“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

Sin taxes on fat and sugar? It seems several states are looking with interest at chipping away at your rights as a US citizen to decide what you eat. Or, as they the politicians put it, encouraging you to make better choices. States are so interested in your health they want to tax foods containing sugar and fat in order to steer you into a more healthy choice. Politicians want to use pricing strategies to influence what you purchase. However, they’re not sure whether subsidies or punitive taxes work best. Shall we control people by making healthier foods cheaper or unhealthy foods more expensive?

The question shouldn’t be how best can the government control our choices, but does the government have the right to do it in the first place. What else are they going to try to influence? Who decides what’s unhealthy? We see what the FDA, AMA, and food industries have already done to our food supply. Is some politician going to get a hair up his ass about sports, thinking the average American needs to start saving their money, and make sporting events tickets so expensive the average person won’t buy them? How about the type of car you drive, even though the global warming issue has been proven a scam.

This is a slippery slope and is as UN-American as progressivism. This issue has been fought for over 300 years. People fled Europe to what is now the US to get from under the control of the governments there. In the US we have a right endowed by are creator to pursue health. The Government doesn’t have the right to make that choice, or to “encourage”, for us.

An interesting, but not surprising study was performed to see which strategy, subsidies or taxes, works best as though it’s even a choice. No matter where you stand on this topic to see how human behavior can be influenced is very interesting

Epstein and colleagues simulated a grocery store, “stocked” with images of everything from bananas and whole wheat bread to Dr. Pepper and nachos. A group of volunteers — all mothers — were given laboratory “money” to shop for a week’s groceries for the family. Each food item was priced the same as groceries at a real grocery nearby, and each food came with basic nutritional information.

The mother-volunteers went shopping several times in the simulated grocery. First they shopped with the regular prices, but afterward the researchers imposed either taxes or subsidies on the foods. That is, they either raised the prices of unhealthy foods by 12.5%, and then by 25%; or they discounted the price of healthy foods comparably. Then they watched what the mothers purchased.

The results, just published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that taxes were more effective in reducing calories purchased over subsides. Specifically, taxing unhealthy foods reduced overall calories purchased, while cutting the proportion of fat and carbohydrates and upping the proportion of protein in a typical week’s groceries.

By contrast, subsidizing the prices of healthy food actually increased overall calories purchased without changing the nutritional value at all. It appears that mothers took the money they saved on subsidized fruits and vegetables and treated the family to less healthy alternatives, such as chips and soda pop. Taxes had basically the opposite effect, shifting spending from less healthy to healthier choices. ScienceDaily.com