Amy is better at day-to-day blogging than I am.
but here is a Progressive Grocer article that maybe the blog circles haven't hit yet. But it's another one from the corporate intranet site.
In short, The Maryland General Assembly has rejected a proposed snack tax. The new tax might have raised as much as $16 million (not a huge number from a government perspective, but enough to be significant at the state level, I'm sure).
But here's the quote that caught me:
...selectively taxing foods disproportionately affects low-income families who can least afford to pay more for groceries.- Elizabeth Avery, VP of government affairs for the Grocery Manufacturers of America.
Personally, I see a missed opportunity here. There's already a tax on food, at least here in Illinois. So, what can the goals of a program for this be?
1 - Raise a certain amount of tax money.
2 - Possibly encourage healthy eating, while not unfairly penalizing anyone.
There's already extra taxes on tobacco and alcohol, presumably under the theory that those are luxuries, not necessities of life (although some will argue that point, probably). But there's already a tax on food (even if maybe it's just called sales tax, that $2.99 gallon of milk consistently costs me $3.03), so there's precedent we can play with. Every grocery trip I pay taxes, even if it's just for food.
I think foods are taxed at a lower rate. 3% seems to come to mind, but milk at least seems to come to 1.5%. So, let's say the existing food tax is 2%. Right or not, we can work with it for the sake of argument.
First, we have to establish criteria for what is "junk food." I don't want the government saying, "you can't eat Twinkies," but I'll use them as my example.
Once you have criteria to create the "food" pile and the "junk food" pile (I don't think "snack" is the category to use), you sort everything. Taxes on "food" either drop by half, or go away completely. Maybe food is 1%, and organic food is tax-free (now we even have some socially responsible behavior we can encourage). Twinkies go up to 3%. Not a huge jump, just enough of an increase to slightly more than offset the lost money from taxing other food. I don't know what the current numbers are, but I know that a large chunk of consumer spending is on snack foods, desserts, and the like. We probably wouldn't have to tax junk food hard to make up some money.
I also think that tax avoidance is a useful way to motivate people. I've always thought that. How many people do you honestly think would give the same amount they give now to charities if they weren't going to be able to write it off anymore? Now, I'm not going to try to claim that taxing junk food is going to make any big change in eating behavior. Raising tobacco taxes didn't lower smoking rates. People are going to spend money on the things they want. The way I see it, the biggest benefit to raising taxes on junk foods is that we could reduce taxes (and therefore prices) on the healthier foods that the lowest income brackets need.
There's one demographic that tends to get overlooked in a lot of diet and healthcare discussions. The ones being hurt the most, the ones having the most problems with obesity, are the poorest groups. Imagine you're hungry, with practically no money to spend on food for you and some children. All day long you're bombarded with advertising for chips and candy. Your kids see those same ads all day long, and you bring them into the store and all they want are chips and candy and soda. You walk into the store, and the soda and snacks are the first thing you and your children see. Produce? All the way in the back. Milk? All the way in the back. Ice cream? That's right in the middle so that you have to pass right through it—probably twice.
Ever hear a child screaming, "Mommy, I want milk" to a woman who's trying to pick ripe fresh veggies? I didn't think so.
But I have seen a mother use food stamps to buy Haagen Dazs. Just a couple weeks ago I watched a mother of four unload her cart at the register. What did she have? Doritos, Pepsi, nacho cheese Lunchables, Fruity Pebbles, no milk, two big containers of Fieldcrest (which is at least the cheapest) ice cream. Now, obviously it wasn't her main shopping run for the week. Now, to complete the picture, all five of them were either at or past the border between overweight and obese.
Where am I going with all this? Hell, I don't even know anymore. I think I had a point when I started. Last week Amy bought us a box of Pop-ems. Over four or five days I ate probably three quarters of them. They were good, damnit!
I guess my point is that no one thing is ever going to be the solution. I think that education needs to be an important part. I think that advertising and marketing deserves a fair share of the blame. I'd love to see a company spend the kind of money spent advertising Oreos to promote health food education.
But now I have breakfast to cook. There's potatoes and veggies to hack up. It's gonna be a breakfast skillet day. Amy needs to get started with dinner stuff early, which means waking her earlier than normal. Hearty breakfast is a good help with that.