is a fat/sugar tax on the way?

hollypink

I heard this on todayfm news earlier:

http://www.todayfm.com/TodayFMNews/Latest-News.aspx

Safefood recommends a fat tax to help curb obesity A leading expert on childhood obesity says a tax on sugary and fatty foods would be a positive statement from the Government. Dr Cliodhna Foley-Nolan of Safefood has been speaking at the Oireachtas Health Committee this morning. She says one in five preschool children in Ireland are obese - and the issue is now one of child protection. Dr Foley-Nolan says a so-called fat tax isn't the only solution - but it would send a strong message

One in five preschool children in Ireland are obese :eek: That's truly horrifying. But is a fat/sugar tax the answer? From a purely selfish point of view, I don't want to see a fat tax because I eat a reasonable amount of high fat foods like nuts, butter, greek yoghurt, very dark chocolate, avocados, coconut oil. In order to implement a fat tax, wouldn't you have to do it on the basis of % fat (or saturated fat) so the aforementioned items would fall into the same category as fried food, chips, burgers, pizza and so on, wouldn't they?

banquet

hollypink wrote: »

I heard this on todayfm news earlier:

http://www.todayfm.com/TodayFMNews/Latest-News.aspx

Safefood recommends a fat tax to help curb obesity A leading expert on childhood obesity says a tax on sugary and fatty foods would be a positive statement from the Government. Dr Cliodhna Foley-Nolan of Safefood has been speaking at the Oireachtas Health Committee this morning. She says one in five preschool children in Ireland are obese - and the issue is now one of child protection. Dr Foley-Nolan says a so-called fat tax isn't the only solution - but it would send a strong message

One in five preschool children in Ireland are obese :eek: That's truly horrifying. But is a fat/sugar tax the answer? From a purely selfish point of view, I don't want to see a fat tax because I eat a reasonable amount of high fat foods like nuts, butter, greek yoghurt, very dark chocolate, avocados, coconut oil. In order to implement a fat tax, wouldn't you have to do it on the basis of % fat (or saturated fat) so the aforementioned items would fall into the same category as fried food, chips, burgers, pizza and so on, wouldn't they?

I think a lot of people would share your concern, particularly if safefood were in anyway involved in deciding what foods would be eligible for the tax. Have a look at the two safe food threads from last year. What an outfit!

LeinsterDub

Fat doesn't make people fat. A high(er) calorie tax would make more sense. For example lets set a standard for a yogurt at 150 cals per 100 ml and tax cals above the standard.

token56

It should not be about making it harder to eat bad foods, it should be about making it easier to eat healthy foods and education. So I think it would be better to subsidize healthier foods but that's not going to happen.

If some sort of "fat tax" were to be implemented you would hope the intake from it would be put back into education about healthy eating, something useful but again that's not likely either. Any revenue from it is going is towards paying for our over sized debt.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

As a dentist I would welcome a sugar tax, however from a obesity point of view its not cut and dried. A Balanced diet would have a certain percentage of protien, fats and sugars. How refined must a carbohydrate have to be to be a sugar? Is fruit taxed? Its a nightmare.

vard

What an absolute farce this will be. I can only hope common sense will prevail.

As someone who partakes in intense excercise 5 days per week, eats a largely healthy diet and maintains a low bodyfat %, why should I be punished for the poor choices of others?

When I have a high calorie/fat/sugar meal it is well deserved, and more importantly, it is OCCASIONAL.

Besides, how can such sweeping be made in regard to what is or isn't healthy. Because something is low calorie doesn't mean it's good for you; because something is high calorie/fat certainly doesn't mean it's bad.

No doubt we'd see the refined sugar ridden junk that is Kellogg's <ANYTHING> marketed towards clueless parents and fat children avoid these taxes. People are clueless; they don't know what's good for them. They consume too much and don't burn it off. That is why they're fat and that's why they'll stay fat.

rubadub

hollypink wrote: »

One in five preschool children in Ireland are obese :eek: That's truly horrifying.

I am always skeptical when I hear things like this.

This is all I can find with a quick search.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0620/pre-school-children-overweight-report.html

It found that 23% of children between one and four are above the recommended weight for their age.

So that does not appear like they did a BMI or body fat test. I have heard people in general are getting bigger, and kids developing sooner, if these "recommended weights" were established 50 years ago they could be out of date. i.e. a healthy 4year old might be expect to be the size of a 5 year old from 50 years ago.

We also need their definition of obese, many people picture a person who is so fat they are bed ridden when they hear it, and get very upset if they are deemed obese. If people see somebody who just falls into the obese category they will often comment like "no way he's obese, hes overweight, sure, but not obese". There are different categories of obese in some charts, like superobese or clinically obese.

If you saw one of these typical "1 in 5 obese children" you may not be particularly horrified.

hollypink wrote: »

so the aforementioned items would fall into the same category as fried food, chips, burgers, pizza and so on, wouldn't they?

Thats the problem, and a question I always pose in threads where people say 'junk food' should be taxed/banned/restricted -how do you define 'junk food'?

banquet

LeinsterDub wrote: »

Fat doesn't make people fat. A high(er) calorie tax would make more sense. For example lets set a standard for a yogurt at 150 cals per 100 ml and tax cals above the standard.

I agree that fat doesn't necessarily make people fat but I don't see how you arrive at your suggestion. If fat contains more calories than sugar, a natural yoghurt would contain more calories then a low fat sugar yoghurt, therefore your tax would affect natural products like nuts, etc whilst their low fat equivalents fall outside the tax bracket.

rubadub

banquet wrote: »

I agree that fat doesn't necessarily make people fat but I don't see how you arrive at your suggestion.

I think he is saying each food would have a guideline amount of calories, so the natural & low fat & low sugar yogurts would all fall below the standardised value. A high sugar, dessert type yogurt would be above it. And I think he is saying to tax only what goes above it. Like 2 different income tax levels. Maybe 1cent per 10kcal

150 cals per 100 ml and tax cals above the standard.

So if the natural one is 150 it is exempt, if the high sugar one is 250kcal per 100ml then it is 100kcal higher per 100ml and you only charge on the 100kcal bit, 10cent more per 100ml of product.

This is fairer since you do not suddenly get crazy expensive items since if the product went to 151kcal it is over the limit, and once over the limit companies might say "feck it, lets really load it with sugar". You can currently see weird price difference for the likes of chocolate biscuits, since they are 23% VAT while plain ones are 13.5% so you might see a big increase in price for only a tiny bit of chocolate.

nuts would not be highly taxed since it is accepted they are naturally high. It would have to be a qualified team deciding it, and could get rid of loopholes.

But then what about donuts, the "normal" ones are already bad, maybe you have generic groups like "bread". It would get very complicated and there would be arguments about what products are what, like the infamous one of mc vities having to go to court to prove jaffa cakes are not biscuits.

In the US they did try and categorise things as vegetables for school dinners. Of course the smartarse gutter press got on it and looked for loopholes, and came up with a headline of "congress call pizza a vegetable", since it had tomato sauce it qualifed -but nowhere in the bill was pizza ever mentioned.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/did-congress-declare-pizza-as-a-vegetable-not-exactly/2011/11/20/gIQABXgmhN_blog.html

mossym

rubadub wrote: »

I have heard people in general are getting bigger, and kids developing sooner, if these "recommended weights" were established 50 years ago they could be out of date. i.e. a healthy 4year old might be expect to be the size of a 5 year old from 50 years ago.

going slightly off topic, but 100% agree. seems like every one of my friends kids <5, including our own, are in the 98 percentile for height, which is obviously impossible. might just be coincidence, but make me wonder if it is a rolling scale and if so over how many years it is computed

siochain

wheat & sugar tax is whats needed.

corcaigh07

why is everyone avoiding whats really happening? This is a case of what the Irish government can possibly tax next.

Money raised, just like motor tax, will largely pay back some debt and not towards ways of improving the situation the tax is meant to solve in the first place.

vard

siochain wrote: »

wheat & sugar tax is whats needed.

Wheat products are regularly eaten by fit and healthy people. People who partake in regular physical activity and runners purposely eat wheat products for their benefit in training. They might have an apple afterwards too - so they'd get hit by both taxes, while they actually need and use the fuel they put into their bodies.

If these taxes were ever to be introduced they should be solely applicable to unhealthy/inactive/overweight people.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

how about a 60% wage tax or a 60% reduction in welfare payments if citizens dont present themselves at the social welfare office once a month to be weighed. if you weigh over the limit for your hight/sex you have to pay an extra obesity tax.

maybe it coudl be called fat-**** tax to be extra dehumanising.

vard

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

how about a 60% wage tax or a 60% reduction in welfare payments if citizens dont present themselves at the social welfare office once a month to be weighed. if you weigh over the limit for your hight/sex you have to pay an extra obesity tax.

maybe it coudl be called fat-**** tax to be extra dehumanising.

Sounds good! I'll sign off on it.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

vard wrote: »

Sounds good! I'll sign off on it.

so long as they don't bring in a hypocritical bastard tax I'm all for it too, no way they'll be able to implement it before I lose the weight I have left.

El_Dangeroso

I'm not in favour of taxing an attribute of a food, liver is high in fat and very healthy, pineapple is high in sugar and very healthy.

This is what happens when nutritionism takes over, ie the idea that all foods can be boiled down to their composite nutrients and that is all that matters.

I'd like to see more targeted measures. Ban all fast food advertising for a start. Ban ALL kinds of food marketing aimed at children. Start limiting where you can sell crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks. Advise people to stop eating away from home so often (one of the main predictors of high calorie intake). These are measures that will make a real difference IMO.

siochain

vard wrote: »

Wheat products are regularly eaten by fit and healthy people. People who partake in regular physical activity and runners purposely eat wheat products for their benefit in training. They might have an apple afterwards too - so they'd get hit by both taxes, while they actually need and use the fuel they put into their bodies.

If these taxes were ever to be introduced they should be solely applicable to unhealthy/inactive/overweight people.

Lots of stuff is consumed by people who appear healthy and fit, doesn’t mean it’s all OK or have long term negative effects.

The modern forms of wheat we are eating have the same insulin response as sugar, hence is helping to fuel obesity on a huge scale. Unfortunately wheat is a cheap food source that’s in many food stuffs so it’s very unlikely that any government would tax it. Take a look at countries\regions that have high incidents of malnutrition they also have very high obesity rates because they primarily feed on wheat and corn based food sources along with refined cheap veg oils.

By the way I know of several cases of athletes eliminating wheat and their performance and general health has significantly improved, including marathon runners.

rocky

siochain wrote: »

The modern forms of wheat we are eating have the same insulin response as sugar, hence is helping to fuel obesity on a huge scale.

Because it is known and accepted that post-prandial insulin spikes lead to obesity, right?