Sugar tax: Doctors call for sweet drink levy

[Giovenith]

Not really. Healthy food for a family of five where I live is roughly the same as an equivalent lot of fast food, sometimes more expensive.

Healthy food isn't just quinoa and gluten free oats y'know.

Good old cabbage, rye bread, spaghetti, peas and carrots etc. is dirt cheap.

Food prices do not remain the same everywhere. Some places those things are far from dirt cheap, especially if you live in an urban area where the only produce available took the expense of being shipped a far distance. I don't know where you live, but as someone who has lived in both the city and county, rural people tend to take for granted the ready ability of nearby vegetation sources and often forget that not everyone has a local farmer's market.

[Tule]

Healthy food isn't just quinoa and gluten free oats y'know.

Good old cabbage, rye bread, spaghetti, peas and carrots etc. is dirt cheap.

Food prices do not remain the same everywhere. Some places those things are far from dirt cheap, especially if you live in an urban area where the only produce available took the expense of being shipped a far distance. I don't know where you live, but as someone who has lived in both the city and county, rural people tend to take for granted the ready ability of nearby vegetation sources and often forget that not everyone has a local farmer's market.

I live in Iceland.

Fast food is vastly more expensive than the sum of its parts in a supermarket. Even though we have to import half our food.

[Arkinesia]

Sugar taxes don't help solve the problem one whit. Just like cigarette taxes don't actually cut the amount of smokers and alcohol taxes don't reduce excessive drinking.

Maybe instead, we should focus on ending the food industry's reliance on high fructose corn syrup by getting rid of idiotic sugar tariffs that do nothing but cost consumers $100b/year. Or people could start lobbying their favorite soda companies for lower-sugar formulas (most America soda has way too much sugar to taste any good anyway).

[Australian rePublic]

Most countries (Aust. Included) have banned high fructose corn cyrup

[Dooom35796821595]

Food prices do not remain the same everywhere. Some places those things are far from dirt cheap, especially if you live in an urban area where the only produce available took the expense of being shipped a far distance. I don't know where you live, but as someone who has lived in both the city and county, rural people tend to take for granted the ready ability of nearby vegetation sources and often forget that not everyone has a local farmer's market.

I live in Iceland

Fast food is vastly more expensive than the sum of its parts in a supermarket. Even though we have to import half our food.

Well that's great for you, but what about all the people who don't live in a British supermarket chain?

[Costa Fierro]

Not really. Healthy food for a family of five where I live is roughly the same as an equivalent lot of fast food, sometimes more expensive.

Healthy food isn't just quinoa and gluten free oats y'know.

Good old cabbage, rye bread, spaghetti, peas and carrots etc. is dirt cheap.

Again, not really. It isn't "dirt cheap" where I live.

I live in Iceland.

Fast food is vastly more expensive than the sum of its parts in a supermarket. Even though we have to import half our food.

New Zealand is a bit of a different story. A day's worth of food for us is probably between $70-$80 if we decide to cook. We had McDonald's tonight and for four people, it cost us $56.

[Salandriagado]

Healthy food isn't just quinoa and gluten free oats y'know.

Good old cabbage, rye bread, spaghetti, peas and carrots etc. is dirt cheap.

Again, not really. It isn't "dirt cheap" where I live.

I live in Iceland.

Fast food is vastly more expensive than the sum of its parts in a supermarket. Even though we have to import half our food.

New Zealand is a bit of a different story. A day's worth of food for us is probably between $70-$80 if we decide to cook. We had McDonald's tonight and for four people, it cost us $56.

This struck me as bullshit, so I went to countdown.co.nz, and did some looking around, and came up with this:


bread: $2 (1 loaf)
ham: $2.80 (200g)
marge: $1.50 (500g)
jam: $2.79 (680g)
milk: $3.70 (2L)
cereal: $4 (600g)
mince: $9 (1kg)
onions: $2.49 (1kg)
cabbage: $2.29 (1 head)
courgette: $5 (500g)
lettuce: $2.79 (1 head)
apples: $4.49 (1kg)
tinned tomatoes:$4.18 (2 tins)
pasta: $0.95 (500g)


Total cost: $47.98, plenty to feed four people for a day, with loads of stuff lasting longer than that, and I shopped well above the bottom end of the price range, and came up with an evening meal that definitely wasn't anywhere near as cheap as what Tule suggested. You could probably half that cost with some shopping around.

[Scandinavian Nations]

Yeah. I don't know anywhere where eating out is actually cheaper than eating in - unless the basic ingredients are times apart in price (imported Oz tenderloin and controlled origin cheese vs bulk chicken and cheese flavored product).

[Costa Fierro]

Again, not really. It isn't "dirt cheap" where I live.



New Zealand is a bit of a different story. A day's worth of food for us is probably between $70-$80 if we decide to cook. We had McDonald's tonight and for four people, it cost us $56.

This struck me as bullshit, so I went to countdown.co.nz, and did some looking around, and came up with this:


bread: $2 (1 loaf)
ham: $2.80 (200g)
marge: $1.50 (500g)
jam: $2.79 (680g)
milk: $3.70 (2L)
cereal: $4 (600g)
mince: $9 (1kg)
onions: $2.49 (1kg)
cabbage: $2.29 (1 head)
courgette: $5 (500g)
lettuce: $2.79 (1 head)
apples: $4.49 (1kg)
tinned tomatoes:$4.18 (2 tins)
pasta: $0.95 (500g)


Total cost: $47.98, plenty to feed four people for a day, with loads of stuff lasting longer than that, and I shopped well above the bottom end of the price range, and came up with an evening meal that definitely wasn't anywhere near as cheap as what Tule suggested. You could probably half that cost with some shopping around.

That's with ham, which is usually the cheapest meat. Anything with steak or lamb will definitely bump up the price considerably. Also whilst Countdown is one of the cheaper supermarkets here, it's not the cheapest. Depending on where you shop, it can be considerably less or considerably more.

[Salandriagado]

This struck me as bullshit, so I went to countdown.co.nz, and did some looking around, and came up with this:


bread: $2 (1 loaf)
ham: $2.80 (200g)
marge: $1.50 (500g)
jam: $2.79 (680g)
milk: $3.70 (2L)
cereal: $4 (600g)
mince: $9 (1kg)
onions: $2.49 (1kg)
cabbage: $2.29 (1 head)
courgette: $5 (500g)
lettuce: $2.79 (1 head)
apples: $4.49 (1kg)
tinned tomatoes:$4.18 (2 tins)
pasta: $0.95 (500g)


Total cost: $47.98, plenty to feed four people for a day, with loads of stuff lasting longer than that, and I shopped well above the bottom end of the price range, and came up with an evening meal that definitely wasn't anywhere near as cheap as what Tule suggested. You could probably half that cost with some shopping around.

That's with ham, which is usually the cheapest meat. Anything with steak or lamb will definitely bump up the price considerably. Also whilst Countdown is one of the cheaper supermarkets here, it's not the cheapest. Depending on where you shop, it can be considerably less or considerably more.

The ham is just for sandwiches. The beef mince is for the evening meal. And you haven't actually addressed the point.

[Scandinavian Nations]

This struck me as bullshit, so I went to countdown.co.nz, and did some looking around, and came up with this:

That's with ham, which is usually the cheapest meat. Anything with steak or lamb will definitely bump up the price considerably.

Did you get steak or lamb in your mcdonalds meal?

[Free Missouri]

I think it's somewhat reasonable for the state to make it more difficult and expensive for people to make persistently unhealthy decisions.

Nope, it's not, that expands out of the the powers of the state.

The state's job is to protect our rights, not control or influence our lives through laws and taxes (looking at you New York with your idiotic soda ban)

[Nosuria]

Making unhealthy food and drink more expensive and less easily available is only good if healthy food and drink are concurrently made less expensive and more easily available to the same community

[Free Missouri]

Making unhealthy food and drink more expensive and less easily available is only good if healthy food and drink are concurrently made less expensive and more easily available to the same community

Which will only happen if we stop using idiotic government-run food programs that raise the price of food to the consumer and lower the price of crop sold by the farmer.

Getting the government out of our business is the best way to do it.

[Nosuria]

Making unhealthy food and drink more expensive and less easily available is only good if healthy food and drink are concurrently made less expensive and more easily available to the same community

Which will only happen if we stop using idiotic government-run food programs that raise the price of food to the consumer and lower the price of crop sold by the farmer.

Getting the government out of our business is the best way to do it.

I partly agree. In the US lunatic farm subsidies, say, to corn and dairy farmers, have heavily put their thumb on the scale with the agricultural industry for so long that the entire agro-economy is built around it. We genetically modify animals to be able to digest corn instead of feeding them what they're actually evolved to eat, and then wonder why we keep getting outbreaks of disease in our meat. The government lies to people about how much meat and dairy they ought o be consuming, because it's in the interests of entrenched big business and because it's cheaper to get people to keep poisoning themselves than restructure the economy (or indeed, leave it alone and let it restructure itself). But your position seems that bad state intervention should be fixed by eliminating the role of the state altogether, and leaving it up to those entrenched business interests to self-regulate. That wouldn't change anything. The big businesses are complicit with government in the system. In fact, they're the ones who keep pressure of the state to not mess with the status quo. What's needed is a divorce of the farm lobby and the government, followed by a reset in state policy.

[Arkinesia]

We genetically modify animals to be able to digest corn instead of feeding them what they're actually evolved to eat, and then wonder why we keep getting outbreaks of disease in our meat.

[muffled laughter]

The government lies to people about how much meat and dairy they ought o be consuming, because it's in the interests of entrenched big business and because it's cheaper to get people to keep poisoning themselves than restructure the economy (or indeed, leave it alone and let it restructure itself).

[muffled laughter]

Ok, you don't have any idea how this works, so I'll explain it to you nice and slow.

Disease outbreaks are not a cause of eating corn (wtf?) so much as how meat is prepared—in closed environments, with lots of moisture, which are frequently warm…aka THE BEST PLACE EVER FOR BACTERIA. Hello? This is elementary biology.

Sure, these companies are (usually) pretty stringent about antibacterial care for their facilities, but something is gonna slip through. It's inevitable. Which is why I frequently argue that we need to loosen up regulations on butchers and allow them to make use of facilities with more space, or even allow open-air butchering which is, counter-intuitively, a lower-risk environment in many cases.

As for nutritional information, the government intentionally overestimates the amounts of good nutrients needed and lowballs the amount of less good nutrients needed because of psychology. People routinely improperly estimate the amount of any given nutrient they take in over the course of a day, so the government instead is trying to adjust people's psyches so that they will, by and large, trend in the right direction on certain macronutrients in particular (those being calories, carbohydrates, sugars, and proteins). This is also why the food pyramid hugely favors meats even though there's a lot to be said for eating white meats over red meats and the whole not all meats are created equal thing.

[Tevehas]

Maybe instead of taxing people who know what a balanced diet is, they should just make it so people who eat themselves to death aren't entitled to taxpayer funded benefits.

[MERIZoC]

Sales taxes are regressive, and punish the poor. I cant speak for Australia, but America would be much better off doing away with corn subsidies and the like, instead subsidizing fruits and vegetables.

[Tevehas]

Sales taxes are regressive, and punish the poor. I cant speak for Australia, but America would be much better off doing away with corn subsidies and the like, instead subsidizing fruits and vegetables.

My main man! You are woke a f my dude.

Better yet, get rid of subsidies all together and let the market actually work. (No this isn't irony.)