Obama's "Fat Tax" has arrived.

[Fade]

Senate leaders are considering new federal taxes on soda and other sugary drinks to help pay for an overhaul of the nation's health-care system.

It would not include most diet beverages.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that adding a tax of three cents per 12-ounce serving to these types of sweetened drinks would generate $24 billion over the next four years. So far, lawmakers have not indicated how big a tax they are considering.

The beverage tax is just one of hundreds of ideas that lawmakers are weighing to finance the health-care plans.

 

[metalman]

Pepsi drinkers with their new Obama can logos will "feel the change".
:roflmao:

Americans consume about 24 billion cans of soda each year. So if Obama taxes each soda pop can at $83 each, he can raise $2 trillion dollars - which is the annual cost of his health-care proposals.

So the Soda tax will have to be expanded to a potato chip tax, Twinkie tax, bear claw tax, honey bun tax, doughnut tax ...

Woohoo! Speakeasies! Moonshine cream soda and root beer! Black-market cola! Mexican gangs bringing in the original Coca Cola made from cane sugar from across the border!

Seems I now have the perfect location for future direct marketing distribution opportunities.
Cash sales only.

 

[smithy]

It makes perfect sense to tax the top sugary foods:
1. Oranges
2. Potatoes
3. Bananas
4. Apples
...
....
1003. Coca-cola

 

[faethor]

It makes perfect sense to tax the top sugary foods:
1. Oranges
2. Potatoes
3. Bananas
4. Apples
...
....
1003. Coca-cola

Seems wrong to me.

Oranges are ~50 calories each. 1 gram of sugar has about 4 calories. If the orange was 100% sugar that's 13 grams of sugar.

A 12 oz can of coke is 140 calories and 39g of carbs. Or roughly three times the amount of sugar.

 

[redrumloa]

Seems wrong to me.

Oranges are ~50 calories each. 1 gram of sugar has about 4 calories. If the orange was 100% sugar that's 13 grams of sugar.

A 12 oz can of coke is 140 calories and 39g of carbs. Or roughly three times the amount of sugar.

Yes I have to agree with faethor here, in coke 39g carbs = 39g sugar. To make things worse it is not even real sugar, but high fructose corn syrup. Maybe smithy was joking to point out that natural foods have sugar to :?: Even still organic (non-processed) foods do NOT have the same effect on the body, like blood glucose levels.

All that said, a fat tax would be very a bad move for a country that is supposed to be the land of the free.

 

[cecilia]

Fat tax

"A fat tax is a tax or surcharge upon fattening food or fat people. Such penalties have been proposed to encourage more healthy eating and to finance the extra burden imposed by fat people in areas such as air travel and health care.

The concept was first introduced by Milton Merryweather and P. Franklin Alexander in the late seventies, but pioneered and brought to prominence in the early 1980s by Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., director of The Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. Brownell proposed that revenue from junk-food taxes be used to subsidize more healthful foods and fund nutrition campaigns. It is estimated that a national tax of 1 cent per 12-ounce soft drink would generate $1.5 billion annually, and a national tax of 1 cent per pound of candy, chips and other snack foods would generate revenues of up to $314 million."

one line made me laugh:

"The New York Times Op-Ed piece that proposed the "fat tax" elicited controversy and outrage nationwide. Author Kelly Brownell became the focal point of this controversy, especially from Rush Limbaugh, who spoke out adamantly against the tax and the general principle of governmental intrusion into food choices and a possible invasion of privacy."

I guess FATbaugh doesn't want to pay more for his big mac and OxyCotton :roflmao:

while I'm not a fan of gov intrustion, I don't drink soda, eat at fast food places, smoke or take drugs. I live quite the boring life :mrgreen:

 

[cecilia]

btw, the idea that diet soda isn't just as bad as regular soda just seems odd to me. it's got that fake sugar subsitute that may encourage cancer....

unless they use something like Quinoa or other natural sweetner, I'm staying away from it

 

[cecilia]

probably the best response to this issue.

"john bowman on 2009-05-12 21:16:32

The science is settled. High fructose corn syrup, HFCS, is an unnatural poison. We don't have to tax it, just eliminate the illegal sugar tariffs that prohibit manufacturers from using cheaper and healthier sugar.

Corn syrup is an expensive and nasty business involving very toxic chemicals. On top of that, it requires ridiculously expensive infrastructure. The product screws up our blood sugar, breaks our proteins, and is more likely than other forms of sugar too be stored as fat.

Consider these aspects of HFCS when the alternative is to squeeze sugar out of sugar cane in a giant roller. Alas, sugar cane doesn't grow well in the states so we need to crap on free trade and support our farmers with needless subsidies that also degrade the health of the nation.

I really don't understand why the insurance companies haven't figured it all out. Exercise and diet are the easiest ways to promote healthiness and reduce medical claims. Cheap blood work and a quick physical should be used to dictate insurance premiums. Are you a fatso who eats right and exercises regularly (read: rare occurrence)? Then tough luck, like the responsible 17 year old driver, you are screwed. If you constantly seek medical care, then like someone who has had lots of auto accidents, you probably should be paying a higher premium. IMO, this is a better alternative that having society collectively subsidize poor health, even if it infringes on your right to be a lazy, fat pig."

 

[smithy]

It makes perfect sense to tax the top sugary foods:
1. Oranges
2. Potatoes
3. Bananas
4. Apples
...
....
1003. Coca-cola

Seems wrong to me.

Oranges are ~50 calories each. 1 gram of sugar has about 4 calories. If the orange was 100% sugar that's 13 grams of sugar.

A 12 oz can of coke is 140 calories and 39g of carbs. Or roughly three times the amount of sugar.

Both freshly squeezed pure orange juice and Coca-cola have calories from more than 70% sugar. My point was, by the government's simplistic sugar attack then both should be equal. And that's not getting into super-high sugary foods (percentage-wise) like carrots.

Tackling a problem through the tax system is typical of politicians who've either ran out of ideas or are too lazy to tackle it properly. Diet is too complicated to be fixed by making one thing more expensive because one thing isn't the problem. Sugar isn't the problem. The problem is that most people don't understand food science.

 

[redrumloa]

The science is settled. High fructose corn syrup, HFCS, is an unnatural poison. We don't have to tax it, just eliminate the illegal sugar tariffs that prohibit manufacturers from using cheaper and healthier sugar.

Corn syrup is an expensive and nasty business involving very toxic chemicals. On top of that, it requires ridiculously expensive infrastructure. The product screws up our blood sugar, breaks our proteins, and is more likely than other forms of sugar too be stored as fat.

I agree with this part 100%. HFCS is poison in more than one way, I have been beating that drum for a long time. Just like cigarette companies have been putting additives in cigarettes for years that boost the addictiveness of their product, food and drink companies have been doing the exact same thing with HFCS. Why? It blocks the receptors that give you the full feeling, causing you to eat more, much more! The runaway obesity problem in the USA can be tied directly to the introduction of HFCS into food products. It is almost everywhere, nearly impossible to avoid for the average consumer. Pick up a pack of bologna in the store and look at the ingredients, chances are HFCS is in it. Why do you need a sweetener in meat? :x

Oh and sugar would be cheap enough to produce in the USA if it wasn't for the environmental wackos. Florida bought out land from sugar farmers at a premium, to make them stop producing sugar on the pretense of saving the everglades from runoff. As it is I can still buy a pound of sugar for about $1.

 

[faethor]

I agree with this part 100%. HFCS is poison in more than one way, I have been beating that drum for a long time. Just like cigarette companies have been putting additives in cigarettes for years that boost the addictiveness of their product, food and drink companies have been doing the exact same thing with HFCS. Why? It blocks the receptors that give you the full feeling, causing you to eat more, much more! The runaway obesity problem in the USA can be tied directly to the introduction of HFCS into food products. It is almost everywhere, nearly impossible to avoid for the average consumer. Pick up a pack of bologna in the store and look at the ingredients, chances are HFCS is in it. Why do you need a sweetener in meat? :x

Red this is #3. HFCS, the more I read the more I dislike it. What it does to the system is akin to a drug.

 

[Speelgoedmannetje]

All that said, a fat tax would be very a bad move for a country that is supposed to be the land of the free.

Well, apparently, those free do not have any problems with outlawing drugs.

Everything that we can consume is poisonous and addictive to a certain extent.

 

[Speelgoedmannetje]

while I'm not a fan of gov intrustion, I don't drink soda, eat at fast food places, smoke or take drugs. I live quite the boring life :mrgreen:

Well, except for eating fast food (which I think is uneatable)
I do the rest (considering drugs only marihuana).
But I don't do it much.