Tax Food to Reduce Obesity?

From left to right, as labeled in the original image, the "healthy" man has a 33 inch (84 cm) waist, the "overweight" man a 45 inch (114 cm) waist, and the "obese" man a 60 inch (152cm) waist.

A report prepared for the Department of Agriculture suggested that, for "sinful-food" taxes to change the way people eat, they may need to equal at least 10% to 30% of the cost of the food.

The obese and overweight suffer chronic illness, poor health, and more than 100,000 preventable deaths each year. Obesity causes over $200 billion in annual health care spending, about half of which is borne by taxpayers. Further, private health insurance premiums for nonobese workers are nearly $26 billion higher annually due to obesity-generated costs.

Policymakers seeking to restrain the obesity epidemic can glean important lessons from the multipronged effort to combat tobacco use, contends a new report from the Urban Institute and the University of Virginia. Public policy interventions that halved adult tobacco use over four decades could be modified to fight obesity, such as imposing excise taxes on fattening foods, placing simple, graphic nutrition labels on the front of packages, requiring restaurant chains to put nutrition information next to each menu item, and banning the advertising and marketing of junk food.

This initiative could be an important part of national health care reform. Not only would effective anti-obesity policies slow the growth of American health care costs, an excise tax on fattening food could raise more than $530 billion over ten years, according to the report. These funds could be used to cover the uninsured and finance obesity prevention efforts.

Obesity’s rise has not resulted from a change in human nature. It’s a product of a change in the environment in which we make food choices. Join us for a lively discussion about what can happen when public health, commerce, and public policy collide.

Resources
- Bios
- Reducing Obesity: Policy Strategies from the Tobacco War

At the Urban Institute
2100 M Street N.W., 5th Floor, Washington, D.C.
Lunch will be provided at 11:30 a.m. The forum begins promptly at noon.

Webcast note:
You will need to register for the webcast on the same computer you will use to listen. You can register anytime up to and during the event. To access the webcast, you can go to the same link where you registered,
http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=60564.

Full event info:http://www.urban.org/events/Strategies-to-combat-obesity.cfm