Should there be a fat tax?

Maybe instead of doing this they could make healthy foods more affordable and accessible. Ask anyone who has gone on a diet if they spent more at the grocery store that week. It cost much more to buy healthy unbreadded fish portions than an entire box of greasy fish sticks. Fresh fruits and veggies are more expensive than a bag of chips. It is worth the extra cost to me, but I can see why some families cannot afford to eat as healthy as they should.

I don't think there should be. How is that helping govt. money? Bush is throwing it out the window on Iraq (or trying to). There are already enough taxes that are ridiculous enough that we have to pay.

Well one who would determine what is unhealthy? Some people don't think eating meat is healthy so would that be taxed? That is were the problem comes in. Anything can be deemed unhealthy if one wants to. Also for some it's not about food, what they eat or how much, as to why they are over weight. Some of it has to do with genetics, with medications they might be on, etc. I have seen where two people can eat the exact same things every day and have the same life styles, one will be skinny and one will be fat. There is no hard and fast rule on it. Want to try and stop obesity? How about starting with letting kids have recess again. More then just fifteen minutes. Give them back the playgrounds and let them run around and have fun. That way they are burning off the calories. They start then it slows down obesity happening.

I'm don't think it will make much of a difference on whether or not it is taxed. I always wonder how the extremely large people who can't leave their house afford to eat. I think it would be better for the government to quit spending money on BS and set up some FREE weight loss programs for overweight people. I know they have the WIC program which I ws enrolled in when I had my daughter 2 years ago. I appreciated being able to participate because baby formula is so expensive. I truly did need the help. I don't think very much effort or time was put into the nutrional aspect of the program. Sure I had older children and yes they are healthy but I did it on my own. My oldest was 18 and my youngest was 10 when I had my daughter. I felt very disappointed with the WIC program. I really would have appreciated a little more nutrional guidance. I loved the formula don't get me wrong, but I also thought it was about more than that.

Cannot be done... 99 percent of food will make you fat if you eat too much of it. It is not what you eat... it is how much you eat. We should have a single tax rate and at tax time... everyone would have to be weighted. Their tax rate would be multiplied by the number of pounds they weight. I bet you that a lot of people would lose weight in a hurry. lol

Hi, I think studies have shown that the fatter people in society are from poor backgrounds, so maybe drasticly reducing the healthier food would be a better incentive.

I don't think a "fat" tax would go over very well with the populace. While it have its merit I just don't see how that would be feasible. Perhaps it would be better if the food producers were to take more care in what they produce and everyone fat or thin would be rewarded. You have a valid point that anything that would help to lower the number of obese people might save the government money on medical programs.

OMG when I first saw this I thought "Oh ya tax people because they are fat".. then I got past the title...lol Hell ya I'll go for it. They tax everything else why not. But I don't know if it would really cut down anything substantial.. And just what do you have in mind for the spending of this tax...hmmm I don't know seriously if it really would do to much good. But I could definately be pursueded to try it. Now I got myself giggling, I just thought to myself.."well I guess you'll just be spending more money"... I better get on a diet...lol

i think that there should be an education, and some banning in food industry to stop obsesity. not higher taxes. if a product is harmfull, then it's production should be ceased. that's how my logic dictates.