{"id":5912,"date":"2008-12-23T09:27:36","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T16:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5912"},"modified":"2008-12-23T09:27:36","modified_gmt":"2008-12-23T16:47:24","slug":"three-reasons-not-to-try-the-obesity-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5912","title":{"rendered":"The Obesity Tax On Soda Will Hurt Fat People's Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Ezra Klein is one of my favorite bloggers, but when it comes to fat politics, he’s a reactionary. So it’s no surprise that Ezra favors Governor Patterson’s tax on non-diet soda<\/a> (often referred to<\/a> as an “obesity tax,” although Ezra didn’t use that term).<\/p>\n

Quoting Nick Kristof<\/a>, Ezra suggests that we’ll see a public health benefit from the tax on non-diet soda, similar to the benefits of taxing cigarettes. “If we can save lives while we raise revenue, why not give that a try?”<\/p>\n

I’d suggest three reasons: First, snack taxes don’t work. Second, this particular tax will discourage thin people and people who drink diet soda from considering the health implications of their own diets. And finally, far from saving lives, fat-obsessed public health measures may actually make fat people’s health worse.<\/p>\n

Reason why not #1: Snack taxes don’t work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meowser <\/a>quotes from the book Fat Politics<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

The reason why snack taxes don\u2019t work is that the demand for food is relatively insensitive to price; economists generally predict that a 10 percent increase in food prices would only reduce food consumption by less than 1 percent. That means that if you want to reduce soda consumption by just 10 percent, you would have to impose a 100 percent tax; if you wanted to reduce soda consumption by half, you would have to make a can of coke cost about four dollars. Not only do such taxes do little to deter demand, but they would take more money out of the pockets of the poor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Meowser, cigarette prices are now 10 times as high as they were three decades ago. Does anyone believe that we’re going to raise soda prices that high?<\/p>\n

Reason why not #2: The Obesity Tax implicitly suggests that diet soda is healthy, which will discourage healthy diets.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s no strong empirical case for soda being worse for health than diet soda. Even if you accept the “fat is always bad! Thin is always good!” mentality, there is no evidence that switching from regular to diet soda will cause any fat people to experience significant long-term weight loss.<\/p>\n

But by exempting diet soda from the tax, the obesity tax will encourage people to think of diet soda as healthy, and discourage critical thinking about the health effects of drinking (other <\/em>than obesity). As Liss writes<\/a>, “thin-but-unhealthy people are discouraged from thinking about whether regular soda is something they should cut out of their diets for any reason other than it now costs too much thanks to those damn fatties, and the simplistic associations between fat\/unhealthy and thin\/healthy are reinforced yet again.”<\/p>\n

In Ezra’s comments, North writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’m all for taxing soda, but I just want to remind you\/everyone that diet soda is linked to ‘metabolic syndrome’ – which doesn’t necessarily include obesity, but does include major risk factors for heart disease and diabetes. So we really ought to tax diet soda, and the reason that’s not on the table has more to do with the stupidity of obesity politics than anything.<\/p>\n

In the rush to be mean to fat people, we’ve forgotten that for most people, weight is genetic; ((North’s use of the word “genetic” was the subject of some discussion. I agreed with Jasper that while genetics isn’t the only cause of fatness or thinness, “an individual’s propensity to get fat (or remain thin) given the nutritional and exercise environment of modern society is <\/em>mostly genetic.”)) that there’s no reliable way to make a skinny person fat or a fat person skinny; and that eating quality food and getting healthy exercise are what’s actually linked to good health outcomes. (Being overweight actually exercises a protective effect against a large variety of illnesses.) Instead, we have a national moralistic crusade against obesity which leads us to an obsession with reducing the number of calories people take in. Which in turn leads policy-makers to the mistaken conclusion that sugar sodas, but not diet sodas, ought to be taxed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The choice to tax regular soda but exempt diet soda — as well as the choice to refer to this as an “obesity tax” — is a choice to focus, not on improving health, but on fighting fat <\/em>(and soda’s alleged connections to fat). This law doesn’t address making people live longer, or feel better; it addresses an aesthetic preference for thin bodies over fat bodies.<\/p>\n

(By the way, North — who blogs at To The Lighthouse<\/a> — did a great job arguing in Ezra’s comments. As did Jasper. Yay North and Jasper!)<\/p>\n

Reason why not #3: Public health measures which focus on fat may make fat people less healthy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kate writes<\/a>: ((Kate also wrote “Being fat is not behavioral; it\u2019s existential.” Someone in her comments suggested making that a t-shirt, an idea I really like.))<\/p>\n

….Calling this an \u201cobesity\u201d tax, as opposed to yet another \u201cvice\u201d tax, makes it quite literally about the punishment of fat bodies, rather than of \u201cbad\u201d habits that could be held by anyone. Not only are they once again conflating \u201cfat\u201d with \u201cunhealthy,\u201d they\u2019re conflating \u201cfat\u201d with \u201cvice\u201d \u2014 reinforcing the message that fatness automatically equals a conscious decision to engage in (arguably) self-destructive behavior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That the obesity tax will encourage prejudice against fat people is, in and of itself, reason enough to oppose the tax. But a recent study ((Muennig, Peter et al, “I Think Therefore I Am: Perceived Ideal Weight as a Determinant of Health<\/a>,” in American Journal of Public Health<\/em>; March 2008, Volume 98 Issue 3, pages 501-506. PDF file (3MB)<\/a>.)) suggests that worrying about being fat is actually more damaging to good health than fat itself is. (Curtsy to The Fatfacts Wiki<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Researchers who looked<\/a> at a nationally representative group of more than 170,000 US adults found the difference actual weight and perceived ideal weight was a better indicator of mental and physical health than body mass index (BMI).<\/p>\n

“The obesity ‘epidemic’ might have a lot more to do with our collective preoccupation with obesity than obesity itself,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Peter Muennig of Columbia University in New York City, told Reuters Health. “We still need to focus on healthy diet and exercise as public health officials, but we need to take fatness out of the equation. Were we to stop looking at body fat as a problem, the problem may well disappear.”<\/p>\n

Some researchers have suggested that stress due to stigmatization could be a factor in the health problems obese people have, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, he and his colleagues note in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health. […]<\/p>\n

“There needs to be a realization among public health officials and medical professionals that the messages we are giving the public could be doing more harm than good,” Muennig said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are all sorts of public health measures that Ezra and I can agree on: measures to make vegetables more affordable and measures to make cities more walkable, for instance. But laws like this one, which add to the stigmatization of fat people, are harmful and shouldn’t be supported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ezra Klein is one of my favorite bloggers, but when it comes to fat politics, he’s a reactionary. So it’s no surprise that Ezra favors Governor Patterson’s tax on non-diet soda (often referred to as an “obesity tax,” although Ezra … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fat-fat-and-more-fat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}