Food Fight!: The Legal Debate Over The Obesity Epidemic, Food Labeling, And The Government's Involvement In What You Eat
THE ‘FAT TAX’ IS NOT A SOLUTION TO THE HIGH SOCIAL COSTS OF FAST FOOD CONSUMPTION
Individual responsibility is an American ideal. Americans have been, at least in our cultural myth, an intrepid and ambitious people, wanting nothing but to be in control of our own destinies. From this flows consumer sovereignty. Don’t tell us what to buy; don’t tell us what to eat. Many among us feel that people should be allowed to eat fast food at their own risk–and suffer the eventual consequences should they indulge too much.
The danger in cleaving too closely to this cocksure and manly ideal is that we are also a forgiving and compassionate people: we do not actually let people suffer the full consequences of their actions. We do not let our poor struggle and die under the weight of diabetes and heart failure without at least attempting to help. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, we spent 21% of our Federal budget in 2010 on Medicare, Medicaid and the Childrens’ Health Insurance Program. Another 14% went to programs that provided aid other than social security or healthcare to people facing hardships. Thus the problem with an attitude toward fast food regulation that allows people to persist in risky and unhealthy habits is that we will not really allow them to suffer alone. If a harsh individualism is an American ideal, fortunately, we are better than our philosophy.
To some this creates a “moral hazard,” a fixture of law and economics analysis that says that those who are insured against risk have less incentive to incur costs to reduce or avoid that risk. The poor do not pay premiums; Medicare is a free insurance policy for the group of Americans who most disproportionately rely on fast food.
The “fat tax,” some argue, addresses the moral hazard externality by fixing a cost directly to the unhealthy and socially expensive act of eating fast food. Not only would this fund healthcare with the dollars of the actual users of fast food, it would also provide an economic disincentive to eat fast food in the first place.
This is a simplistic and unhelpful approach to a serious problem because the quality of the food we eat is a key identifier of class. Fast food is largely responsible for our seemingly contradictory relationship between poverty and obesity. A 2008 study by the USDA found that women and children living on food stamps were more likely to be overweight than those who were not. As the economy was slumped, food prices have risen. A 2008 article in the New York Times tells of Adam Drewnowski, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington, who studied food prices in Seattle in 2007. In that time the most nutritious foods rose 19.5%, while junk food prices dropped 1.8%.
Lisa Miller’s 2010 article in the Daily Beast tells the story of a woman living in Brooklyn, who, even if she finds the time to cook, does not have access to decent and affordable fruits and vegetables in her local grocery stores. “Whole Foods sells fresh, beautiful tomatoes,” she says. “Here, they’re packaged and full of chemicals anyway. So I mostly buy canned foods.” The same article quotes Michael Pollen: “essentially…we have a system where wealthy farmers feed the poor crap and poor farmers feed the wealthy high-quality food.”
Industrial food, urban life, and the realities of an economy where low income parents work several jobs and don’t have time to cook means that fast food does not always have a viable alternative. The problem with the moral hazard approach is that disincentivizing fast food requires there be a meaningful alternative. Making a staple food source more expensive so that poor people cannot burden the rest of us with their health problems is simply unworkable, not to mention unacceptable.
Sources:
Jeff Strnad, “Conceptualizing the “Fat Tax”: The Role of Food Taxes in Developed Economies 78 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1221 (June 2005).
Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go? Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, April 15 2011.
Tara Parker-Pope, Money is Tight, and Junk Food Beckons, N.Y. Times, November 3, 2008.
Lisa Miller, Divided We Eat, The Daily Beast.com, November 22, 2010
Paul Wallis, Fast Food Global Boom, Huge Profits, as Recession hits Incomes, DigitalJournal.com, February 2, 2009.
McDonalds Rings up Stronger Profits on Rising Sales, The Independent, January 22, 2010.
COMMENTS
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This article insightfully points out that the flawed assumption behind the “fax tax” is that everyone who purchases less-expensive, less-healthful foods does so only because they prefer these foods. For those who have the economic resources to make a choice to indulge in these less-healthful foods on occasion, it might be a natural assumption that the higher fat and sugar content of these foods is the reason that anyone else who eats these less-healthful foods does so also. If that was true, then it would be okay to impose a “fat tax” because everyone who eats these foods is making his or her choice in complete freedom. Of course, it is not true and it is worth reflecting on the fact that very few people who can make a meaningful choice about what types of foods they eat choose to consistently rely on less-healthful foods for their nutritional needs.