Tax on saturated fat? and salt?

(ishaisagi) #1

yeah - lumped in with sugar, saturated fat and salt are considered fat food by University of Melbourne’s school of public health:

(Cathy Schroder) #2

Time to lobby our local federal MPs fellow Australians?

(Dustin Cade) #3

Micheal Bloomberg tried to do similar things in new York, banning any soda being sold more than 16oz, or something like that… it didn’t work…

(Alex Forbes) #4

I’m all for a sugar tax, but I will be contacting my federal MP to make sure they don’t touch my saturated fats!

(ishaisagi) #5

I think the first step is not to lobby against the tax, but to make people (the scientists in melbourne for one) understand that saturated fats are essential for a healthy diet. once this gets through to them, it will make its way into policies.

(Cathy Schroder) #6

That’s what I meant - if we all start contacting our local MPs and providing them with our individual stories then perhaps some of them might be interested enough to look at the science. Wouldn’t that be wonderful!

#7

I dare say the DAA, AHPRA and certain food giants will continue to fight tooth and nail to retain the status quo for some time yet, sadly.

(Thomas Clark) #8

Try not to hate on me too much but I don’t think taxing people for sugar is a good thing. I suppose if the Tax were limited strictly to the cost of consuming the sugar and the result of the consumption it would make sense but in my experience most of these taxes are an excuse to extort more money out of people and if you tax it to much your drive it under ground. I also see cities putting taxes on things like sugary drinks while at the same time it is official policies of government agencies to promote low fat diets and promote the consumption of carbohydrates. It doesn’t seem right to me to victimize the wallets of consumers when the government has conflicting policies and does not promote the truth. Truth in the eyes of governments is false in our eyes so how can you compel policies based in part on a falsehood? There is so much conflicting information out there and people have been brain washed and confused so it seems wrong to me to punish them with a more taxes.

(Jamie Hayes) #9

See https://youtu.be/0sNqnAZTy4w to see how blunt, out of date, misguided and ineffective this would be.

To my mind taxing sugar makes sense. If GST were to increase on all processed foods including bread, that would make a difference.

I’m not impressed when “experts” conflate fruit and vegetables together. Various fruits and vegetables vay widely in their nutrient and carbohydrate density.

What’s our big health problem? Can you estimate what % of the western world have diagnosed or undiagnosed insulin resistance?

(Thomas Clark) #10

I would agree that when you tax something you tend to get less of it and taxing processed carbohydrates would most likely lead to people consuming less of them. I don’t think it right to punish people who have been mislead and confused by all the contradictory information out there.You are just as likely to have more taxes on high fat food items accompanying them and then the message to people would be even worse, you would escalate the in information war and generate more propaganda. I don’t think point of taxation should be to punish, it should only be to fund the necessities of government.

(Thomas Clark) #11

It occurred to me that Sugar prices in the USA are kept at an artificially high price by government policy, so if you added an extra tax to it you would be gouging the consumer/tax payer twice. Corn is also subsidized, so you take money from tax payers to keep the price of corn low, kind of the opposite of sugar, (not that either is a good idea) and if you add a tax to corn or corn syrup you are taxing it twice, once to keep the price low and second time to raise the price. I am opposed to both. I think it is better just to keep spreading the word to help people understand what we have learned, trying to get the government to do it is just going to cause an expensive contradiction.

(Dustin Cade) #12

they subsidize corn to make corn syrup, so really if they are taking taxes to subsidize corn and then taxing items made w/corn syrup they are already being taxed twice…