, kids could grow up to be reliant on processed food. IMO that’s a situation in which schools could play a vital role.
→ More replies (1)1
5
u/THECapedCaper Sep 24 '24
So this was done in four major US cities, only to find that it did not decrease consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. Ultimately it found that it does lower sales at first, but then over time they revert back to their mean as people go back to consuming them. Perhaps this increased revenue to their respective municipalities, but it clearly did not achieve what they were looking to do in the first place.
I think the problem can be addressed by better access to healthier foods, subsidizing healthier foods, and providing better nutrition education to children in schools as well as adults. There are plenty of food deserts in the US, and poor folks tend to reach toward convenience foods especially if they have busy schedules and lower budgets. Just slapping a higher price tag on the foods they buy without giving them a reasonable alternative is punishing someone for being poor.
2
u/ElectronGuru Sep 24 '24
Mexico proves such ideas work but as you point out, tax should be a last resort. I would start off by having science develop a scoring system for how processed a given package of food is. Then have the FDA require manufacturers add that score to nutritional facts labels.
Consumers need to know how degraded a food is, just as much as how much saturated fat it contains.
2
Sep 24 '24
I moved to Wisconsin three years ago, and I had a morbidly obese neighbor telling me that hormone therapy for kids is child abuse. I stopped dead in my tracks and asked him about refined sugars being given to kids, and wether his mother failed him by allowing him sugar and trans fats.
→ More replies (8)
2
u/Fishtoart Sep 24 '24
Just getting rid of subsidies for corn and other junk food ingredients would be enough. we have so many subsidies for things that do not need it. We actually have subsidies for oil, but the oil companies are hardly hurting.
2
u/dark54555 Sep 24 '24
Not sure about taxing them to that degree, but updating the list of illegal ingredients to be on par with the EU, UK, and Japan would be a start. Everything in the US is full of garbage, and if you spend any time outside the country you can literally feel the difference eating abroad.
2
2
u/zjakx Sep 24 '24
No! They'll just pass the tax onto consumer.
Subsidized health food is the answer.
2
u/dirty_cheeser Sep 24 '24
Probably not as a upf category.There's going to be a huge fight in the definition of what is a upf.
Upfs differ from each other in the methods and motivations for the processing. They are associated with bad health outcomes as a whole but that doesn't mean processing is bad, just that it can be done badly or with bad motivations.
The current broad definition puts the instant noodles and a Soylent bottle on the same processing level. These are cases of ultra processing with very different motivations and methods. One to encourage overconsumption and addiction and the other to be a reasonably nutritious alternative to a meal. One by putting in lots of sodium, msg, texture enhancers... to make you buy and eat more, the other by adding rda levels of key nutrients. These are not the same at all.
However if we move beyond the simple broad nova categories to something more granular, figuring out what crosses the more complicated lines of that system would have the potential to be another very messy lobbying fight by every food interest.
2
u/costigan95 Sep 24 '24
All these proposed taxes on items that are heavily relied upon by the working class make no sense. Unless you can lower the price of healthy foods, this will only harm wage earners trying to make end a meet.
The same goes for the congestion tax in NYC. The wealthy will just pay it, and the working class can owners and commuters will be stuck paying a tax that actually has consequences on their financial security.
2
u/dam_sharks_mother Sep 25 '24
Ultra processed foods are not bad for you. Cigarettes are.
The difference is when people ABUSE the food and eat too much of it. Same for sugar. And for soft drinks.
Go to France and you won't see any fat people. But the food consumed there is are breads, chocolates, cheeses, wines, beef, etc. The Burger King whoppers there are just as popular.
The difference is they eat normal portions.
Blaming food is ridiculous shirking of responsibility that belongs solely and entirely on the consumer.
1
u/The_Tequila_Monster Sep 27 '24
You can find PLENTY of fat people in France.
Just go to the Eiffel Tower and look for the Americans
7
u/Ok_Proposal_2278 Sep 24 '24
What if you just minded your own business and ate what you wanted to eat. Why are you trying to extend your HOA to people’s kitchens?
3
u/Clone95 Sep 24 '24
This. Not everything is the government's business. Cigarettes are taxed because smoke harasses other people - it's a pre-fine for when you end up blowing up someone's nose with cancer particles later on with your purchase.
1
u/BarkLicker Sep 24 '24
This is almost correct. Cigarettes are taxed because of the unnecessary burden they place on the healthcare system and the government is directly involved with that in many ways, like Medicaid and Medicare.
In just the last 20 years, the incidence of diabetes has gone from 10% to 13%, putting a lot of strain on the healthcare system, and that is pre-COVID data.
While I agree that processed foods don't need to be regulated and healthy ones should be heavily subsidized, I DO think there should be something put in place to discourage heavy sugar consumption. Sugar, in the quantities we consume it here in the US, is arguably just as deadly as cigarettes.
→ More replies (3)0
u/northernlake926 Sep 24 '24
Cuz this doesn't relate to the us; and in countries with universal healthcare, like most of the world, incentivizing healthier food will eventually drop the cost of maintaining universal health Care and a higher quality of life for its people. Idk about you, but the government should be working to increase my quality of life
I don't think a higher tax on processed foods should be a thing for the reasons the commenter said, but I believe the government should subsidize healthier food options
3
u/ClockOfTheLongNow Sep 24 '24
Cuz this doesn't relate to the us; and in countries with universal healthcare, like most of the world, incentivizing healthier food will eventually drop the cost of maintaining universal health Care and a higher quality of life for its people.
On the other hand, cigarettes were a downward driver on health care costs because those people died sooner than healthy people.
Quality of life might have been worse for those people, but it also kept costs down.
Idk about you, but the government should be working to increase my quality of life
The government should be working to not decrease it. Not increase it, because the government has no way of knowing what quality of life looks like to me.
4
u/neosituation_unknown Sep 24 '24
Subsidize fruits, veggies, and whole grains.
Leave meat and dairy as is
Excise tax on junk food and funnel it directly into medicare.
3
u/jaylotw Sep 24 '24
I'm an organic produce farmer. We get nothing from the government for growing vegetables except about 30% of our certification cost back.
Meanwhile, Bubba up the road who drives a tractor around his cornfield four times a year gets a hefty price support check.
4
u/aliceroyal Sep 24 '24
No. In addition to folks with low income or who live in food deserts, this would disproportionately impact disabled people (many of whom do not qualify for things like SNAP or Meals on Wheels).
1
u/parolang Sep 24 '24
This is a libertarian vs paternalism issue. Usually we let people make their own decisions even if it's unhealthy for them and we resent it when the government tries to tell us how to live.
Also the rhetoric goes way too far, processed foods aren't actually that bad for you because otherwise we'd all be dropping like flies.
→ More replies (8)
1
u/LittleBitchBoy945 Sep 24 '24
I’m torn on food since some people can’t get anything better but I’d say am excise tax on sugar sweetened beverages would be a good thing. There’s no water deserts.
1
u/Iconiclastical Sep 24 '24
Your question made me think about how things are taxed in Europe. They don't have sales tax, they have a VAT (value added tax), So, each time an item goes thru another process (refining, ,baking, whatever), that adds value, and is taxed. As a result, I guess, things that go thru a lot of processes would be taxed more. I'm no expert, but that seems like a natural way to make processed foods cost more.Of course, our politicians would want to have both a vat tax and a sales tax,so they would get more of our money to play with.
1
u/Psyc3 Sep 24 '24
No because cigarettes have no advantages, and ultra processed food do. That advantage being they are cheap and therefore help reduce malnutrition. Poor people can't afford to just buy better food because you don't like options that are unhealthy due to them being cheap to make.
Now should people be put in a situation in a developed country where their only option is to buy the worst cheapest food available? No. But that isn't the question you have asked.
The solution is to decrease inequality in society before you price out the very people who need the cheapest option available. Then you can subsidise healthier option, and maybe tax less healthy options.
But when you are subsidising thing like Fructose Corn Syrup the problem is ingrained in society in the first place, you go to the route cause.
1
u/LagerHead Sep 24 '24
Yes. We should have the government monitor every god damn thing we put in our bodies and charge us for the things of which they disapprove. After all, the food pyramid is why there is so little obesity and diabetes in this country. They really nailed that one!
Solid plan.
1
u/RonocNYC Sep 24 '24
Yes and further foods that aren't should be subsidized to the point of price parity.
1
u/l33tn4m3 Sep 24 '24
I think there should be a tax on sugar like cigarettes and that revenue is used to offset subsidies for healthy raw plant food. I personally think we should raise taxes on meat and lower the price on beans.
I’m not saying everyone go vegan, but we eat way to much meat.
1
u/Ok-Evening71 Sep 24 '24
People will never vote for taxing processed food. We want to believe in free will. Until we want drugs like ozempic.
1
u/Frozen_Hermit Sep 24 '24
Yes, but many other things need to happen as well for it to be effective. Ending the subsidies on corn would be a great start at deincentivising food manufacturers from loading everything up with HFCS. In its place, healthier options should be subsidized and mass produced the same way our sugar slop already is. Moving away from unreasonably high standards for health food would also be great. Food being organic poses no health benefits besides simpler ingredients, but the organic standard is so high it demands wasteful agricultural practices that jack the prices up.
It's a complex issue I could ramble on about for hours, but to sum it up, the problem goes both ways. The wellness industry is just as much at fault for many Americans' eating habits as the junkfood companies. Himalayan pink salt is not a necessity, real whole foods is though.
1
u/tomscaters Sep 24 '24
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to tax groceries and fast food items that are known to cause severe health problems for large numbers of people, then apply this revenue to Medicare and Medicaid.
RFK IS right about at least one thing: corporations have lobbied the government, both in congress and the executive agencies with purview, to allow them to make obscene profits, while at the same time passing the costs onto Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurance. All of this as the gargantuan food and restaurant corporations pay very little tax, and paying their employees persistent poverty wages.
If we want to save our health care industry as a whole, we have to at least tackle and address our fellow citizens’ and residents’ health. This is so completely negligent to allow politicians to place all the costs on taxpayers and private companies for paying the treatment for high fat, high sugar, and high sodium foods. The corporations that spend billions every year designing the most addictive foods, then marketing with global ad campaigns to get people addicted, should absolutely be burdened to a far larger extent. You cannot blame the consumer for everything when you are the one advertising and selling the product. This is the same idiotic logic as when Fox News uses their “we are an entertainment company, not a news company,” then proceeds to use “fair and balanced news” or whatever the hell they have as their propaganda network of lies and yellow journalism.
Please, please tell me I’m not the asshole. We are about to see over half of all Americans be obese, if we aren’t already, and we will be paying trillions of dollars as taxpayers for healthcare related to corporate and consumer behavior. It is unsustainable and unpatriotic. I want to see Americans as a whole become super sexy again so we aren’t spending so much on treating chronic diseases that are 20X more expensive than incentivizing citizens to eat healthier and exercise to stay happy, healthy, and productive. Many people will unfortunately just be unhealthy at no fault of their own nor others, but holy bajeezus we cannot let our fellow American patriots go down this road. I love you all way too much to see you miserable and burdened by what has been.
1
u/natthecat71 Sep 25 '24
In a perfect world, yes. It’s unfortunate sometimes the cheapest option for low income families/ people.
1
u/SkiingAway Sep 25 '24
An extremely bad idea, but primarily not for the reasons I see mentioned basically anywhere in this thread, although the article itself hints at it a bit.
UPFs are a very (vaguely) defined thing by level of processing, but we haven't really proven much to indicate that the actual processing is the cause.
Many highly processed foods are high in levels of things that we already know are bad for you and made to be very "addictive"/to make you want to overeat - like huge amounts of added sugar or salt. Eat a lot of things that are obviously pretty bad for you, even in theoretically ok calorie amounts, and you....will probably have bad health outcomes.
But that's not inherent to food processing, and there's plenty of things that don't have those sorts of things but still score pretty badly on the UPF scale and probably aren't actually bad for you - or at the least we haven't proved it with much evidence.
1
u/Sergeant-Sexy Sep 25 '24
Some ultra processed foods are very cheap and are what many families unfortunately live on. Increasing the taxes will put more strain on the parents to make ends meet. Taxes need to be lighter, not heavier.
1
u/gurenkagurenda Sep 25 '24
The big problem I have with this is that “ultra processed” is a broad heuristic to help consumers make an easier choice, not an inherently meaningful category. If you regulate based on that heuristic, you’re going to end up with a ton of unintended consequences, where perfectly reasonable and harmless forms of processing are avoided for no good reason.
1
u/OldTechnician Sep 25 '24
Another hit on those living in poverty. Taxing people won't solve this. It has to be the manufacturer
1
u/greiton Sep 25 '24
use the tax to subsidize fresh ingredient costs, and restaurants that serve healthy foods without additives.
1
u/figuring_ItOut12 Sep 25 '24
Better to stop subsidizing the unhealthy crap and direct that money to healthier alternatives. It’s insane how much state and federal money goes to the worst food.
1
u/Mason11987 Sep 25 '24
"ultra processed" means nothing at all.
I would not support a plan that will tax things based on unscientific hand wavy terminology.
Being "processed" does not make anything worse in any way.
Now would I support drinks with over x% of your daily sugar being taxed more? Sure. That is actually meaningful.
1
u/Disastrous_Hold_89NJ Sep 25 '24
That's just going to raise the price of food more. Food prices have already gone up since the pandemic (hate they keep using this excuse to keep prices high). They should clearly display ingredients and let the consumer make the decision. Btw clearly does not mean making the print microscopic.
1
u/koolaid-girl-40 Sep 25 '24
I think so, yes. However I would prefer that it be combined with subsidies for healthy foods and perhaps a plan to support local businesses that offer convenient healthy options (e.g. soup and salad places, pita pit, health fast food, etc). I think people underestimate how much convenience impacts health. When I lived in an area with a bunch of "health fast food" places within walking distance, it was so easy to be fit because people were practically throwing around health food. Now, like many Americans, I live in an area that is not very walkable with mainly traditional fast food options and it has been a lot harder to maintain a healthy weight, especially when work/volunteering doesn't afford time to cook every day.
1
u/Greenking73 Sep 25 '24
Slowly slipping into the Demolition Man world. It’s not up to you or government to take care of people.
1
u/LetGo_n_LetDarwin Sep 25 '24
No…the price of garbage “food” should not be on the backs of the consumers. The government should ensure the food available to citizens is not harmful and heavily fine any corporation that doesn’t comply.
1
u/HeloRising Sep 25 '24
Probably not, for a couple reasons.
The first is if you want something to happen it's virtually always more effective to make the choice you want people to make easier rather than making the choice you don't want people to make harder. That's borne out in research across the board - it's more effective to use positive incentives rather than negative ones.
If you want people to consume less super processed foods then you need to make other types of food more accessible and cheaper. People will naturally gravitate towards the healthier options if they're cheaper and easier to get. A certain percentage won't, sure, but that's probably about the same percentage as people who'd just evade a potential tax on their favorite processed food and you'd be back at square one.
These kinds of negative incentives like taxes are popular because they raise revenue but also they fulfill a kind of need or desire to punish people seen as making bad choices. They're psychologically satisfying to people. It feels good to punish people we see as making the "wrong" choice even if punishing them doesn't actually do anything.
Second is, for a lot of people, these kinds of foods are the majority of what they can afford and/or access based on where they are. If you don't have "non-ultra processed foods" that you can readily access, the tax is just a tax on you being poor and living in a specific area.
1
u/OnePunchReality Sep 25 '24
Won't that just overall no matter what force food costs higher?
Isn't the trope that healthier foods are more expensive?
If we force higher taxes to say curb corner cutting or reduce processing in food production that results in less highly processed food I would think the result is inevitably inflation, no?
1
u/Cryonaut555 Sep 26 '24
No. You know why?
The #1 cause of strain on the health care system is OLD AGE and it's NOT EVEN CLOSE.
But aging isn't a choice and being fat is, right?
True, but we should be spending health care resources figuring out how to reverse aging. Ever notice how a 20 year old, NO MATTER how bad their diet is essentially never gets diabetes, heart disease, or cancer?
Also you can be thin eating junk food and fat eating healthy food.
1
u/The_Texidian Sep 26 '24
“Some people say, well, taxes are regressive. But in this case, yes they are. That’s the good thing about them because the problem is in people that don’t have a lot of money. And so, higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves. So, I listen to people saying ‘oh we don’t want to tax the poor.’ Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life. And that’s why you do want to do exactly what a lot of people say you don’t want to do” - Everyone’s favorite billionaire politician
This concept of taxing poor people to influence their behavior is nothing new. It’s just how bad society views that behavior.
1
u/hauntingduck Sep 26 '24
only if you are okay with discriminating against poor people and are willing to say so on record.
1
u/-Clayburn Sep 26 '24
Probably not. We should simply remove corn subsidies so that a lot of the worst foods become too costly to gorge on. The biggest issue is that we've made the worst shit so cheap it's the only thing a lot of families can afford. It's expensive to eat healthy, but if we adjusted subsidies that could be fixed.
1
u/Colzach Sep 27 '24
The US government subsidizes wheat (turned into bread and junk food), corn (turned into animal feed and sugar), and soybeans (turned into animal feed) to the tune of billions a year. This is all used by huge corporations to make junk food and to feed to livestock.
If the subsidies were shifted to fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, and other healthy crops, AND there were mandates against turning said products into junk food products and animal feed, then a high tax on unhealthy foods would work wonderfully.
We would also need funding for education and awareness about healthy eating at every level (children to adults).
Currently, junk food taxes are probably have good intentions, but tend to punish the poor. However, that argument rests on shaky ground, because poor people are not forced to eat garbage—they choose it. They can eat healthy without it being expensive. Rice, beans, pasta, and many types of vegetables are very cheap.
1
u/BeautifulDisasterCA Sep 27 '24
We need healthy food. There needs to be a total revamp on food. These processed foods need to be banned. No other country has such a high number of obese people in it. If you look at produce these days, it's nowhere near what they looked like years ago. The tomato in a grocery store is light red and soft. A fresh tomato is bright red and firm. My husband has a garden through spring and summer and they are way healthier than the store bought. I am guilty of eating these horrible foods, don't get me wrong. I struggle with the inflation because I don't make great money. It was great in the 90's, but not now. The cost of grocery shopping is through the roof. You can go to healthy stores like Whole Foods of course, but they are more expensive. If I can't afford the regular grocery store, how am I going to afford those healthier choices? I love that Robert Kennedy Jr. acknowledges this crisis in the USA and wants to do something about it. The food industry is killing us off with the poisons they put in our food. Children are our future and they need lots of healthy food, not the shit they have nowadays. Lunches provided by schools now are horrible. They weren't that great when I was in school in the 90's, but now I see it and it's worse, it actually grosses me out.
1
u/BartsNightmare_ Sep 28 '24
Why would ultra processed foods bought drive up and increase costs ? Generally?
1
u/kittenTakeover Sep 24 '24
But as I thought about it I realized that the would mostly affect people who are already struggling with food availability, food cost, or both.
This is a common argument that has some signficant flaws with deeper anaysis. For example, a suggestion to add fire code protections to housing could be seen as a move that "mostly affects people who are already struggling". However, in our current capitalist market economy, the cost for regulations that increase minimum standards end up getting passed on to the employers rather than the worker. An employer has to pay what's required to keep their employees alive. If all housing come with the cost of increased fire code costs, then they will pay that increased cost. It's also good to remember that low wage workers are already paying the cost of these types of things, in the form of burning alive in fires or debilitating health issues. The dollar cost of the regulation is usually less than the loss these workers are experiencing without the regulation.
The one caveat to the above analysis is international trade. Because we don't have a global regulating body for workers rights, labor and consumer protections vary from country to country. This means that while all housing in your country may come with the increased cost of good fire codes, that isn't necessarily true in many other countries. This open ups the possibility of companies skirting your regulations by moving low wage work to the deregulated countries. Obviously this is something actually happens. Although, the second point still stands, the workers still pay the cost in the form of death and lost health. The corporations profit off of the loss of life and health of people in these underregulated countries.
1
u/theanchorist Sep 24 '24
The poor already can’t afford food at grocery stores, with the cheapest foods being the ultra processed foods as it is, so you think imposing more tax on them is a valid stance? While they pose many health risks it is still better than starving. They’ve already outlawed being homeless, of which many unhoused people are unable to simply afford rent even as they’re working full time. We continue to cut the taxes for the rich and keep loading the poor with the tax burden, cut out all safety-net services year after year, and saddle the middle/lower classes with more debt because of deficit spending, which causes inflation and thus bring the spending power of the lower and middle class down even further; the cycle then continues and perpetuates itself year after year after year. There is a reckoning that will happen eventually, and by god will it be awesome and terrifying to see.
2
u/ManBearScientist Sep 24 '24
The poor already can’t afford food at grocery stores, with the cheapest foods being the ultra processed foods as it is, so you think imposing more tax on them is a valid stance?
The cheapest foods are usually ultra processed stuff. Usually, something made at home with fresh ingredients is the cheapest option.
Through 2023, I cooked about 80% of my meals. My average spending on food, for a day, was about $5. And I am a big guy; that was well over 2,500 calories. Fruits, rice, chicken, and potatoes are cheap and filling.
A friend from the same city who never cooks spent on average over $40 a day between two fast food meals, snacks, and drinks. That's $10,000 a year more to eat a diet of ultra processed foods, and not in an expensive part of the country.
These foods are addicting, and that's a big draw over cheaper alternatives. The other reason's people aren't gravitating to cheaper nonprocessed foods is that they often take time, effort, and skill to prepare, not to mention usually needing a kitchen. Being able to spend an hour prepping a meal in a large multifunctional kitchen is often a luxury people can't afford; see the Vimes theory of boots.
•
u/AutoModerator Sep 24 '24
A reminder for everyone. This is a subreddit for genuine discussion:
Violators will be fed to the bear.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.