The Fat of the Land
Sin taxes are as old as humanity. Someone has always been able to persuade a government that taxing any beverage with any alcohol content will discourage its consumption. In Oakland, CA, promoters of marijuana have public support behind taxing pot. In this case, to enable its legal consumption. Taxing tobacco has always been sold as a way to encourage smoking cessation. Because obesity, unlike many other diseases, is usually the result of individual choices about diet and exercise, it is becoming popular to tax fat in order to discourage its consumption.
Researchers inform us that Americans are becoming much more obese in the last 30-40 years. It is true that personal convenience is a major reason for changing our exercise and diet habits. The response to convenience is a food industry which is funding a nutrition science industry to produce a variety of “healthy” food elements which then become required food labeling which then excuse price increases on convenience foods. It is just short of a remarkable phenomenon in America that boys and girls and men and women are turning out in increasing numbers in exercise spots and that health and fitness clubs are in every hotel, hospital, and highway rest stop. It is also remarkable that the organic food movement is catching on quickly. Starting with “buy locally” – which, of course, has been quickly translated into “support your local any store (including Wal-Mart.)”
I have read and enjoyed In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. My wife Susan and I enjoyed Food Inc. at our San Rafael, CA nonprofit movie theatre. It describes how four very large U.S. companies control access to and the quality of most of the essential ingredients of the food Americans consume. That agriculture company Monsanto has a corner on wherever soy beans end up. That the family farmer is anything but and is usually a victim of the co-op he/she has helped create to preserve a socio-economic system that no longer exists – except in Congress. Where it is used to enrich production food rather than production agriculture. That two-thirds of us prefer white meat to the dark meat so the chicken industry is producing – in 48 days from hatch to super market – chickens whose breasts are so large the chicken is unable to walk.