Should Junk Food Should Be Taxed?

1852 Words4 Pages

Canada has a problem with obesity and a solution should be established. Junk food is easily accessible and because of this, low-income families are more likely to buy bigger quantities of it due to lower costs. Obesity can lead to diseases and serious illnesses, some of the most likely illnesses to get from obesity include Type 2 Diabetes, Uterine Cancer, and Gallbladder Disease. While these illnesses and diseases are bad, the population of people that have them can be decreased by decreasing the amount of sugary, carbonated, and high sodium foods humans consume. Junk food should be taxed because it will decrease consumption and reduce obesity rates as well as incidence of diseases, while the revenue generated by these taxes can be used to …show more content…

By adding a tax, people will stop buying unhealthy foods daily. Being able to decrease the number of unhealthy food people eat, will better our overall health, and will decline our obesity rates. A study done "as of 2003, US states without sales taxes on soft drinks or snack foods were 4 times as likely as states with a tax to have a relative increase in the prevalence of obesity" (Franck, Grandi, & Eisenberg, 2003). This is a good example of how taxing junk food will help the populations problem with obesity. With easier access to junk food, people are more likely to buy it because it is a cheap substitute for the pricey healthy …show more content…

People are going to argue that adding taxes to junk food is not going to decrease the amount of consumption, and they are going to argue there is not is not going to be any proportional change in the consumption if it is taxed. Even if “Observational data suggest that food consumption is relatively insensitive to price changes, the proportional change in consumption being less than the proportional change in price” (Mytton, Clarke, & Rayner, 2012). The argument against adding taxes to alcohol and tobacco had the same issues. However, it is suggested that “market failures for food include a failure to appreciate the true association between diet and disease, time inconsistency (preference for short term gratification over long term well-being) and not bearing the full health and social costs of consumption” (Mytton, Clarke, & Rayner,

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