Obesity

It helps discourage consumers from eating foods that aren't good for them.

Health care costs of obesity are skyrocketing, and even non-obese people must share this cost burden.

Additional revenue could be raised by the government to cover health care, medical research, and other items.

No

1. People are personally responsible for their weight, not the products.

2. How would you decide what items to tax? Virtually any products can make you obese if abused.

3. A tax would punish successful businesses for providing products that people want.

4. The government already taxes income, alcohol, gasoline, sales, and about everything else in our lives.

5. Additional taxes can lead to job cuts in the affected businesses and contribute a degradation of consumer purchasing power.

The CDC calls nearly 18 percent of Americans "obese," meaning that nearly one in five of us weighs more than 30 percent above the ideal.

Americans are being seduced by "our toxic food environment," which offers up a "diet that is high in fat, high in calories, delicious, widely available and low in cost."

He recommends policies that would subsidize healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, while taxing "unhealthy" foods such as those high in fat and cholesterol

The majority of American consumers would support a 'fat tax,' or a tax placed on unhealthy processed foods, if the revenues were used to make healthier food less expensive, according to a new survey.

The controversial 'fat tax' first gained attention over 10 years ago, when it was recommended as a means to help combat widespread obesity. The idea behind the tax was that it would be imposed on certain 'unhealthy' foods, and be used to subsidize sales of 'healthy' foods, in order to make it cheaper to stick to a healthy diet.

CQ Researcher

at least 300,000 Americans die each year from obesity-related diseases

The U.S. food industry aggressively markets high-fat , high-sugar, super-sized foods. Modern communities...