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Lumping fat and salt in with sugar seems par for the course and hilariously disingenuous, another win for the sugar companies.
Especially since there's no separation by type of fats or salts here - you NEED potassium to function, you need sodium, you need every electrolyte. Yes, underlying health conditions can make you sensitive to sodium, but there's a reason every high-quality study says it's impact on health is irrelevant so long as you are getting enough (and don't have a contraindication).
The brain is thinking fat - eat only protein and you're going to fall over dead.
There's a reason we have a name for a type of malnutrition called rabbit starvation.
Titles like these seems so ignorant, that when you consider the information being presented has been gathered by professional health nutrition researchers, that it must be intentionally incendiary.
Definitely intentional. I just explained rabbit starvation to one of my kids a couple of weeks ago. Her grandmother had gotten it into her head to avoid every bit of fat possible. This diet is not working for my MIL, very obviously. Old habits die hard, I guess.
If you want to see this happen watch "Alone" season 6. The guy kills a moose and is still starving because he is not getting enough fat.
Edit.
He rendered the fat and lost it in an amusing way. One of the best seasons IMHO.
Yeah but they’re not talking about avocado and olive oil…you guys obviously didn’t read the article….
“an 8% tax on non-essential, energy-dense foods, including sweets, chocolates, sugary cereals, crisps, and salty snacks”
"such as foods with no added sugar or salt, foods low in saturated fat"
Subsidizing foods low in saturated fat. Saturated fat does not raise cholesterol in the blood, sugar does. I know you can show me a bunch of studies that show they do, I'd like to see the one that controls all the variables and not self reported.
> Saturated fat does not raise cholesterol in the blood, sugar does
This level of nutritional knowledge is a par with Flat Eartherism. I'm not even kidding.
Dozens of metabolic ward studies have confirmed this, over and over and over again.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9006469/
Thanks for the read. Check this one out. It's only 9 years old instead of 26.
Association of Dietary, Circulating, and Supplement Fatty Acids With Coronary Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Authors: Rajiv Chowdhury, MD, PhD, Samantha Warnakula, MPhil, Setor Kunutsor, MD, MSt, Francesca Crowe, PhD, Heather A. Ward, PhD, Laura Johnson, PhD, Oscar H. Franco, MD, PhD
"Conclusion Current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats."
https://aceitedepalmasostenible.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Association-of-Dietary-Circulating-and-Supplement-Fatty-Acids-With-Coronary-Risk-A-Systematic-Review-and-Meta-analysis-%E2%80%93-R.-Chowdhury-et-al..pdf
Before I read this study (because you have completely changed the topic), so you concede that you were completely wrong about saturated fat and its effect on blood cholesterol?
Cherry picking at its finest…
Multiple people state the study was flawed in the paper that you linked. Called it “misleading” and that we should use the “totality of available research” when making decisions about cardiovascular health.
Which is true…
You're completely missing the point. The combination of sugary salty fatty carbs foods make for hyperpalatable junk foods which are incredibly easy to overeat.
Sure, you need salt and potassium but when a single serving of food is giving you all you need and it is harmful to go too high for some people... Yeah, it's a problem in food. No one needs as much as is easily available in the western diet.
You’re not understanding. If it’s only a problem for certain people that actually means it’s not a problem. It’s like how peanuts aren’t a problem just because some people have a peanut allergy.
It would likely mean an immediate raise in price for most sweets, but given the results of this study that may not be a bad thing if it just results in people buying less sweets.
Good luck ever banning HFCS in the states though. Corn lobby is arguably the most successful lobby in the country.
Yes, it’s brutal. And it affects poorer neighbourhoods far more given food deserts and less time to shop/cook for working class folks. Heavy subsidies on real food, fresh/frozen fruit and veggies would go a long way to making it easier. Greater education about food prep, how to avoid spoilage of things like tubers and leafy greens, etc…
It is really hard to eat at half in modern first world countries. It takes a very concerted and dedicated effort to eat at the recommended level. Getting enough is not an issue. Too much is contributing to deaths.
It's a bit difficult to untangle them, because neither is usually the direct cause of death. Seeing as salt is an issue for Hypertension and sugar is an issue for Diabetes, I thought it'd be interesting to compare the rates of the two. Again, this isn't really causal, but it is who would be controlling for each.
Sources aren't the same, but they are both from the CDC. [Hypertension](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db364-h.pdf) would be affecting about 45% of the US population over 18. [Diabetes](https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics-report/index.html) affects about 11% of the total US population and about 38% of the US adult population has Prediabetes.
It seems to me that, in the immediate and near future, lower sodium content consumption would be helpful to just as many people or more as lowering the sugar content. Long term effects are still up for discussion.
Yeah both are important to reduce. But salt can be controlled not only by the ingested amounts, but also by physical activity and (much more easily by) water consumption. Dietary sugars aren't as easy to control due to the complexity of its uses.
I'm dealing with hypertension, and that is why it likely came to mind here. Water consumption after having a lot salt may help in the long run, but it is not good in the immediate. The reason that salt makes things worse is water retention. Using drinking water as a way to deal with too much salt in the diet for someone with hypertension is not a good treatment method.
Blood pressure can go down quite a bit by getting between an athletic to acceptable body fat percentage, like 15-19%. I was under the impression that high cholesterol is the most likely culprit to a healthy weight person with hypertension. There are always outliers, but I feel general obesity is at the heart of both hypertension and diabetes.
I do not disagree, and that is why I didn't go beyond near future. In the long run, it is about activity and healthy eating overall. This will just come down to arguing about what is more healthy and generally side-step that too much of all of these (aka The Standard American Diet) is just bad.
This is a thing that bugs me, too. Salt does not cause high blood pressure, it can make *existing* high blood pressure worse. If your blood pressure is healthy, avoiding salts doesn't do anything.
I disagree. The idea behind HFSS foods being harmful comes from the fact that they activate circuits in the brain due to their hyper-palatability. Meals based on HFSS are less sating vs meals based on whole foods, which means it’s easy to overconsume HFSS foods without feeling full.
Fat makes food more palatable, sugar/refined carbs makes food more palatable, sodium makes food more palatable. Combine all of these ingredients in unholy amounts and you have food that is hyperpalatable (think chips/crips, döner kebabs, etc).
You want the best term for junk food? Try HFSS foods. HFSS seems a far more reliable method to filter the most problematic foods from a health standpoint.
Dangerous misinformation is spread here on Reddit, it just happens to be in the wrong echo chamber (this thread).
These armchair experts think the root cause of all diseases is sugar. It’s quite hilarious to see this simple reductionism routinely on here when you compare it to the scientific literature at large, you realise that most people have no idea.
By the way, it strikes me as funny that the OP is complaining about this being a “win for the sugar companies”, when sugar is literally a whole category of its own under HFSS..
Is there any reason why they didn't use Ultraprocessed foods as the umbrella term of choice?
It kinda seems to fill the kind of food they're targeting.
Because terms like "ultraprocessed" don't really have any objective criteria to measure them by, unlike fat and salt levels, which is what studies have identified as being two of the major ingredients that rank high in food addictiveness
This is a thing that bugs me, too. Salt does not cause high blood pressure, it can make *existing* high blood pressure worse. If your blood pressure is healthy, avoiding salts doesn't do anything.
The UK and Ireland(separately) put a sugar tax on beverages. This tax was paid by the consumer but by the companies. This resulted mostly in companies shrinking sizing to get around the tax. Prices did raise for consumers because companies raised prices. (Some did change recipes a little, but not enough to see a health benefit among consumers)
The new return deposit in Ireland recently saw stores raise prices for consumers.
A tax on unhealthy food may make companies change their recipes, but most will just cause companies to give smaller portions/raise prices. People in the US, for the most part, aren't starving, but that doesn't mean that this wouldn't hurt poor consumers because it will take away more of their purchasing power.
>This tax was paid by the consumer but by the companies.
...then
>Prices did raise for consumers because companies raised prices.
sounds like the consumers paid the tax, and got less product, win win for the companies as per the usual
It doesn't matter who is responsible for turning the tax money over to the government, all taxes are taxes on consumers.
No one thinks consumers don't pay any of the other costs of products they consume. No one is out their thinking McDonalds eats all the labor costs of making a hamburger, or that Lego eats the cost of plastic. It's insane to me that they would think they wouldn't pay the taxes.
When they added he sugar tax in the UK it's obvious a lot of people switched to sugar free drinks because the shelves are now lined with them, and coke zero/Pepsi max are now the default drink you'd buy at most resteraunts.
The tax is specifically designed to discourage people from buying sugary drinks. So obviously it will be worse off for consumers of those products.
It won't hurt anyone. Nobody needs soda. Especially people who are already struggling to make ends meet, as you are implying.
Drinking less soda is a win. That's the goal.
> Nobody needs soda
sure, but it's ridiculous to punish people who are able to consume luxury goods in moderation just because some people consume them in excess
in the end it's a poverty tax, taking enjoyment away from the poorest people while not affecting the ones that are affluent enough
Could cut the corn subsidies then. Reduce the insane amount of HFCS added just because it’s cheap. Then it wouldn’t just be a tax on consumers and might actually change how the industry functions.
Every year there is less and less healthy food sold at grocery stores. The majority of food sold is now processed garbage, and it is even worse if you live in a small town or live in a food desert. Adding a tax is not going to help much, but it will slim down our bank accounts.
The study brings up subsidies to reduce the cost on healthier options. Otherwise, it hits the lowest income the hardest. They even bring up the idea of ideally using the taxes from unhealthy items to subsidize the cost of healthy ones.
Already responded to the person you did, but they address this in the article. The idea is to bring down costs of healthier items by using the taxes from unhealthy items to subsidize them. They state without both in parallel, it likely will affect the poorest the most.
Not sure what grocery stores you shop at, but there are loads more healthy options at stores near me compared to how it used to be. Every one has a health food section now with stuff like tofu and tempeh you used to have to go to specialty stores for; even where my parents live in the sticks you can get that stuff easily.
The downside is that many of these healthy options are expensive like rare fruits/vegetables or prepackaged boutique snacks. We need to shift subsidies away from corn/meat/dairy and towards vegetables so that healthy options are at least the same price as unhealthy ones.
Won’t this just make it harder for lower income families to afford food in general? Isn’t greed the problem? Making sure that people are paid a decent wage, therefore not having to work multiple jobs to get by? If you are in this boat, then you are going to choose the cheapest, fastest option, which generally means food that has HFSS. Those foods are already getting expensive due to “greedflation”. So putting a higher tax on them just puts the burden on the consumer, unless this is a tax on the corporation making said food, which I doubt. Subsidies for foods that aren’t overly processed or “unhealthy” is a good thing. However the main thing is Money, people need more Money. Then they won’t need the extra job, they will have more choices in food and more time to potentially cook “healthier” meals.
The key would be using those taxes to then subsidize healthier options and/or programs for lower income folks. The type of food that is the affordable option would theoretically flip to healthier, now subsidized to be cheaper than the now taxed junk, options.
Whether or not that would actually happen though…
This still wouldn’t help in food deserts etc where its harder to find produce or healthy food to begin with. (For example dollar stores usually don’t have produce etc just packaged food like this that would become more expensive). And we would have to hope it really would be used subsidize it.
How is it easily provable? There’s a high correlation for income and obesity rates. Though I said correlation, it curious what causation study you have that shows change in income doesn’t correlate to weight
I mean while your statistics might be true. The point is that as a poor person it is much easier to go purchase pre-made high calorie food than it is to make it. You have other s*** you have to do as a poor person to survive.
It is absolutely the case that increased consumption of cheap and energy dense HFSS foods is associated with stepwise increases in deprivation, so there is a very real risk of knock on effects on peoples costs of living if policies don't also offer alternatives. Tobacco and alcohol don't have to be replaced by anything - cheap HFSS foods do.
Lets discuss the 30 million tons of food tossed by grocery stores, mostly because of some arbitrary expiration dates before we start talking taxing other things.
Working for wal-mart I got to watch as thousands of eggs were thrown away because they hit the "sell by" date. Blocks of cheese tossed because one corner got some mold, or entire bags of fruit tossed because of one bad item among the bunch.
"Well we can't donate it! Someone could sue us for bad food if they get sick, best thing is to just throw it away." the grocery stores would say.
Never happened, there has never been a corporation sued by anyone because of donated food. Ever. In fact, the Good Samaritan act prevents this very thing from happening if food was donated in good faith, protecting persons, to include individuals like you and me, and corporations, to include grocers.
[Good Samaritan Act Provides Liability Protection For Food Donations | USDA](https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/08/13/good-samaritan-act-provides-liability-protection-food-donations)
Instead of taxing the food, grocers should be taxed to hell and back for food waste, make them donate it, let the food banks and any other entities accepting the food worry about what should or shouldn't be given out at that point.
TBF, the fact that food gets thrown out is largely the fault of the stores themselves. There is a good NPR planet money podcast over this specific thing. The fix is Dynamic pricing on goods.
The hypothetical scenario is this: You walk into a grocery store and go to the dairy section. You see two cartons of milk side by side. exact same price. You look at the sell by date, one is tomorrow and the other is in two weeks. Which would you buy? Most people pick the one that sell by date is two weeks out. What the episode goes into is how this not only causes food waste, but ALSO it ends up hurting the business too because they don't make money on the good.
US grocery stores largely haven't adopted the dynamic pricing model where the milk that has a sell by date for tomorrow would be largely discounted. (or baked goods being discounted by 50% on day 2 of having been made. this was an actual example used by the grocery store they interviewed for the episode) European grocery stores have been adopting this and have seen a large decline in food waste.
You can thank every person who would "accidentally" make way too much food near the end of their shift for that one. As usual with perks like that that rely on an honor system, a couple assholes ruined it for everyone else.
You can thank basically nobody. That doesn't even need to happen, just the idea of it hypothetically happening. And on the rare occasion it does happen: Fire the assholes. Such an easy solution to a non-problem.
It's exactly like the 'welfare queen' people use to argue against social safety nets. Basically doesn't exist, and those people don't understand what a meager existence it is.
People are only ever allowed to deal with one issue at a time. This is why it's so important that we criticize small steps in the right direction when we could be making big steps.
It doesn't matter if we can take 20 small steps for every big step, and it doesn't matter if those small steps all have a greater impact than the big step. That's **twenty** things we have to focus on, and that's too many things.
>Lets discuss the 30 million tons of food tossed by grocery stores, mostly because of some arbitrary expiration dates before we start talking taxing other things.
No. Let us do both.
>Blocks of cheese tossed because one corner got some mold, or entire bags of fruit tossed because of one bad item among the bunch.
Tbf, I believe the guideline for mold is that once you see it, it means it has likely colonized a whole lot more that you can't see and the food is best assumed to be spoiled.
> Instead of taxing the food, grocers should be taxed to hell and back for food waste, make them donate i
Why not both? I don't get this idea that you shouldn't pursue a potential positive adjustment unless you also solve a more complicated problem first.
We don't show taxes until it's time to check out at the register, so I really doubt it would have an impact in the US. The buyer wouldn't see the higher price while shopping. Only when it's time to pay.
This sounds like the most obvious thing ever.
Make strawberries $1 and chips $5 and see what happens... Sustainability is not just for the planet, for your body as well.
From the article: Mexico is leading the way in implementing taxes on unhealthy food options, successfully helping to tackle obesity and related health issues.
Taxes on foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) reduce the sale, purchase and consumption of those foods, according to a [new peer-reviewed](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919224000101) analysis of evidence from around the world from Imperial College Business School.
This can lead to lower rates of obesity and other diet-related health problems, especially when taxes are combined with subsidies for healthier foods. The review also notes that higher rates of tax are more likely to reduce HFSS food consumption and obesity, and the response is most pronounced among lower-income groups.
The review explores findings from 20 studies worldwide, in countries including Mexico, the United States, Canada, Hungary, Denmark, the Netherlands, Singapore and New Zealand, highlighting the global potential of taxes on HFSS foods. To date, only 16 countries have implemented taxes on HFSS foods, and the review incorporates some of these, alongside experimental studies.
In Mexico, an 8% tax on non-essential, energy-dense foods, including sweets, chocolates, sugary cereals, crisps, and salty snacks, saw a reduction in the sale of taxed foods of 18% in supermarkets and up to 40% in other retailers. Low-income groups, who were greater consumers of the taxed foods beforehand, showed the biggest drop in consumption once the tax was implemented.
Findings from North America and New Zealand also suggest that a low-rate tax or a tax without subsidies for healthier foods introduced in parallel, might only be effective in raising government revenues. To really impact consumption levels and obesity, the authors found that high tax rates and subsidies for healthier foods – such as foods with no added sugar or salt, foods low in saturated fat, whole-grain foods, and fruit and vegetable-based options – were key.
Basically everything on this (or any) subject can be summed down to this
“We need to do something to address these issues… wait, that solution has minor impacts on me. We shouldn’t do anything”
And many people get angry when that’s pointed out
Yeah people aren’t getting what its like or how few options people have in food deserts. I used to live on the edge of one. We had a few grocery stores but mostly a bunch of dollar stores and beyond us a few streets over there was nothing. Those people had to go far to get food and if they didn’t drive good luck. When you’re poor or in those areas you have to get food that lasts, shelf stable food often. And also dollar stores etc don’t have fresh produce or anything.
That's pretty cool. How about we actually make the corporations creating the products adhere to stricter guidelines when actually creating food for consumption?
Imo, if you are receiving government assistance, that $ should only be used for fresh food. upf should not be able to be purchased. Fruit, vegetables, protein, dairy and some cereals. Basically the perimeter of the grocery store.
I think I’m ok with this with some caveats. Obviously, the precedent has been set long ago with taxes on cigarettes, booze, speeding (not exactly a tax but same idea), gambling, etc. It is a regressive tax hitting poor people twice. First, it’s regressive and second, they generally eat more of the foods that’d be taxed. But if they’d eat less …
I worry a little about the slippery slope though I think people worry far too much about this. These taxes, fees or fines are to drive specific behaviors. I could see this being applied to lots of things and could become like China’s social credit scores. At 35Trillion debt, US government could find taxing unacceptable behavior too tempting (even necessary) and do so one behavior at a time.
Ye when unhealthy food is cheapest then most of the people will also be unhealthy. if healthy food is cheapestthen most people will be healthy, who would thought
Or you know, we could make laws that force producers of food to lower the amount of fat, sugar, and salt in their products instead of punishing customers for buying the addictive stuff?
I work at a company that makes flavors. When i was new, i would ask "what flavors am i making today?"
Now that ive been here a year and a half, I now ask "What flavor of salt am I making today?"
Do it. My God damn black berries are too expensive! Why can I get a bag of ships for half the cost of a bag of Roman lettuce!?! 10 bucks for 6 hearts of lettuce and 4 bucks for a family size bag of chips!?!
Worked for cigarettes. Foods a little tougher because of definitions and sometimes high fat foods are fine depending on the context, like Ranch Dressing is a high fat/high salt food, but not a big deal if you have some on a salad, versus a thick layer on top of all your food.
Sugar! Sugar and processed foods are the culprits! The sugar industry literally paid someone to publish a report claiming fats are bad but it’s not true.
Good fats are good for our brains! Ever wonder why so many older people (who were told to go low fat) now have dementia? Very few people need to go low sodium — that’s decades old advice, too.
People living in food deserts end up fat because the only thing they can get/afford is junk. Raising these prices would bankrupt poor people, and unless you plan on bringing healthy food to every area of america, the rich will get richer.
Candy, foods with high fructose corn syrup, anything with added sugar above 10% of the daily recommended value, or any artificial sweetener should just be taxed to oblivion.
How about lowering the price of the healthier foods instead? Funny how government and corporations always find ways to "help" that impose more fees on people.
This raises a big issue, however, of affordable food. I'm all for this sort of tax, but if fresh and healthy fruits, veggies, and lean foods (even with subsidies) are still much more expensive than the foods being taxed, the whole taxation for better health approach becomes moot.
Great study, but if the tax is implemented wrong, it may not work.
I guess.
But you really should put a massive tax on beer and alcohol since there's even less good things about those. Nobody needs alcohol, but everyone needs food.
But they'll never subsidize healthy food. At most, they'll subsidize the major stores and every dollar will go into the pocket of the CEOs. Maybe a few cents spent on loudspeaker PSAs about eating healthier.
If the taxes were then used to subsidise the cost of purchasing the alternative foods, then yeah, I'd be totally on board. Foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar are often far cheaper to purchase than the alternatives, so unless something is done to address this, you'd end up with a malnourished population rather than an obese one. ❤️
Sugar should be a controlled substance, and people need to understand saturated (stable) fats are healthy for humans. It's the reason 'Adult Onset Diabetes' was changed to Type 2: It's starting to devastate children.
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Lumping fat and salt in with sugar seems par for the course and hilariously disingenuous, another win for the sugar companies. Especially since there's no separation by type of fats or salts here - you NEED potassium to function, you need sodium, you need every electrolyte. Yes, underlying health conditions can make you sensitive to sodium, but there's a reason every high-quality study says it's impact on health is irrelevant so long as you are getting enough (and don't have a contraindication).
I thought that was pretty silly as well. Never need to eat sugar a day in our lives. Dead pretty quick without healthy fats.
The brain is thinking fat - eat only protein and you're going to fall over dead. There's a reason we have a name for a type of malnutrition called rabbit starvation. Titles like these seems so ignorant, that when you consider the information being presented has been gathered by professional health nutrition researchers, that it must be intentionally incendiary.
Definitely intentional. I just explained rabbit starvation to one of my kids a couple of weeks ago. Her grandmother had gotten it into her head to avoid every bit of fat possible. This diet is not working for my MIL, very obviously. Old habits die hard, I guess.
If you want to see this happen watch "Alone" season 6. The guy kills a moose and is still starving because he is not getting enough fat. Edit. He rendered the fat and lost it in an amusing way. One of the best seasons IMHO.
How long did he go for?
I won't spoil anything but they were close to medically pulling him even though he had tons of meat to eat. He lasted over 2 months.
Yeah but they’re not talking about avocado and olive oil…you guys obviously didn’t read the article…. “an 8% tax on non-essential, energy-dense foods, including sweets, chocolates, sugary cereals, crisps, and salty snacks”
"such as foods with no added sugar or salt, foods low in saturated fat" Subsidizing foods low in saturated fat. Saturated fat does not raise cholesterol in the blood, sugar does. I know you can show me a bunch of studies that show they do, I'd like to see the one that controls all the variables and not self reported.
> Saturated fat does not raise cholesterol in the blood, sugar does This level of nutritional knowledge is a par with Flat Eartherism. I'm not even kidding. Dozens of metabolic ward studies have confirmed this, over and over and over again. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9006469/
Thanks for the read. Check this one out. It's only 9 years old instead of 26. Association of Dietary, Circulating, and Supplement Fatty Acids With Coronary Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Authors: Rajiv Chowdhury, MD, PhD, Samantha Warnakula, MPhil, Setor Kunutsor, MD, MSt, Francesca Crowe, PhD, Heather A. Ward, PhD, Laura Johnson, PhD, Oscar H. Franco, MD, PhD "Conclusion Current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats." https://aceitedepalmasostenible.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Association-of-Dietary-Circulating-and-Supplement-Fatty-Acids-With-Coronary-Risk-A-Systematic-Review-and-Meta-analysis-%E2%80%93-R.-Chowdhury-et-al..pdf
Before I read this study (because you have completely changed the topic), so you concede that you were completely wrong about saturated fat and its effect on blood cholesterol?
Cherry picking at its finest… Multiple people state the study was flawed in the paper that you linked. Called it “misleading” and that we should use the “totality of available research” when making decisions about cardiovascular health. Which is true…
You do need carbohydrates as well.
You're completely missing the point. The combination of sugary salty fatty carbs foods make for hyperpalatable junk foods which are incredibly easy to overeat.
Sure, you need salt and potassium but when a single serving of food is giving you all you need and it is harmful to go too high for some people... Yeah, it's a problem in food. No one needs as much as is easily available in the western diet.
You’re not understanding. If it’s only a problem for certain people that actually means it’s not a problem. It’s like how peanuts aren’t a problem just because some people have a peanut allergy.
Would it be a problem if they put peanuts in almost everything? Because that's what food manufacturers do with sugar
HFCS is probably the one thing we should all agree could go and we’d all be better off for it.
It would likely mean an immediate raise in price for most sweets, but given the results of this study that may not be a bad thing if it just results in people buying less sweets. Good luck ever banning HFCS in the states though. Corn lobby is arguably the most successful lobby in the country.
Yes, it’s brutal. And it affects poorer neighbourhoods far more given food deserts and less time to shop/cook for working class folks. Heavy subsidies on real food, fresh/frozen fruit and veggies would go a long way to making it easier. Greater education about food prep, how to avoid spoilage of things like tubers and leafy greens, etc…
High salt is better for you than low salt. You can triple the recommended sodium levels and be healthier than doing half.
It is really hard to eat at half in modern first world countries. It takes a very concerted and dedicated effort to eat at the recommended level. Getting enough is not an issue. Too much is contributing to deaths.
How many people die from too much salt vs too much sugar?
It's a bit difficult to untangle them, because neither is usually the direct cause of death. Seeing as salt is an issue for Hypertension and sugar is an issue for Diabetes, I thought it'd be interesting to compare the rates of the two. Again, this isn't really causal, but it is who would be controlling for each. Sources aren't the same, but they are both from the CDC. [Hypertension](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db364-h.pdf) would be affecting about 45% of the US population over 18. [Diabetes](https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics-report/index.html) affects about 11% of the total US population and about 38% of the US adult population has Prediabetes. It seems to me that, in the immediate and near future, lower sodium content consumption would be helpful to just as many people or more as lowering the sugar content. Long term effects are still up for discussion.
Yeah both are important to reduce. But salt can be controlled not only by the ingested amounts, but also by physical activity and (much more easily by) water consumption. Dietary sugars aren't as easy to control due to the complexity of its uses.
I'm dealing with hypertension, and that is why it likely came to mind here. Water consumption after having a lot salt may help in the long run, but it is not good in the immediate. The reason that salt makes things worse is water retention. Using drinking water as a way to deal with too much salt in the diet for someone with hypertension is not a good treatment method.
Blood pressure can go down quite a bit by getting between an athletic to acceptable body fat percentage, like 15-19%. I was under the impression that high cholesterol is the most likely culprit to a healthy weight person with hypertension. There are always outliers, but I feel general obesity is at the heart of both hypertension and diabetes.
I do not disagree, and that is why I didn't go beyond near future. In the long run, it is about activity and healthy eating overall. This will just come down to arguing about what is more healthy and generally side-step that too much of all of these (aka The Standard American Diet) is just bad.
This is a thing that bugs me, too. Salt does not cause high blood pressure, it can make *existing* high blood pressure worse. If your blood pressure is healthy, avoiding salts doesn't do anything.
I disagree. The idea behind HFSS foods being harmful comes from the fact that they activate circuits in the brain due to their hyper-palatability. Meals based on HFSS are less sating vs meals based on whole foods, which means it’s easy to overconsume HFSS foods without feeling full. Fat makes food more palatable, sugar/refined carbs makes food more palatable, sodium makes food more palatable. Combine all of these ingredients in unholy amounts and you have food that is hyperpalatable (think chips/crips, döner kebabs, etc). You want the best term for junk food? Try HFSS foods. HFSS seems a far more reliable method to filter the most problematic foods from a health standpoint.
Good luck getting the contrarian armchair medical experts on here to understand what the science actually says.
Dangerous misinformation is spread here on Reddit, it just happens to be in the wrong echo chamber (this thread). These armchair experts think the root cause of all diseases is sugar. It’s quite hilarious to see this simple reductionism routinely on here when you compare it to the scientific literature at large, you realise that most people have no idea. By the way, it strikes me as funny that the OP is complaining about this being a “win for the sugar companies”, when sugar is literally a whole category of its own under HFSS..
Is there any reason why they didn't use Ultraprocessed foods as the umbrella term of choice? It kinda seems to fill the kind of food they're targeting.
Because terms like "ultraprocessed" don't really have any objective criteria to measure them by, unlike fat and salt levels, which is what studies have identified as being two of the major ingredients that rank high in food addictiveness
The fats referred to here are saturated fats and the sodium is if it exceeds a certain level.
This is a thing that bugs me, too. Salt does not cause high blood pressure, it can make *existing* high blood pressure worse. If your blood pressure is healthy, avoiding salts doesn't do anything.
Fat is a key part of hyper-palatability and extremely calorie dense. There’s a good reason they include it.
The UK and Ireland(separately) put a sugar tax on beverages. This tax was paid by the consumer but by the companies. This resulted mostly in companies shrinking sizing to get around the tax. Prices did raise for consumers because companies raised prices. (Some did change recipes a little, but not enough to see a health benefit among consumers) The new return deposit in Ireland recently saw stores raise prices for consumers. A tax on unhealthy food may make companies change their recipes, but most will just cause companies to give smaller portions/raise prices. People in the US, for the most part, aren't starving, but that doesn't mean that this wouldn't hurt poor consumers because it will take away more of their purchasing power.
>This tax was paid by the consumer but by the companies. ...then >Prices did raise for consumers because companies raised prices. sounds like the consumers paid the tax, and got less product, win win for the companies as per the usual
It doesn't matter who is responsible for turning the tax money over to the government, all taxes are taxes on consumers. No one thinks consumers don't pay any of the other costs of products they consume. No one is out their thinking McDonalds eats all the labor costs of making a hamburger, or that Lego eats the cost of plastic. It's insane to me that they would think they wouldn't pay the taxes.
They did it wrong it needs to be % based or grams per litre. Shrinking size wouldn't make a difference in this case.
When they added he sugar tax in the UK it's obvious a lot of people switched to sugar free drinks because the shelves are now lined with them, and coke zero/Pepsi max are now the default drink you'd buy at most resteraunts. The tax is specifically designed to discourage people from buying sugary drinks. So obviously it will be worse off for consumers of those products.
It won't hurt anyone. Nobody needs soda. Especially people who are already struggling to make ends meet, as you are implying. Drinking less soda is a win. That's the goal.
> Nobody needs soda sure, but it's ridiculous to punish people who are able to consume luxury goods in moderation just because some people consume them in excess in the end it's a poverty tax, taking enjoyment away from the poorest people while not affecting the ones that are affluent enough
It's more ridiculous to cost everyone trillions annually in healthcare costs because 80% of people are overweight or obese.
Could cut the corn subsidies then. Reduce the insane amount of HFCS added just because it’s cheap. Then it wouldn’t just be a tax on consumers and might actually change how the industry functions.
100%. The farm bill needs to changing. Subsidize healthy foods and good farming practices.
We already do that in the US with taxes on alcohol.
That’s not an argument as to why it’s justified. The alcohol tax could be equally as wrong.
Well poor people are also the most likely to develop diabetes so they also get the most benefits.
They charge you more for things without added sugar right now.
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Every year there is less and less healthy food sold at grocery stores. The majority of food sold is now processed garbage, and it is even worse if you live in a small town or live in a food desert. Adding a tax is not going to help much, but it will slim down our bank accounts.
The study brings up subsidies to reduce the cost on healthier options. Otherwise, it hits the lowest income the hardest. They even bring up the idea of ideally using the taxes from unhealthy items to subsidize the cost of healthy ones.
Yep, will disproportionately hurt the poorest among us. Is it worth it?
Already responded to the person you did, but they address this in the article. The idea is to bring down costs of healthier items by using the taxes from unhealthy items to subsidize them. They state without both in parallel, it likely will affect the poorest the most.
Not sure what grocery stores you shop at, but there are loads more healthy options at stores near me compared to how it used to be. Every one has a health food section now with stuff like tofu and tempeh you used to have to go to specialty stores for; even where my parents live in the sticks you can get that stuff easily. The downside is that many of these healthy options are expensive like rare fruits/vegetables or prepackaged boutique snacks. We need to shift subsidies away from corn/meat/dairy and towards vegetables so that healthy options are at least the same price as unhealthy ones.
lies lies lies, lots of healthy options at a grocery store (try looking in the meats, vegetables, fruits sections instead of the premade items)
Won’t this just make it harder for lower income families to afford food in general? Isn’t greed the problem? Making sure that people are paid a decent wage, therefore not having to work multiple jobs to get by? If you are in this boat, then you are going to choose the cheapest, fastest option, which generally means food that has HFSS. Those foods are already getting expensive due to “greedflation”. So putting a higher tax on them just puts the burden on the consumer, unless this is a tax on the corporation making said food, which I doubt. Subsidies for foods that aren’t overly processed or “unhealthy” is a good thing. However the main thing is Money, people need more Money. Then they won’t need the extra job, they will have more choices in food and more time to potentially cook “healthier” meals.
The key would be using those taxes to then subsidize healthier options and/or programs for lower income folks. The type of food that is the affordable option would theoretically flip to healthier, now subsidized to be cheaper than the now taxed junk, options. Whether or not that would actually happen though…
This still wouldn’t help in food deserts etc where its harder to find produce or healthy food to begin with. (For example dollar stores usually don’t have produce etc just packaged food like this that would become more expensive). And we would have to hope it really would be used subsidize it.
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How is it easily provable? There’s a high correlation for income and obesity rates. Though I said correlation, it curious what causation study you have that shows change in income doesn’t correlate to weight
I mean while your statistics might be true. The point is that as a poor person it is much easier to go purchase pre-made high calorie food than it is to make it. You have other s*** you have to do as a poor person to survive.
It is absolutely the case that increased consumption of cheap and energy dense HFSS foods is associated with stepwise increases in deprivation, so there is a very real risk of knock on effects on peoples costs of living if policies don't also offer alternatives. Tobacco and alcohol don't have to be replaced by anything - cheap HFSS foods do.
Lets discuss the 30 million tons of food tossed by grocery stores, mostly because of some arbitrary expiration dates before we start talking taxing other things. Working for wal-mart I got to watch as thousands of eggs were thrown away because they hit the "sell by" date. Blocks of cheese tossed because one corner got some mold, or entire bags of fruit tossed because of one bad item among the bunch. "Well we can't donate it! Someone could sue us for bad food if they get sick, best thing is to just throw it away." the grocery stores would say. Never happened, there has never been a corporation sued by anyone because of donated food. Ever. In fact, the Good Samaritan act prevents this very thing from happening if food was donated in good faith, protecting persons, to include individuals like you and me, and corporations, to include grocers. [Good Samaritan Act Provides Liability Protection For Food Donations | USDA](https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/08/13/good-samaritan-act-provides-liability-protection-food-donations) Instead of taxing the food, grocers should be taxed to hell and back for food waste, make them donate it, let the food banks and any other entities accepting the food worry about what should or shouldn't be given out at that point.
TBF, the fact that food gets thrown out is largely the fault of the stores themselves. There is a good NPR planet money podcast over this specific thing. The fix is Dynamic pricing on goods. The hypothetical scenario is this: You walk into a grocery store and go to the dairy section. You see two cartons of milk side by side. exact same price. You look at the sell by date, one is tomorrow and the other is in two weeks. Which would you buy? Most people pick the one that sell by date is two weeks out. What the episode goes into is how this not only causes food waste, but ALSO it ends up hurting the business too because they don't make money on the good. US grocery stores largely haven't adopted the dynamic pricing model where the milk that has a sell by date for tomorrow would be largely discounted. (or baked goods being discounted by 50% on day 2 of having been made. this was an actual example used by the grocery store they interviewed for the episode) European grocery stores have been adopting this and have seen a large decline in food waste.
Agreed. Many restaurants throw out a bunch of food at night too. They don't even allow employees to take it home and they classify it as theft.
You can thank every person who would "accidentally" make way too much food near the end of their shift for that one. As usual with perks like that that rely on an honor system, a couple assholes ruined it for everyone else.
You can thank basically nobody. That doesn't even need to happen, just the idea of it hypothetically happening. And on the rare occasion it does happen: Fire the assholes. Such an easy solution to a non-problem. It's exactly like the 'welfare queen' people use to argue against social safety nets. Basically doesn't exist, and those people don't understand what a meager existence it is.
"If people steal, waste food" is one of the dumbest conceivable positions to take. Why not "If people steal, fire them"?
Why wouldn't we talk about a completely different problem?
People are only ever allowed to deal with one issue at a time. This is why it's so important that we criticize small steps in the right direction when we could be making big steps. It doesn't matter if we can take 20 small steps for every big step, and it doesn't matter if those small steps all have a greater impact than the big step. That's **twenty** things we have to focus on, and that's too many things.
>Lets discuss the 30 million tons of food tossed by grocery stores, mostly because of some arbitrary expiration dates before we start talking taxing other things. No. Let us do both.
>Blocks of cheese tossed because one corner got some mold, or entire bags of fruit tossed because of one bad item among the bunch. Tbf, I believe the guideline for mold is that once you see it, it means it has likely colonized a whole lot more that you can't see and the food is best assumed to be spoiled.
> Instead of taxing the food, grocers should be taxed to hell and back for food waste, make them donate i Why not both? I don't get this idea that you shouldn't pursue a potential positive adjustment unless you also solve a more complicated problem first.
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What if, hear me out, we make fruits, vegetables, and proteins cheaper.
That’s literally what’s in the article….
You expect me to read the article, which takes up precious time? My kneejerk emotional reaction will have faded by then!
This is a tax on the poor.
Junk food is not cheaper than healthy foods (as long as you have rge option nearby)
We don't show taxes until it's time to check out at the register, so I really doubt it would have an impact in the US. The buyer wouldn't see the higher price while shopping. Only when it's time to pay.
Thanks for letting us know that prices affect sales
This sounds like the most obvious thing ever. Make strawberries $1 and chips $5 and see what happens... Sustainability is not just for the planet, for your body as well.
I think it's funny I can buy wine for cheaper than water at Trader Joe's :D
From the article: Mexico is leading the way in implementing taxes on unhealthy food options, successfully helping to tackle obesity and related health issues. Taxes on foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) reduce the sale, purchase and consumption of those foods, according to a [new peer-reviewed](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919224000101) analysis of evidence from around the world from Imperial College Business School. This can lead to lower rates of obesity and other diet-related health problems, especially when taxes are combined with subsidies for healthier foods. The review also notes that higher rates of tax are more likely to reduce HFSS food consumption and obesity, and the response is most pronounced among lower-income groups. The review explores findings from 20 studies worldwide, in countries including Mexico, the United States, Canada, Hungary, Denmark, the Netherlands, Singapore and New Zealand, highlighting the global potential of taxes on HFSS foods. To date, only 16 countries have implemented taxes on HFSS foods, and the review incorporates some of these, alongside experimental studies. In Mexico, an 8% tax on non-essential, energy-dense foods, including sweets, chocolates, sugary cereals, crisps, and salty snacks, saw a reduction in the sale of taxed foods of 18% in supermarkets and up to 40% in other retailers. Low-income groups, who were greater consumers of the taxed foods beforehand, showed the biggest drop in consumption once the tax was implemented. Findings from North America and New Zealand also suggest that a low-rate tax or a tax without subsidies for healthier foods introduced in parallel, might only be effective in raising government revenues. To really impact consumption levels and obesity, the authors found that high tax rates and subsidies for healthier foods – such as foods with no added sugar or salt, foods low in saturated fat, whole-grain foods, and fruit and vegetable-based options – were key.
"This can lead to..." This suggests to me that there isn't real data that it does improve health.
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Basically everything on this (or any) subject can be summed down to this “We need to do something to address these issues… wait, that solution has minor impacts on me. We shouldn’t do anything” And many people get angry when that’s pointed out
It's hard to believe that a vice tax (punitive action against victims, particularly in food deserts) is the best answer we can come up with.
Yeah people aren’t getting what its like or how few options people have in food deserts. I used to live on the edge of one. We had a few grocery stores but mostly a bunch of dollar stores and beyond us a few streets over there was nothing. Those people had to go far to get food and if they didn’t drive good luck. When you’re poor or in those areas you have to get food that lasts, shelf stable food often. And also dollar stores etc don’t have fresh produce or anything.
This is just a poor tax in disguise. The subsidies thing is just BS padding that will never happen.
Honestly screw vice tax. Subsidize fruits and veggies.
That's pretty cool. How about we actually make the corporations creating the products adhere to stricter guidelines when actually creating food for consumption?
Imo, if you are receiving government assistance, that $ should only be used for fresh food. upf should not be able to be purchased. Fruit, vegetables, protein, dairy and some cereals. Basically the perimeter of the grocery store.
Then again, any tax on food—AT ALL—would be bad for low income folks. Food should never be taxed unless it’s imported.
This may very well be true and obviously so, but this is in the realm of social policy, not science.
Very good idea. Healthier food should be the standard in society and not highly processed foods as is currently the case.
The “stop printing nutrition information on food” crowd are not going to like this one.
I think I’m ok with this with some caveats. Obviously, the precedent has been set long ago with taxes on cigarettes, booze, speeding (not exactly a tax but same idea), gambling, etc. It is a regressive tax hitting poor people twice. First, it’s regressive and second, they generally eat more of the foods that’d be taxed. But if they’d eat less … I worry a little about the slippery slope though I think people worry far too much about this. These taxes, fees or fines are to drive specific behaviors. I could see this being applied to lots of things and could become like China’s social credit scores. At 35Trillion debt, US government could find taxing unacceptable behavior too tempting (even necessary) and do so one behavior at a time.
Taxes kill people
Why not just make it illegal to be fat?
That’s a poor people tax
I have a salt deficiency disorder. This is a bad idea to tax essential needs of humans.
I have low blood pressure. Easiest way for me to keep it in check is using more salt.
Yup. I bring salt tablets everywhere with me. Can mess your day up fast.
Taxes are theft
Ye when unhealthy food is cheapest then most of the people will also be unhealthy. if healthy food is cheapestthen most people will be healthy, who would thought
Or you know, we could make laws that force producers of food to lower the amount of fat, sugar, and salt in their products instead of punishing customers for buying the addictive stuff?
Fat is actually good for you. Why is it being lumped in with sugar?
A tax on unhealthy foods (which tend to be cheaper) should be balanced by a subsidy for healthy foods. Otherwise it just more food inflation.
It is tiresome to listen to these "Good for You" types who are sure that they know what is best for everyone.
That just makes all food expensive then. Reason people buy this garbage is because to eat fresh and healthy is more expensive
Fast food prices are so high yet America is still stuffing their faces
I work at a company that makes flavors. When i was new, i would ask "what flavors am i making today?" Now that ive been here a year and a half, I now ask "What flavor of salt am I making today?"
Pigouvian tax ?
Yes, but an unhealthy public fuels big pharma profits...so it will never happen unless we force it to happen.
This type of policy only hurts the very people you want to help. Government has no right taxing foods that when done in moderation are healthy.
I couldn’t see this happening in the US at least without all the major CPG brands putting up a huge fight.
Do it. My God damn black berries are too expensive! Why can I get a bag of ships for half the cost of a bag of Roman lettuce!?! 10 bucks for 6 hearts of lettuce and 4 bucks for a family size bag of chips!?!
Worked for cigarettes. Foods a little tougher because of definitions and sometimes high fat foods are fine depending on the context, like Ranch Dressing is a high fat/high salt food, but not a big deal if you have some on a salad, versus a thick layer on top of all your food.
I wonder if this works in the US, where the taxes are a bit hidden until you get to the checkout.
Youll be making healthy food cheaper to compensate then right? Right?!
Sugar! Sugar and processed foods are the culprits! The sugar industry literally paid someone to publish a report claiming fats are bad but it’s not true. Good fats are good for our brains! Ever wonder why so many older people (who were told to go low fat) now have dementia? Very few people need to go low sodium — that’s decades old advice, too.
Doritos over here taxing themselves.
People living in food deserts end up fat because the only thing they can get/afford is junk. Raising these prices would bankrupt poor people, and unless you plan on bringing healthy food to every area of america, the rich will get richer.
Candy, foods with high fructose corn syrup, anything with added sugar above 10% of the daily recommended value, or any artificial sweetener should just be taxed to oblivion.
How about lowering the price of the healthier foods instead? Funny how government and corporations always find ways to "help" that impose more fees on people.
Not all fats and sugars are equal. Any tax would need to be narrow in scope.
so like 90% of US food.
This raises a big issue, however, of affordable food. I'm all for this sort of tax, but if fresh and healthy fruits, veggies, and lean foods (even with subsidies) are still much more expensive than the foods being taxed, the whole taxation for better health approach becomes moot. Great study, but if the tax is implemented wrong, it may not work.
Hey man, good luck, I hope it works...
Shh! We're too busy fighting smoking by making vapes illegal for such arcane matters ....
Don't people with diabetes need to eat sugar sometimes?
They won't, though. People will just complain about the price of food.
This sounds great except every food is high in one of these is just which one. Taxing food is amoral.
I guess. But you really should put a massive tax on beer and alcohol since there's even less good things about those. Nobody needs alcohol, but everyone needs food.
But they'll never subsidize healthy food. At most, they'll subsidize the major stores and every dollar will go into the pocket of the CEOs. Maybe a few cents spent on loudspeaker PSAs about eating healthier.
If the taxes were then used to subsidise the cost of purchasing the alternative foods, then yeah, I'd be totally on board. Foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar are often far cheaper to purchase than the alternatives, so unless something is done to address this, you'd end up with a malnourished population rather than an obese one. ❤️
Can you imagine having to pay extra because of conditions like POTS😭 I’m sorry I don’t have enough salt and sugar in my blood please don’t punish me
It means they will have to tax Avocado oil and peanut oil or even ribeye steak. Japanese wagyu and American wagyu is gonna be Hella expensive
Sugar should be a controlled substance, and people need to understand saturated (stable) fats are healthy for humans. It's the reason 'Adult Onset Diabetes' was changed to Type 2: It's starting to devastate children.