Food for Thought by Daphne Oz

On July 23, Mark Bittman put out an incredibly moving and impossibly simple plea to the public in a column for The New York Times, titled "Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables."

His premise is obvious: We Americans are getting unhealthier by the day, and we are not taking the right steps to stem the obesity epidemic, which is making us the world leader in lifestyle-related disease. Granted, it seems the deck has been stacked against us, what with the prevalence and affordability of highly processed, empty-calorie foods, which form the convenience food groups of today. But as Bittman aptly points out, the convenience food industries aim for profits, not public health, so how can we blame them for capitalizing on our eagerness as consumers for a "good deal"?

The real issue is that the governing bodies whose mandate is to protect the public good — and improving our ability to access and affordably purchase healthy food would improve public good in both immediate and long-term ways by helping us better care for our health and curbing health care expenditures down the road — seem to be rendered paralyzed by the huge donation dollars of special-interest lobby groups and the rotating door between government jobs at the USDA and FDA and high-ranking positions at food giants, such as Monsanto and ConAgra.

Moreover, the government's meager efforts at redemption through consumer education (though we still have not achieved universal labeling policies, which would at least make clear to purchasers what they are buying and where and how it was grown) are overwhelmed by the advertising might of fast-food chains, totaling $4 billion last year, according to Bittman. Add to this mix the fact that our citizenry is experiencing a financial crunch, desperately trying to squeeze every last cent of value from purchases, and it is easy to see how the scales of diet influence tip in the direction of those providers beckoning us to feast for as little as $4.99.

Americans now find it easier to eat food that actually harms us — think meat from industrial farms, genetically modified corn and its many iterations as potato chips and processed cereals and high-fructose corn syrup — than the raw materials that arrive out of the ground as nature's powerhouse fuel foods, your basic fruits and veggies. Compare the prices of chips, hamburgers and soda with those of apples, salads and water and you will begin to see this principle at play.

This disparity is thanks to the nearly $25 billion we taxpayers turn over in farm subsidies to select industries that provide a buoy and thereby allow producers to sell us their wares at drastically reduced prices from what it actually costs to create these overly processed products.

Currently, rather than tax unhealthy foods, we subsidize them. Obesity-related health costs are projected to hit $344 billion by 2018, and roughly 60 percent of this figure will be borne by the federal government (aka your tax dollars). It seems wise to me to implement a program that not only curbs this expenditure but also may help to reverse it and bring the number down as more and more people are given a choice about how they feed their families, with access to a food system that does not distort the value of its produce.

By Bittman's estimation, "a 20 percent increase in the price of sugary drinks nationally could result in about a 20 percent decrease in consumption, which in the next decade could prevent 1.5 million Americans from becoming obese and 400,000 cases of diabetes, saving about $30 billion." He goes on to discuss the various ways such a "food tax" could be applied and, more importantly, the numerous ways that the profits we would earn from taxing the foods that are making us sick could be rerouted to make us healthy once more, physically and psychologically. Perhaps most moving, Americans could set an example as the inventors of an antidote to the "standard American diet" we created.

Detractors from this sort of nationally legislated eating program say that to allow the government to determine how we eat is to effectively engender a nanny state. But we would be silly not to see that the state already has say in how we eat by determining which food producers receive the largesse of our tax dollars. Instituting a "junk food tax" would simply level the playing field and give us back the reins.

We may feel entitled to cheap meat with breakfast, lunch and dinner — to a meal made up basically of one food group that is momentarily filling even while being nutritionally void. But this mentality is simply a product of having been deprived of any real choice for so long. We have grown complacent in assuming that what the government decides is best for us to eat must be correct. We are tricked into thinking we are getting a bargain, even as we are forced to mortgage our health down the line on cheap meals that will cost us everything. It's up to us, as educated consumers, to demand we be given the option to be healthy, and there is no time to lose.

To find out more about Daphne Oz and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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