In the midst of all the recent health care reform debate comes the idea of taxing soda to prevent obesity. Kelly Brownell, a professor at Yale, is convinced that is the answer ever since he co-authored a book in 2004 book called "Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It". He recently was published in the New England Journal of Medicine with the same argument in favor of taxing soft drinks sweetened with sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. The Washington Post article highlighted here tries to give both points of view on whether or not taxing foods (in this case soda) is the answer.Brownell's approach smacks of paternalism and over-reliance on government intervention. Shouldn't diet and weight be a matter of personal responsibility, not the government's concern? Brownell counters that the ubiquity and marketing of fattening food stack the deck against individual willpower, and their allure is more than many people can resist on their own, no matter how responsible they are.
As a physician, I really would LOVE it if my patients did have the willpower to curb their thirst for sugary drinks and fattening foods. However, I DO NOT want soda taxed higher in order to try and prove the good professor right. The bottom line is that no one food product is the culprit. If it is not soda then it would be something else. And then we would tax that. When would it end? The author's point (in the article) of personal responsibility is spot on. No one is forcing anyone else to stuff their face with poor quality food. I have heard all the stories about lower income people having no choice and I don't buy it. Sorry. This generation of twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings have been educated in school about nutrition and exercise. The medical community has been preaching to them as well during their office visits. At some point we can only do so much. I do not have an answer to the obesity dilemma but I would NOT add taxing foods as the next step.
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