'Fat Taxes'

The merits of so-called fat taxes on sugar- and fat-laden products have been hotly debated for years. On one side of the fence, public health advocates believe such measures will deter consumers from buying unhealthy foods, thereby improving their overall health. But when the countries of Hungary and Denmark enacted nationwide fat taxes in 2011, critics around the world blasted these initiatives as steps toward “nanny states” that force food choices on a captive population.

One more boon for the fat-tax hater: A recent review of 20 years’ worth of studies on the effectiveness of fat taxes found that the positive effects are small — though poorer populations and people who were more at risk for obesity were the most likely to benefit. Overall, researchers wrote in The Millbank Quarterly, “small taxes or subsidies are not likely to produce significant changes in body mass index or obesity prevalence.”

More recently, researchers at Iowa State University published a paper in the journal Contemporary Economic Policy that concluded a fat tax would be most effective if, instead of taxing sugary goods as they move through the checkout line, food processors were taxed for use of caloric sweeteners, such as high-fructose corn syrup and table sugar. Meanwhile, a group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote a position paper in the journal Nature calling for the regulation of sugar as a controlled substance like alcohol and tobacco.