Many assume that if organic and other healthy foods were cheaper more people would buy them, right? Not so according to this study. People were given money to shop at a store created for the study and it was found that when prices were lowered on healthy foods people used the extra money to buy more unhealthy foods. The unhealthy foods need to cost more in order for people to eat less of them.


https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 142046.htm

I think we have to consider a sugar/sweetener tax.

If the tax was applied to the sugar/HFCS/fructose manufacturer level, or imports where applicable, this would affect the food manufacturers raw ingredients costs and encourage them to use less.

In the UK we've asked baby food manufacturers to limit sugar/sweetener to 10% of calories but they simply haven't made any attempt to reduce the sugars/sweeteners in baby foods.

It really shouldn't be the case that plain bottled water costs more than sweetened sodas beverages.

I don't think we should regard sugar/sweeteners as a food item and they should be subject to a tax. If we are ever going to make any impact on cancer incidence we need to cut total calorie consumption and the first and easiest step in that process is to tax the unnecessary nutritionally empty calories in sweetened soda beverages.

Similarly we should stop supermarkets aggressively discounting multipacks of beer. If the law stated the price of a single can of beer had to be replicated when 20 cans were sold in a pack the temptation to buy multipacks, and then not be able to resist drinking them, would not be so great. So banning the aggressive discounting of multipacks would encourage people not to buy huge quantities because that worked out cheaper per can. In the UK our pub culture is disappearing because it's so much cheaper to buy a lot of booze cheaply at the supermarket and drink it in the park or at home.
Alcohol is one of the most well established causes of cancer
Alcohol increases the risk of mouth and oesophageal (foodpipe) cancers
Alcohol increases the risk of liver cancer
Alcohol increases the risk of breast cancer
Alcohol increases the risk of bowel cancer
The trouble is that telling young lads and lasses that in 40 yrs time they are going to regret having drunk so much as teenagers and young adults simply won't work. They all know about smoking yet lots of their mates do it and at that age they think their indestructible so why not.
At present it so much cheaper per can to buy a lot of beer then buy just a single can that they are encouraged to buy more than is sensible. We need a minimum price per unit of alcohol and an end to the aggressive discounting of large multipacks that encourage overconsumption.

how about no subsidies?

or is that too crazy....

and while we're at it get rid of income and sales tax as well.....

let people keep the fruits of their labor....

now that is crazy talk....

But just look at how much money those companies are benefiting from These guys have sufficient money to lobby and buy off any politician. The idea that the US government would stand up against the big money earners is somewhat naive.

I doubt it's going to happen
Unfortunately I don't think it will work. If you give most people a choice cheap sweet food now and trouble (cancer/diabetes/heart disease etc) 40 yrs later I think most people would go for the cheap beer, the cheap fructose/sugar sweetened sodas, the reason food manufacturers slap sugar/HFCS/ into every possible food item is to get people addicted to sweetness and have them craving for more.

While of course we should be working to reduce, end corn subsidies we must take URGENT ACTION now to stop the current diabetes epidemic. Over 50% of US adults have at least one indicator of metabolic syndrome No system of insurance or health provision is going to be able to cope with the health disaster that is looming. Preventing people over consuming calories by increasing the price of the most easily consumed sweetened beverages and cheap beer is a simple target that would not be taxing food but taxing nutritionally empty calories.

Treehugger

Mercola goes into more detail here.

The problem is, you're looking at government intervention to be able to fix the problem...when in fact, government intervention is in large part responsible for the obesity problem we have...by forcing people to subsidize gmo corn here in the states.

The only thing the government can do effectively is destroy wealth and create more problems.
We need less government intervention if we want to fix this problem...start by something as simple as stop forcing people to pay for the production of millions of tons of gmo corn.