We’ve spent a whole year talking about health care reform in our country but have spent very little time talking about lifestyle reform. As a calorie-watcher, I know how difficult it is to purchase the right kinds of foods. More nutritious foods are more expensive and don’t keep as long. The results of a new study are bound to raise some eyebrows, though:
A new study published in Psychological Science concludes that taxing foods is more effective in reducing consumption of unhealthy products than subsidizing healthy foods. Researchers at the University at Buffalo studied the purchasing habits of 42 mothers from different social economic backgrounds in a simulated grocery store by increasing the prices of unhealthy foods by “12.5%, and then by 25%” and discounting “the price of healthy foods comparably.”
The study found that “taxes were more effective in reducing calories purchased over subsides. Specifically, taxing unhealthy foods reduced overall calories purchased,” while “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”:
Taxing foods had the dual benefit of reducing purchases of HCFN [High-Calorie-for-Nutrient] foods while increasing purchases of LCFN [Low-Calorie-for-Nutrient] foods with lower energy density. From a public-policy standpoint, this strategy had the additional benefit of generating significant tax revenue. If policymakers aim to reduce consumption of HCFN foods to control rising rates of obesity, then taxing these foods may be more effective than subsidizing LCFN foods. In our experiment, a tax that increased the price of HCFN foods by 10% reduced total calories purchased by 6.5%, as a result of a reduction in fat and carbohydrate calories of 12.8% and 6.2%, respectively.
People buy these high calorie foods because they taste good and because you get more calories for your dollar. I think food research has spent a lot more time researching what makes these kind of foods taste good because they get a lot of money out of processing a cheap commodity (corn) into a much more expensive food (twinkies, TV dinners). If only there had been as much research on making more nutritional foods taste as good. Personally, I think the craving for fat and sugar is probably an evolutionary adaptation – people who could store fat for longer period of times no doubt had significant advantages during times of feast and famine in the hunter-gatherer days.
I’m very hesitant to support a “calorie tax.” It is a regressive tax, it will punish poorer, less healthy people over richer, more healthy people. Of course, our society supports any number of “sin” taxes, like taxes on alcohol and cigarettes. Would a calorie tax just be following in the footsteps of these taxes?