http://www.naturalnews.com/Report_Nutrition_Health_America_8.html
Creating a strong, healthy nation
In order to sell more products, food and beverage companies have mastered the art of engineering food-like substances that exploit the hard-wired taste preferences of the human tongue. Humans can primarily taste sugar, salt and fat, and not coincidentally, those are the three primary things that food companies put into factory foods that are marketed to the public.
Food is fabricated specifically to be addictive, much like crack. And a surprisingly large portion of the population will always seek out such addictive, synthesized food tastes in much the same way that a heroin-addicted lab rat will keep pushing the drug lever to self-medicate with even more heroin. (This metaphor is eerily accurate when it comes to junk foods and human behavior...)
There are only really two ways to prevent such people from seeking out and consuming such foods:
Method #1)Educate peopleabout junk foods and health so that they can make better-informed decisions about what to eat (or what to avoid). (The "Free Choice" approach.)
Method #2)Restrict accessto junk foods to prevent people from making food consumption decisions that are not in their own best long-term interests (the "Nanny State" approach).
A nation that wishes to be strong and healthy must, in my opinion, pursue both of these methods. Here are some of the ways in which these goals can be pursued:
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Method #1 - Educate People
• Teach real nutrition in public schools.
• Require doctors to learn the principles of nutrition and teach them to patients.
• Require all broadcast media outlets (cable, TV, radio, etc.) to dedicate some small percentage of their airtime to airing pro-nutrition public service announcements (as an exchange for the right to use FCC-regulated airwaves).
• Put very high taxes on all processed foods and junk foods, then use those tax dollars to fund public service announcements teaching consumers to avoid those foods. (I'm not a huge fan of using taxes in this way, but it's one idea worth considering.)
• Tax the key ingredients used in processed foods such as high-fructose corn syrup or refined white sugar. Then use that money to fund pro-nutrition public service announcements.
• Require all food retailers to place public service educational booklets in or near aisles where food is purchased. Those booklets should provide honest information about the dangers of processed foods and chemical additives, including mentioning the diseases they cause: Cancer, diabetes, depression, etc.
• Require prominent food labels that warn consumers about the diseases caused by the particular ingredients used in processed foods. This is similar to the lung cancer warnings on cigarette packages. A box of sugary breakfast cereal, for example, should carry a large red warning label that reads, "WARNING: This product contains ingredients known to promote diabetes."
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Method #2 - Restrict access
Here are some ideas that could be pursued to restrict consumers' access to disease-promoting foods:
• Ban ALL advertising of processed foods, factory-made foods or non-natural foods of any kind. This includes TV, radio, internet, sporting sponsorships, etc.
• Ban disease-promoting ingredients from the food supply altogether: High-fructose corn syrup, aspartame, MSG, trans fats, artificial colors, sodium nitrite, etc.
• Hit food retailers with draconian new food display laws that forbid junk foods from being displayed on end caps, near checkout counters, at eye-level on the shelves, etc. (I normally don't go for "Draconian" anything, but this is one idea to be considered.)
• End government subsidies on corn and sugar, as these are the sources from which cheap, nutritionally-depleted foods are made.
• Place heavy taxes on food manufacturers forproducingunhealthful foods and beverages. This will have the same effect as raising retail taxes on those items, but it's easier to administer this tax at the manufacturer rather than at retail.
• Use tax money raised from taxing junk foods tosubsidize fresh produce, thereby making fresh fruits and vegetables more affordable to American families. (Again, I'm generally against using the tax code in such ways, but it's an idea worth debating.)
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Food taxes and subsidies
Economically speaking, using taxes to alter consumer behavior does work. Consumers are price sensitive, so making unhealthful foods ridiculously expensive while making healthful foods more affordable seems to make sense if you wish to use taxes to shape behavior. But in a free society, it's always better, in my opinion, to rely onpublic educationandlimits on advertisingto allow consumers to make their own informed decisions about what they wish to purchase and consume.
If consumers were really aware that hot dogs cause brain cancer, for example, (because of sodium nitrite), or that high-fructose corn syrup promotes diabetes and obesity, they might make far better decisions about what they wish to feed themselves and their children.
At the same time, you can't discount the impact of interventionist tax policy to alter point-of-purchase prices. Imagine taking this to the extreme: What if a bag of fresh apples cost one penny, while a box of apple-flavored Pop-Tarts cost $10? How would that alter consumer behavior?
Most families, out of sheer economic necessity, would opt for the far cheaper fresh produce while avoiding the extremely high cost of processed foods. The cost of subsidizing the healthful foods would be easily earned back by the nation in terms of greatly reduced health care costs and increases in economic productivity (not to mention improved happiness, lower rates of disease, improved results in education, etc.).
In fact, it's not unreasonable to suppose that in a progressive, health-conscious nation,all fresh produce might be fully subsidized by the taxpayers, effectively making their purchases (virtually) free. Imagine ten cents for a pound of carrots, or fifty cents for a bunch of organic broccoli. This could be done through taxes subsidies, if desired.
There would be fraud in the system, of course. Growers would try to claim more subsidies than they are due, so you can expect some waste overhead to exist.
You would also see Americans making "junk food border runs" to Mexico and Canada where junk food items are sold at market prices instead of the high-tax prices enacted in the USA. In effect, you would see "junk food smugglers" bringing in truck-loads of Pop-Tarts and Frosted Flakes in order to make a profit undercutting the high-tax retail prices in the U.S. The scope of this activity would be directly proportional to the difference in prices between the U.S. vs. Mexico (or Canada).
As is typical of Big Government, the feds would then criminalize the covert importation of junk foods and start running raids on junk food smugglers. You could literally go to prison for getting caught with a van full of Pop-Tarts!
That's why taxes and subsidies are a messy business. Nations must tread carefully in this area. If taxes on junk foods are too high, they will inevitably create a very large underground market for smuggled junk foods, resulting in a rather large "criminal" operation of junk food smugglers and the widespread avoidance of the very taxes intended to be imposed.
But beyond taxes and subsidies, there's a bigger question in all this ...
Who profits from disease? (And why they have to go...)
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