Time for a Twinkie Tax?
7. How to slim down the world's fattest society
This would be unabashed social engineering. But so is virtually anything the government does about public-health dangers, such as air pollution or drunk driving, that pose smaller threats to most people's life expectancy. And compared with the way the government handles problems like air pollution or drunk driving--by imposing regulations--instituting a Twinkie tax would be less bureaucratic and intrusive. Some Americans may cringe at the thought of having to pay more for certain foods when they themselves don't have a weight problem. But doing nothing to address obesity imposes big financial costs on society, too. Even some who find the proposal harsh or preachy are joining the call for the Pillsbury Doughboy's head. "It may be time for a last resort. We are losing the battle," says Arthur Frank, director of the Obesity Management Program at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Brownell himself has little sympathy for those who ask to be left alone as they chow down their Cheetos. Eat pork rinds if you like, he says, but you'll pay for them, just as you pay for cigarettes and alcohol. To the extent that working-class people eat more pork rinds than affluent people, who are more partial to crudites, the tax would be regressive, just as cigarette taxes are now. (Food represents between 10 percent and 15 percent of most people's budgets, except for the very poor and the very rich.) If a Twinkie tax's net effect ended up being that people simply paid more for their Twinkies--and poor people paid proportionately the most--it would have to be judged a failure. But it would impose no monetary cost on people who were steered away from junk food entirely, and only a modest cost on those who indulged moderately. At the same time, it would bring considerable benefit, monetary and otherwise, in the form of better health.
At the moment, it's true, a "fat tax" would seem to stand a fat chance politically. Small "snack taxes" intended purely to produce revenue in California and Maryland were quickly repealed after snack-food makers and consumers went up in arms. A beefed-up federal version would not be popular, to put it mildly. But Brownell insists his idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds: "If someone had proposed 30 years ago that we should raise prices on cigarettes, that we should ban smoking in public places, that states should sue to recover health care costs, who would have believed that would happen?"
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