Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Taxing soda = the cure to the obesity epidemic in America, who knew?

Blog instructions:
  1. Read this article.
  2. Read my subsequent rant.
  3. Add comments and feel free to generate a discussion in the comments.

Really? This is where they are going with this? A freakin' soda tax?

Two-thirds of the American population is overweight or obese (and I am part of that two-thirds, so believe me, this is not a matter of the pot calling the kettle black), and they think that raising taxes on soda is going to help cure it?

Apparently, looking in their calorie-counting-crystal ball, by placing a 20 percent tax on soda, it will cut the average American’s caloric intake by 7 a day. SEVEN whole calories. Wow. Raising the tax to 40 percent will cut the caloric intake by 12.5 a day. Well, shoot, sign me up. If only I knew it was so easy as to pay more money for soda to lose weight, man I wish I knew about this years ago.

What the hell kind of moron thought this was a good idea? I mean, you see how well raising the price of cigarettes worked to curb smoking – after all, now they are reduced to monkeying with the labels to thwart that bad habit. Ohhh, remember the short-lived law in Mississippi that would ban restaurants from serving customers who were overweight or obese? How would you like to be the waitress on shift for those conversations? “I’m sorry sir, I can’t take your order because you’re a fat cow, but I’d be glad to bring you a glass of water if you’d like.”

With the tightening of budgets recently due to the economy, people have already cut back on a lot of things, soda being one of them. I know I don’t pay $4 for a 12-pack of Diet Coke, with or without an astronomical tax attached to it. So I really think it’s unfair to say that adding a tax is going to have any sort of impact on someone’s weight.

Here’s the thing – we all *know* how to lose weight, we all *know* what we’re supposed to eat. We just don’t. And when you raise that glass of soda to your lips, or you munch down that chocolate bar instead of a salad, you know exactly what you’re doing. A new tax on said items is not going to all of the sudden make the light go off in someone’s head, “oh, maybe this is bad for me.”

Even McDonald’s started printing the calorie count of everything on their packaging. Has the great obesity epidemic reduced as a result of that initiative? Nope. In fact, we go and order something that we think might be remotely good for us (like, say a grilled chicken sandwich), and we get our packaging and look at the calorie count and are appalled at the number we see. Oops. Maybe it could have benefited one to know this information BEFORE ordering, rather than after.

I’m not about banning foods. I’m not about forcing someone to pay a premium for something they like. I also don’t believe in singling out one food as the downfall of Americans' health. Soda is the target today. A few years ago it was fast food, McDonald’s in particular. What will it be tomorrow? Hershey?

Oh, let’s ban all holiday parties because the holidays are when most people do their baking and cookies and cakes and the like lead to obesity. Sorry, no more Christmas cookies for you. Halloween – you either give pennies or apples or the police are going to come and get you. (We can’t very well stop our children from panhandling, after all, it’s walking which is exercise, so we must promote that aspect of it.) Oh, yeah, birthday cake is no more – try a birthday salad. Yummy, yummy.

Forget the American staple of apple pie – it’s tofu or nothing.

No more doughnuts at early morning meetings at work. In fact, let’s ban early morning meetings altogether, so everyone has the proper amount of time to make their oatmeal in the morning before heading into work. (Okay, the idea of banning meetings actually has some merit.)

No more “all-you-can-eat” buffets. Nope, those have definitely contributed to the rise in obesity. You get one trip before you are shackled to your table, and then you are escorted back out to keep you from sneaking up to the bar to steal another cookie on your way out.

Why must we be prisoners of the government when it comes to what we put in our bodies? If we choose to make unhealthy decisions, we will have to pay the consequences – physically and monetarily (and if universal healthcare goes through unchanged, we’ll be paying the monetary consequences for EVERYONE). If I’m okay weighing a few pounds more so I can enjoy a Hershey bar from time to time, then rock on with my bad self. Who the hell is the government to tell me I can’t?

I got it – instead of taxing the food, tax your weight. After all, the government’s trying to get their hands into my healthcare anyway, so – every time I go to the doctor and I get weighed, my weight goes into her database, which is picked up by the government and they tax me based on the number of pounds I weigh above my “ideal” weight, rather than what I earn. There’s an incentive to get people to drop the weight – and quick! (Don’t even think about cheating and using gastric bypass surgery. Because it’s linked to your doctor’s information about you, it will know, and you’re charged a cheater tax. Unless otherwise deemed necessary by your healthcare provider. But you’ll have to provide 8,000 letters from your doctor detailing exactly why it was necessary so you don’t have to pay an extra tax.)

I mean, shoot, heaven forbid people be allowed to live their lives and enjoy them. Enjoying life means enjoying what you eat. If you can’t run down the street because of what you put in your mouth, then it’s up to you to decide to do something about it, not the government’s.

People just need to take responsibility. And the government just needs to let them. (Yeah, it's not the least bit obvious I'm very laissez-faire, is it?)

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