http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/10/02 ... thy-foods/

Pretty cool, imho.

Yea, lovely... a sin tax. It's a sin to eat fatty foods, so we're going to tax you more to do it. Bah. Government needs to stop meddling in stupid crap imo. Either make it illegal, or go do something more important.

zomg @ Ox reading Fox.

I don't think the reasons behind it have anything to do with sin...more with public health and money. After all, unhealthy foods indirectly put a strain on society. People who are unhealthy or very fat are costly and of little value to society, so it only makes sense they pay more for their indulgences. You should probably see it from the pov of a society with an expansive social security network that everyone is obligated to contribute to, and pretty heavily so...in that sense, higher taxes on unhealthy food, cigarettes or even alcohol make sense since people who are not slobs are paying for other's bad habits. But I agree that in the US it would make less sense because there is more focus on your individual choices re: insurances etc (and it does appear that in the US a lot of these laws are based in Christian morality rather than pragmatism).

All in all, this is of course a semi-PR campaign by a government to levy more taxes, but as we all know they will raise taxes anyway so I'd rather have them tax fat than other stuff. IDEALLY the government should raise awareness on eating habits and health rather than taxing outright - since it doesn't hurt to eat something fatty once every while - but I think that it's ultimately impossible to reach some corners/depths of society...I once saw a show here in Belgium that was about finding people with horrible eating habits and trying to help them. One woman had a massive jar of mayonaise in her fridge and would eat spoons of mayonaise FOR A SNACK. Like, watch a movie on tv and eat mayonaise. ZOMG. I mean are these people that retarded that they don't know that's a horrible idea? The answers are yes they are, or they know it's incredibly unhealthy but do it anyway. Neither are very encouraging.

As for the Fox thing...I read the news on a Dutch-speaking site and just grabbed the first English link on it.

meh, I still disagree with taxing fatty foods. I also disagree with taxing cigarettes and alcohol. If you don't want people to do it, make it illegal... at least that way we can get it illegally. Just because something bad for you in general, doesn't mean it's bad for everyone, or bad in limited quantities (as you mention). Want to subsidize your social security system? Rather than tax foods that make people fat, how about you just tax fat people? Skip the middleman, jump right to the source. Or, to be more exacting, how about you tax people when they go to the doctor? X visits per year are free, everything beyond that you get some extra cash taken from you at the end of the year. Replace number of visits by $ value of visits, perhaps.

As far as fatty foods, I eat them, but in limited quantities. I'm also in better shape than 90% of my countrymen. Why should I have to pay more to subsidize those bastards?

Typical capitalism... Putting band aids on gashes and at the same time profiting from it.

I mostly eat chicken, turkey and fish, usually tilapia. But yea, I like to eat stuff that's horrible for me from time to time... a huge steak, a burger (though you can make healthy burgers), pizza... all that great stuff. My personal favorite is french with gobs of melted cheese and like an entire package of bacon crumbled onto it. Freaking heart attack waiting to happen, but it's so good.

I'm in two minds on this. After all, people who have more money than sense (or just more stomach than sense ) will continue to eat it even if they can't afford it, they're not gonna stop just coz it costs more. Cigarettes, alcohol and drugs cost a lot and people still just spend on them even if they can't afford them (ok so they're more obviously addictive than fatty foods but people do get addicted to eating as well, just less so). I personally figure let people do what they want (except cigarettes, anything that can harm me without actual violence, such as alcohol-related rage is evil! evil I say!) and if they get too fat or unhealthy to reproduce/live that's their tough luck.

It's always kinda pissed me off that over here you can eat yourself to a heart attack and get given all sorts of medical treatment for free yet I have to pay extortionate amounts of money just to be able to see thanks to having been born with faulty eyes. I guess that ties in with Satis' argument about taxing fat people, rather than what makes them fat. I'm all for human rights and improving our lives and stuff but some things just aren't fair! *will avoid getting into a huge rant about all this stuff, I could probably go on all night*

There's a thought, maybe we'll go back to the old times where being fat is a sign of status and richness and all us poor peasants will be stick-thin vegetarians...

Hmmm... can I look like a peasant but live like a king? I'd date peasants too. Definitely. Besides, you can always knock up a peasant and blame god, or stick a pitchfork in her. Ahh,the good old dark ages.