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Back in a 2007 column, I mocked a tax on sugary drinks, suggesting a tax on obese people might be more efficient. “Everyone would submit an official body mass index report with their annual tax return. The (tax office) would make the fat tax calculation for you. It would be a progressive tax: the fatter the taxpayer, the higher the tax,” I wrote.
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I'm against a tax on sugar for all the reason's Bob-a-rama mentioned. But, I suppose it is progress of a sort if the author of the article has come to finally recognize that becoming/being fat MIGHT NOT be due to some sort of moral failure!
I don't know if he was ever serious about A direct tax on fat people (based on a submitted official BMI report) or if that was just a tongue-in -cheek suggestion. But, such a tax would only push fat people towards consuming an even higher ratio of cheap carb-laden processed crap as they would have even less money in their pockets to splurge on more-expensive high quality REAL food.
Maybe what we really need is for someone to figure out how to ensure that unprocessed foods cost less to purchase than processed (convenience) stuff.
One would THINK that it would cost more to buy processed (pre-made) convenience foods than the "raw" (as it comes from the field) materials to make one's own. But sadly, that is often NOT TRUE.
Big buyers (i.e. food manufacturers) get a major price break on the cost of their raw materials...and then they save more money by bulking up their processed stuff with cheap sugar, corn syrup, and grains. When you purchase tons of tomatoes right out of the field, you don't pay anywhere NEAR the supermarket price per pound. Plus, it doesn't matter to the bulk purchaser if there are a bunch of misshapen, green, and bug eaten tomatoes among the truck-load. It's all going to look the same once chopped and processed with a bunch of sugar and chemical flavorants and preservatives added.
And, as long as it costs more for a consumer to buy fresh tomatoes, pepper, garlic, onions, cilantro etc to make their own salsa (without the added sugar) than it does to just buy it by the jar, very few consumers are going to go to the trouble of making their own. Ditto pretty much everything else now available as a convenience food on the supermarket shelves!
BTW - fat people already pay a financial premium for being fat. One simple but ubiquitous example: women's "plus-size" garments are ALWAYS more expensive that the exact same garment (style, color, material, and manufacturer) in a "miss-size." That is, if the exact same garment is even available for purchase. More often, when compared side-by-side, the more expensive plus-size garment is more cheaply made that it's purported twin in missy sizes. Linings are left out, cheaper buttons are used, elastic waist-bands replace fitted waists, and very often thinner, cheaper fabric (but with the same print pattern) are used to make the plus-size garments. I know b/c, when I was on my way down from 265 lbs, I went thru a phase where I didn't know whether the largest missy size or the smallest plus size would fit me better. So I often compared supposedly-identical garments in the two size ranges! It's one thing to have to pay more for a garment (fair enough assuming the larger garment requires more material) but quite another to pay more and then get an inferior product!