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The junk-food industry, now under attack by public health advocates and parents, finds itself in a similar position to where the tobacco industry was in the 1990s. After decades of lies and industry propaganda, the truth is finally coming out: junk food kills.
It would be very difficult to identify 'junk food' without creating a nightmarish bureaucracy of regulations. Perhaps decreasing subsidies for corn sold for HFCS, might be a more efficient approach. Rather than create a web of new taxes, we could eliminate tax breaks or credits that fund the basic ingredients of these foods.
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briandmyers · 4351 days ago · link ·
Agreed. The article suggests subsidising healthy foods, instead of unhealthy ones. That approach would simply lead to growers meeting the letter (not the intent) of exactly what is specified in the law as "healthy" (i.e. "ketchup-is-a-vegetable" thinking), simply to get the subsidy. Much more effective to simply stop subsidising altogether.
So the government sued the shit out of big tobacco. As I remember it they got so much money that they were able to give each state billions of dollars. What happened to that money? Well, most of it wasn't used to help the people who suffered from smoking. Most of it went into school funds and general funds, etc. While I can see the argument that tobacco had cost states lots of money over the years, and for this reason states should do whatever they please with the money, I think that most of it should have gone to health care. Otherwise it just looks punitive. Why should I benefit from the suffering of others? Same goes here. If they tax junk food for the purposes of helping diabetes patients, then the money should go to diabetes patients. But anyway, didn't you hear that high fructose corn syrup is just like natural sugar? (sarcasm, btw)