I suppose I’m part libertarian, as I really object to governments trying to control the leisure activities of their citizens—always “for the public good.” While I can understand a desire to stop bad habits like smoking by taxing the hell out of cigarettes, I support that only because it raises money that should be (but isn’t always) earmarked to help cover the costs to the public of smoking-induced health problems.
Yes, I can understand taxing to help relieve the public burden of people’s smoking habits, but there’s really only one bad habit linked to lung cancer and emphysema. Things are different when it comes to diet, for there are many dietary causes of obesity and its attendant byproducts of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and so on. Governments have tried controlling these, too, by banning trans fats (as the U. S. government is now doing for artificial trans fats) or putting taxes on soda pops with sugar, as has been done by several countries and, in the U.S., by the People’s Republic of Berkeley. Most other U.S. measures have failed, and of course the soda manufacturers have fought them.
And a recent attempt to impose a pretty stiff soda tax in California has just failed. It would have been 2¢ per ounce, which is a whopping 24 cents on a 12-ounce can of Coke, which you can buy pretty close to that price when it’s on sale. That’s a substantial tax, all because some people want to control the diets of others—especially poor people who can’t afford steep taxes.
As the Sacramento Bee reported, though, the soda tax bill in California was pulled from the legislature without coming to a vote. This is mourned by Lifestyle Nanny Jason Best at TakePart in a column with the ludicrous title of “Big Soda wins in California”
There’s little doubt that soda and other sugary beverages are at least partly to blame, however. As such, it only seems fair that they be taxed to help shoulder at least a fraction of the staggering health care costs associated with the epidemic of obesity-related disease, estimated at between $147 billion to $210 billion each year. California’s proposed soda tax would’ve been a step in the right direction. Let’s hope its supporters take heart and try again next year.
Yes, of course. So why not tax cookies, red meat, butter, candy, potato chips, Cheetos, and so on? Cigarette taxes—maybe. Soda and snack taxes—not for me! I do support getting the soda machines out of schools, which is at least a nod toward improved health, but I don’t support doubling the price of a can of soda because Leisure Fascists think it’s bad for me. After all, not everybody gets obese from drinking Coke!
I still remember two incidents that have led me to oppose this kind of thing. The first was when my mother died a few years back, and I was so upset that I bought a pack of cigarettes to calm myself. (I used to smoke a bit in college, and still have one cigarette every few months when I can cadge it, but have pretty much stopped completely over the last forty years.). A guy in line behind me at the store took it upon himself to lecture me, asking, “Don’t you know those things can kill you?” I looked at him darkly and told him why I was buying cigarettes. That shut him up.
The other occasion was when I was walking down the street in Davis, California, smoking a fine cigar that my friend Michael Turelli had given me. One person held their nose and pointed at me when I walked by, and that person was in a store behind a window. When I sat down in a park to enjoy my stogie, a cop came by and told me that I had to move on: I could smoke the cigar while walking, but not when sitting down far away from anyone else. That’s the law in Davis.
These two episodes make clear that concern for health is not the sole reason for Leisure Fascists’ desire to tax anything that could hurt you. Much of it is based on a ridiculous moral stance: the Leisure Fascists want to dictate how other people live. And once you buy into that philosophy, there’s no end to the taxes you can levy.
Seems to me that back in 2006 Congress passed a law mandating that everyone have health insurance. Doesn’t that mean that they are already paying in some measure for their health care costs? This is just the safety trumps freedom argument writ small. I am sure that in other contexts Best would agree that just because you have a majority, you should be allowed to tell other people how to live their lives.
“Doesn’t that mean that they are already paying in some measure for their health care costs?”
Yes, but that doesn’t mean they are paying a fair contribution to their health care costs. If some behaviour has poorer health outcomes and places an extra burden on the health care system, it will most likely lead to higher health insurance costs for all, i.e. it socialises the cost. Better to privatise the costs, and one way to achieve that is to tax the behaviour that causes the adverse outcomes directly.
This would apply whether health insurance is provided by the government or the private sector.
All insurance is a means of socialising the cost of some adverse circumstances which the individual considers unlikely but whose cost is relatively high. For private insurance the cost is socialise among the clients of the insurance company, for government run schemes it is sometimes socialised among tax payers. For some circumstances the alternative cost of having no insurance is so significant to public good that government is justified, or even duty bound, to establish and administer the necessary insurance scheme. In many circumstances governments can provide insurance more efficiently than the private sector (e.g. Australia’s Medicare).
I’m not sure if I buy the idea that smoking and obesity place such huge costs on healthcare.
It is my observation that everybody eventually dies of something and frequently the years leading up to death can be very expensive in terms of healthcare no matter what the cause.
Furthermore, the healthier you are, the more years of economically unproductive life you have after you retire. In my country (the UK) this is becoming a bit of a problem because the pension system is struggling to keep up.
You do have to balance the above against sick days of smokers and obese people during their economically productive period, but I don’t think the oft cited “smokers cost society money” is as obviously true as people assume.
I don’t buy this argument. Not everyone dies in a car crash when not wearing a seat belt, either.
The trick is to balance public health interests with personal liberty interests. It is easy (for me) to make the call with smoking in public places, and even for smoking in the presence of your own children. Soda’s not so easy, but to the extent that we as a community need to share the costs of obesity, I’m fine with (some) policy measures that help reduce it. (I say this as a guy who until a year ago was living in the “obese” category.)
Well how about taxing soda at $1/ounce. Then NOBODY would buy it. That would reduce its effects on obesity to zero.
But it won’t solve the obesity problem. Obesity is caused by eating too many joules and a sedentary lifestyle!! There is plenty of science that supports this. People eat too much protein, fat, and carbohydrate and that leads to weight gain. Blaming sugar for our obesity epidemic is too simplistic.
The physics diet, the assumption that all calories are created equal and that obesity is the result of eating more calories than one burns through activity…is depressingly naïve.
And that’s because that all calories are not created equal. The body is a complex biochemical machine. Some things you eat are mostly burned for energy, yes. And other things you eat are mostly deposited as fat, yes yes. But still other things simply pass through undigested. Complicating matters, if you eat various combinations of foods, some things that would otherwise get deposited as fat instead pass through undigested. As further complication, none of this is consistent from person to person, and it can even change based upon the physical condition of the person at that moment in time.
Nor is any of this actually surprising or controversial. As a thought experiment, imagine two people, both with 2000 KCal diets and identical activity schedules. One only eats from vending machines; the other only eats celery. Nobody for a moment would seriously consider that the two people would have anything like the same medical result.
At this point, the physics diet crowd usually says something about only referring to well-balanced diets with proper nutrient amounts — but that’s conceding the entire point! And once you’ve acknowledged that all calories are not created equal, it should be bleedin’ obvious that the question of counting calories is a red herring and we instead need to be focussing our attention on the actual nutrition (not calorie count!) of the food being eaten.
But wait! There’s more!
The physics diet only considers “exercise” as a significant energy expenditure…when, in fact, it’s not all that big a slice of the body’s energy budget. The brain itself uses a lot of energy, as does simple metabolic function (cellular repair, waste elimination, and so on). Muscle contraction is the one thing we have significant conscious control over, but it’s really just a fraction of the energy your body uses.
And that’s the answer to why exercise increases your energy usage. Sure, you might use up a few calories here and there in the exertion itself…but you’re also significantly increasing the metabolic load on your body. You’ve got to rebuild damaged muscle tissue and build new muscles. The waste urea in your muscles needs to be flushed out and the glycogen stores replenished. Similar stuff is going to be going on with your joints and bones. Your kidneys and liver will have to deal with the wastes from all of that. And so on — and all of it takes energy. A lot of energy.
Take two people, same weight, sitting on a couch watching TV. One is the proverbial couch potato, hasn’t exercised in years, thinks lifting the remote is hard work. The other is an Olympic athlete who just finished a workout.
They’re both sitting there doing nothing. The physics diet crowd would have you believe that they’re therefore burning the same number of calories…when, in fact, the athlete is burning far more calories just sitting there doing nothing.
So, yes. Diet and exercise are vital to good health. But “diet” refers far more to the quality of food you eat than your total caloric intake, and the calories you burn during exercising are about as irrelevant as you can get.
The short answer to what you should do…is avoid refined sugars (and thus prepackaged foods). Eat plenty of veggies. Eat some protein, fat, and carbohydrate with each meal. Most pre-industrial cooking traditions got the proportions right…go dig up grandma’s Joy of Cooking and start from there. Exercise at least a few times a week…but, if you can’t get all the exercise you need from half-hour sessions, ur doin it rong.
If you don’t know where to start…bodyweight exercises. Old-school “PT,” with pushups and squats and pullups and crunches and jumping jacks and that sort of thing. If you’re not up to the full versions, make them easier…not everybody can do one-armed pushups with feet on a chair, but everybody can do pushups against a wall. Do your pullups with a towel over the top of a sturdy door, and stand on a chair so you can use your legs to make it easier on your arms. See Mark Lauren’s You Are Your Own Gym for easy-to-follow instructions and plans and what-not.
Too much rambling, and I’ve got other things I need to attend to…sorry for any typos or thinkos or the like….
Cheers,
b&
A joule is a joule no matter where it is coming from refined sugar or vegetable. What we have learned from nutritional science is that our diet contains too much energy. We eat too much carb, protein and fat. To single out one energy nutrient as the cause of obesity is dumb. It has been done in the past and it doesn’t work. Remember the high carb/low fat diet followed by the high protein/high fat low carb diet. They just don’t work. These diets are not sustainable and we need all three energy nutrients in our diet. Most people would be shocked at the amount of food they need to maintain healthy body weight. Law of conservation of energy absolutely holds true for a couch potato or Olympic athlete. If an athlete does not maintain their activity level they better change their energy input or they will gain weight.
…only in the land of the spherical frictionaless cow. Or the spherical physicist. Unsurprisingly, those who assume that cattle are spherical tend towards a spherical shape, themselves.
You might try actually reading the post that I wrote, especially the bits about how some of those “joules” you eat go right through you without being burned as energy, and about how the olympian on the couch is expending more energy than the spherical physicist next to her.
Or, try this one. Write up your energy balance equation for two systems: one a laboratory calorimeter, and the other an aircraft on a windy day with a jet engine that leaks at various rates depending on whether you fill the tank with JET-A, lamp kerosene, olive oil, or diesel — each of which, of course, has its own specific energy density and burn characteristics. Oh — and you’ve got some poorly-written engine management software that tweaks this and that as the sensors, half of which are miscalibrated, report performance data. You still gonna insist that your “joule is a joule” mantra is going to tell you what sort of distance the plane is going to cover?
Cheers,
b&
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My understanding of the athlete vs the true couch potato is that the athlete has enlarged musculature and higher metabolism. His circulatory system is developed to supply a high level of nutrients to the muscles, which, being highly toned, consume more calories even when at rest. The true couch potato has atrophied musculature with reduced circulation consuming much fewer calories. The athlete is healthier over time because, even at rest, he is consuming calories which are not, then, available for storage as fat.
Exactly — and that’s also the true health benefit from exercise. The energy required to perform some activity is negligible next to the energy required to build and maintain an active body. It’s the latter that increases the “calories out” side of the equation that the physics diet faddists miss.
And on the “calories in” side, they miss that a calorie of celery is going to go right through your body basically undigested and take some more calories with it, but a calorie of sugar water is going to get metabolized by the liver about half-and-half into glucose (which the body’s cells burn for energy) and a cocktail of fats and cholesterol that get released into the bloodstream. Worse, the glucose is going to trigger an insulin release, which in turn is going to cause fat cells to take up and store the lipids.
When you get your sugar from fruit, it’s buffered by fibre and roughage. That slows the absorption and causes a significant amount to leave the body undigested, plus it causes you to feel full. But straight sugar goes right into the bloodstream and then the liver…and without making you feel like you’ve just taken on that much in calories. Anybody can “chug” a quart of apple juice without much effort, but who’s going to eat more than a couple apples at a time?
All those facts are ignored by the physics diet cultists, who simply keep repeating their “a calorie is a calorie” mantra. Rather like Christians who keep singing, “Jesus loves me”….
Cheers,
b&
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Except for a plane is not a biological system. Energy in equals energy out. Your claims that not all energy is burned and some goes through you needs to be quantified and shown to be significant. And since obesity seems to be a problem, then I suggest very little of the energy we consume is passing right through us. As for athletes, we are all aware of the benefits. But if you stop training the epoc effect diminishes and your diet must as well.
See what I mean?
If you’re truly unaware of the energy content of excrement, of its value as a plant fertilizer or the fact that you can get significant quantities of burnable methane from fermenting it and so on, then you’re so hopelessly ignorant of basic biology that you need to abandon all your confidence in the subject until you’re at least as knowledgeable as an high school graduate.
I mean, really. You putting forth as reasonable that the default assumption should be that our digestive systems are perfect until I come up with evidence otherwise…that’s on a par with claiming that automotive bearings are perfect and I need to prove friction loss before you’ll consider otherwise.
Cheers,
b&
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Sorry Ben but your knowledge of basic nutritional science is what is lacking. You are equating fertilizer with nutritional energy which means you need to take a nutritional science course. Furthermore Australia’s Human Nutrition conducted a study on the effect of meal content in lean women’s diets on the thermic effect of food and found that the inclusion of an ingredient containing increased soluble fibre and amylose did not reduce spontaneous food intake but rather was associated with higher subsequent energy intakes despite its reduced glycaemic and insulinemic effects. Can you provide evidence that shows eating celery actually reduces energy intake? You are claiming that celery provides negative energy? What is celery made of?
Seriously?
You’re completely unaware of the use of excrement as fertilizer?
Either that, or you think that fertilizer has no energy content.
Regardless, you’ve got such a profoundly lacking basic education that there’s no point in continuing this — or, likely, for that matter, any other — discussion. Enjoy your life as a frictionless sphere.
b&
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Wow! Celery contains 105 g of water in 110g serving and you are claiming that eating it reduces the amount of energy absorbed. How does that work? Before you resort to name calling get informed. You obviously can’t handle being challenged.
I agree with nearly everything you’ve written, except about all calories not created equal. It is not that they aren’t equal but that they are processed differently.
The problem with the spherical physicist’s view is not that it is outright incorrect but that that it is too simple. The problem with a simple “energy in energy out” account is that it doesn’t account for differences in metabolism (as you explain).
Of course not all food is processed the same in all possible circumstances (although generalisations can be useful), but it is impossible to become overweight without consuming more energy than your body needs, and furthermore you are not going to lose weight unless your energy intake is reduced, your energy use is increased, or your energy wastage is increased (or a combination of the three).
The real problem in controlling one’s weight is at heart an issue of matching one’s appetite (energy intake) to one’s energy expenditure and wastage. As it stands that is a very inexact science even now.
Define wastage. If you mean differences in how much energy is absorbed, that is seriously misguided. Do you think that people gain weight because they absorb more energy than people who don’t gain weight? Is overeating not a problem in western society? Are our children not becoming obese because of this and because of the fact they are not moving their bodies? Are we this scientifically illiterate?
I think there is some confusion or misreading by the above posters’ responses.
When people refer to calories or joules in food, they mean USABLE energy. Celery has water and cellulose. Water has no usable energy for humans but of course has molecular bond energy etc. Cellulose in indigestible by the current form of human gut design and bacteria, and therefore has no to little usable energy FOR the HUMAN eating it. Of course there is usable energy in poop. But poop is UNDIGESTED “Food”. Dietician et al refer to the “digestible and absorbable” contents of food when they refer to caloric content of food. This is not news.
People are talking past each other.
There is no confusion. People claim that usable energy in the form of carbs (not cellulose), protein, and fat is not digested and ends up in feces in significant quantities. This is a misconception. To use this as a reason to explain weight gain is beyond ludicrous ie. Obese individuals absorb more energy, while normal weight people absorb less.
Well said Ben
Actually, I don’t think anybody has any idea what the medical result of a celery only diet would be. You’d have to eat hundreds of sticks to get to 2000KCal for a start.
Although I can’t stand leisure fascists either, we seem to disagree on the core issue here: These drinks contain an INSANE amount of sugar. While this is harmless to most people who consume just a few litres of the stuff every year, some people drink NOTHING else.
And it’s those people who would be most hurt by the tax and, hopefully, drink a whole lot less. The rest of us wouldn’t give a damn and pay the levy.
And there are plenty of people that drink it everyday, all their lives with no discernible ill effects.
All pleasurable things are unnecessary. Some have possible bad health outcomes. Every person’s body reacts differently to environmental inputs. Everyone is born with a different genetic makeup about which they had no say and no influence.
Hence the need for universal single-payer health care.
And some people smoke “all their lives with no discernible ill effects.”
So I’ll just keep puffing away and show my kids by example that smoking is just fine because I’m not dead yet.
Hopefully their genetic makeup will keep them healthy too.
“All pleasurable things are unnecessary.”
Like sex. Or do you mean that when making babies it is important that you don’t derive pleasure from it?
Leisure Fascist? Is that a neologism? No sitting with cigar for you! NEXT!
Cigarettes, red meat, butter, candy, potato chips, Cheetos and so on have a measurable cost on our health. Ciggies are the worst, and so today few mind the taxes and other restrictions on them.
But taxing and restricting any of the others? Actually that is a tough call, and both sides have good points to make so that good counter-arguments still exist even when one side wins in legislation.
What bothers me the most about taxing them is that they hit the poor and a moderate tax will not be a deterrent. Otoh the state does need revenue and a means to offset costs that all taxpayers absorb b/c of preventable illness. Clearly, we do accept some dictates from the nanny state regarding our personal business such as wearing seat belts and jaywalking. I guess I am just ruminating without choosing sides here.
Speaking of ruminating:
A ruminant CAN digest and absorb the caloric content of cellulose.
More absurd was the attempt in NYC to ban large cup sizes. As if one could not refill.
I am of the opinion that what I eat and drink is nobody’s business but mine. If I have an unhealthy diet I am the one who has to deal with the consequences. As it is I have a healthy diet and do plenty of exercise, but that is my choice and nothing to do with anyone else. As I do endurance sports I use energy drinks and energy gels while taking part in events. I suspect that these contain an insane amount of sugar too, are the government going to put a sin tax on these as well?
Don’t think I agree that you are the only one who has to deal with the consequences. If you keel over from a heart attack directly related to your diet, you are taking away medical resources in terms of first responder usage, an emergency room bed, a subsequent hospital bed, etc. – all of which could be saved for someone else. Simplistic, yes, but none of us live in a vacuum where our actions don’t have unintended or unforseen consequences.
Stonyground might also keel over with a heart attack brought on by the exercise regime, not to mention the possibility of joints prematurely worn out.
Actually, the way to use the most medical resources is to live to be old. The older you get, the more healthcare you tend to need. People who die young due to an unhealthy lifestyle cost less.
But equally, those living longer will have contributed more to the system! What is more, those less able to contribute to the system (lower educational levels?)tend to be the ones who (again, because of the lower educational levels?) have the poor diets. Double whammy on the system.
Perhaps even more important than what eryops wrote, if you *don’t* keel over, but require surgery and extensive rehab, you’re placing a significant financial burden on the system that will be reflected in insurance premiums and other taxes.
“I am of the opinion that what I eat and drink is nobody’s business but mine.”
Unless of course you are one of those baby eating atheists. I jest of course (but damn! they are tasty), but the point is that your diet may very well adversely affect others. Beef production is rather inefficient, so if we were to move to a situation where the earth was seriously stressed to produce enough calories for everybody then a diet high in beef products could very well be a concern for others. That after all was the original issue in Make Room Make Room, soylent steaks were made from soy and lentils (hence the name) simply to provide enough food.
Luckily for you were aren’t there yet (and I hope were never get there). But what if your diet reduced your lifespan? Wouldn’t your children and grandchildren be saddened by your avoidable premature death?
You are right. It is a slippery slope. Why not ban kilo bags of sugar? What about chips and candy? But I am going to assume that studies show that taxing soda has a positive effect however they measure it.
Your smoking can cause health issues to others, your choice of soda, I don’t think so.
Want to tax something dangerous, go after homeopathy.
I agree. If your actions harm others, there is a case for government intervention of some sort, ranging from taxes to making it illegal. If you only harm yourself, the government’s role should be restricted to providing information. I do not mind those menus that tell me the calories in each item. Who knew that Red Robin hamburger I just ate had 3000 calories.
If you teach your kids (by example) that drinking a litre of Coke a day is just fine then your bad habit certainly does affect others.
Yes, but it’s also about how much you cost the health care system, which the public helps fund.
By that logic, ciggies should actually be subsidized. Smokers die young, saving both health care and social security costs.
The logic is “how can we encourage a life that is not prematurely cut short, but that will cost us as little as possible”.
Longevity, and perhaps more importantly, the quality of that longevity must be taken into account: given that everyone would like to live long, how can we reduce costs.
See my reply to Michael below.
The point is that government interventions are warranted where someone’s actions impose costs on OTHERS. If one chooses to shorten his own life for whatever reasons, that is his concern.
There is a cost on others, given that the individual seeks or receives treatment for their preventable maladies. A financial cost.
And, as I pointed out, for cigarettes studies have shown that the net costs on others are negative.
But I think it’s reasonable to try to prevent preventable costs and to allow for the fact that there will be unpreventable costs.
+ 1
If the California tax applies only to pop sweetened with sugar, and not artificially sweetened drinks then I’d be all in favour.
I believe it does, and I believe the Berkeley ordinance in effect also does.
Artificial sweeteners certainly aren’t any better and may well be worse.
If you have a sweet tooth, satisfy it with whole (not juiced) fresh (not cooked) fruit. If you’re thirsty, drink water. If you like soda for the sake of soda, save it as a treat, a glassful with a weekend dinner or that sort of thing.
Or, if you really want to slurp down gallon-sized sodas all day long, do so accepting that the metabolic cost is indistinguishable from drinking a comparable amount of beer. If you like soda so much you’re happy to suffer a beer belly as a consequence, wonderful! That’s not a tradeoff I’m personally interested in, but, if that’s what floats your boat, all the more power to you.
Cheers,
b&
Artificial sweetners are fine, although they may not taste as good as sugar to many.
No, they’re not. At least some of them trigger an insulin response. Some of them turn into formaldehyde when exposed to the sort of low-level heat you’ll find in the trunk of a car on a summer day. And ask yourself: how many people who switch to diet sodas actually lose weight? Plenty actually gain weight….
b*
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Formaldehyde? You mean like in vaccines? That’s scary!
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had laughed about Los Angeles and now ’tis here you’ll lie;
Here pickled in formaldehyde and painted like a whore,
Shrimp-pink incorruptible, not lost or/but/nor gone before.
(Tags: formaldehyde, death, Los Angeles)
Formaldehyde is a normal, essential human metabolite with a biological half-life of about 1.5 minutes (Clary and Sullivan 2001). It is endogenously produced and is involved with methylation reactions for and biosynthesis of some proteins and nucleic acids. It is also rapidly metabolised to formate and excreted in urine or to carbon dioxide and exhaled (WHO, 2006 and Clary and Sullivan 2001). Some common routes of exposure for exogenous formaldehyde include dermal, from occupational handling, inhalation, from occupational exposure and environment, oral via dietary intake and of course, intramuscularly or subcutaneously from vaccines. (Franks 2005, Clary and Sullivan 2001 and Inchem 1989).
The Mayo Clinic says artificial sweeteners do not affect blood sugar, but “Dr.” Mercola agrees with you.
I’d suggest that if a person who switches from sugar to diet soda still gains weight, they’re simply not doing enough, whether that be exercise or better nutrition all around. Or, they simply and unfortunately have a genetic makeup that all but precludes physical fitness. It happens. I drink 3 to 5 12oz cans of diet soda a day and maintain a pretty high level of fitness: visible abs, sub six minute mile, 4-plate bench press, etc.
That has to save 2000-2500 kJ/d?
I do agree with several of Ben Gorens comments about diet earlier in the thread, but I feel like I should point to other reasons for diet soda drinkers gaining weight.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt when it comes to obesity, it’s that people have no clue what they’re eating/drinking.
There are plenty of obese people that claim they eat almost nothing. When they are asked to write a diary of what they eat, you find that they eat twice the amount of an average person.
People also have a natural tendency to exaggerate the effect of exercise and downplay the effect of unhealthy eating. Many think that they can reward themselves with something unhealthy after going to the gym f.ex.
In the same way, people tend to think that a healthy lunch gives them the opportunity to eat an unhealthy dinner.
I will therefore claim that drinkers of diet soda reward themselves by eating more during the day.
Many slimming diets also involve eating too little leading the body to cling onto fat instead of burning it. A person on such a diet may therefore be in a constant state of “starvation” which leads to a desire for sweets. When they eventually give in and reward themselves with something unhealthy, their body will store the fat more easily.
It’s also worth mentioning that fat is damn hard to get rid of, once you’ve got it. A severely obese person can’t go back to eating the same amount as a thin person , he/she will have to eat somewhat less and more healthy because the body will want to get back to its obese state. So just switching to diet soda won’t be enough, they have to cut down on everything and few people do.
And the formaldehyde scare is something I associate with the anti-vaccination crowd. You get formaldehyde by eating apples as well.
The beauty of exercise is that it helps maintain lean body mass which means your bmr is maintained. Although any weight loss will always result in some lean body mass loss.
That’s true.
I just think people should focus on the effects exercise has on well being and general heath, not the minimal effect it has on weight. Anyone thinking they’re going to lose a lot of weight purely through exercise without changing their diet will surely be disappointed.
Right-on!! Doctors consider exercise medicine.
Please no taxes on sodas. I want my kids to run circles around ‘their’ kids.
Obesities hidden anti-privilege: National Park Trails…fewer Americans making it to remote trail ends.
[Sidenote, sodas are not the problem: it’s what people do the remainder of the day that can be.]
I am not so sure that tax should be used for behavioral reasons at all. Whether it be cigs, food, or any of that stuff. It is really nothing more than side attempts to get what you want people to do. They tax the crap out of alcohol nearly as much as cigs and people still drink. It’s just that the well to do can afford to do it and poor people cannot.
So if keeping the poor from do those things you do not approve of is the goal, then tax is your game. The rich do not give a damn about your behavior modifications. Same goes for gas pricing and tax. It’s like a lab experiment only with people instead of mice.
Who decides what is the evil and how much pain do we inflict to make them stop. And just who is it that is in pain?
“They tax the crap out of alcohol nearly as much as cigs and people still drink. It’s just that the well to do can afford to do it and poor people cannot.”.
UK experience is that the “rich” rarely smoke, are not obese and don’t abuse alcohol (these are, of course, generalisations. The “poor” live unhealthily and die young (relatively).
“Who decides what is the evil and how much pain do we inflict to make them stop. And just who is it that is in pain?”
I think we can agree that an early painful death is “evil”. The people in pain are the ones that suffer from diabetes and cancer.
Non libertarian action on smoking
(tax and prohibition on smoking in all public places) has had a remarkably positive effect. Smoking rates in all social classes has declined dramatically.
As they say – you can never be too thin or too rich. Your generalizations are just that.
However, just maybe a better education for those who live poor and die young would be better than attempting to tax them into good health.
My experience in the U.K. was a big black market for booze and cigs performed by American G.I. The human experience is such that taxes seem like the simple answer but it does have unintended consequences.
“However, just maybe a better education for those who live poor and die young would be better than attempting to tax them into good health.” Do you seriously think there has been a lack of education in these matters?What if education doesn’t work?. Education on seatbelt use was tried for decades. Didn’t work. Simply passing a law resulted in virtual 100% compliance with a massive saving of lives and injury. I favour a pragmatic, non ideological approach. If people continue to use mobile phones in vehicles then pass a law and prosecute them. I don’t want to be killed by an idiot with a phone clamped to his ear – even if he does resent this restriction on his freedom.
Sorry, I do not say glued to these posting like some do. You think passing a law on seat belts resulted in 100 percent compliance. Why then do I hear almost daily of a death because someone was not wearing the belt.
Also, how do you expect the phone police to pragmatically catch and prosecute all the people talking on phones while driving. I know, lets pass another law prosecuting the police for failure to do this.
When I was young, there were no bans on adult smoking in my country. As a result, whenever I sat with friends in a cafe, I had to endure thick smoke. Smokers did not care about non-smokers, and neither did cafe owners.
Drinking doesn’t affect others the same way (except when combined with driving), neither does eating sugar, so I see no need to go after them.
I do not buy the “increased health costs” argument. Should we tax also sports with high trauma risk?
No need to tax sports…just load their insurance premium. Try get life insurance as a sky diver
If you want economically incentivize people to eat healthy, why not go the direct route – government run salad bars where you get paid by how much you eat.
I’m not surprised that Michael Turelli gave you that cigar. He wouldn’t remember me, but I still have a vision of him (from my grad school days) sitting in his office with cigar smoke encircling his head and beard. Best lecturer I ever heard. I try to channel him every day in my classroom and have never come close!
Implement the tax. Stand by for unmarked semi’s crossing state borders in the dark of night loaded to the gills with Coke, Dr Pepper, Fanta, etc. They’ve done it for years with Coors beer and cigarettes.
The hovering Kestrel is my favorite. I’ve seen the jaguar/crocodile clip too many times, and it’s out of focus.
Oops. wrong post. 🙂 How did that happen?
Caffeine buzz, and too much sugar.
“I suppose I’m part libertarian” — in what details to you fall short of being all libertarian?
“Yes, I can understand taxing to help relieve the public burden of people’s smoking habits…”
I don’t know if you are specifically talking about the financial burden on health insurance due to spending on smoking-related diseases, but all the research I’m aware of shows that smokers actually use fewer health care dollars in a lifetime than non-smokers.
Of course treating lung cancer is expensive, but smokers don’t live as long as non-smokers, and non-smokers die of something eventually. Lung cancer is nowhere near as expensive as Alzheimer’s disease. And during their extra life years, non-smokers also get non-fatal diseases and social security. Smokers are basically transferring their tax and health insurance dollars to non-smokers.
I googled around, and it seems like this is also true for obesity. Here are some sources:
http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/6/e001678.full
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050029
But there’s nothing one can do to prevent getting Alzheimer’s. Not smoking is a huge step in the direction of preventing lung cancer.
I mean, seriously, this argument boils down to this: poison yourself early so that you won’t cost us a bunch of money in your old age.
No, it is a counter to the argument that since smokers provide an extra cost burden to the system, therefore taxing cigs to offset this burden is justified. If smokers do not provide an extra burden, then the public costs argument – which is about the only rationale for govt. intervention through selective taxation most Americans are likely to accept – is false.
It is an extra cost, in that it is something the person brings on themselves – which they didn’t have to. Alzheimer’s is not something you bring on yourself, and so not “extra” in this sense.
I’m not making an argument in favor of smoking, I’m just saying this argument that is often made about smokers putting a financial burden on society is based on false premises.
Granted, it may be true that a non-smoker could end up using more health care dollars over a lifetime than a smoker, but my point was that it’s still fair to use the financial burden that comes with smoking as justification for a tax because it stems from a choice an individual makes. IOW, I think it’s legitimate to complain about how much smoking costs society even if we can’t say smokers cost more than non-smokers. There’s nothing a non-smoker can do to avoid Alzheimer’s.
I think for you to make that argument work you must also include the productivity lost from people dying early. More succinctly, it is the difference between the accumulated benefits (e.g. money earned, taxes paid, contributions to society) and medical costs of a long and productive life vs that of a shorter life that should be considered.
Having said that, it is likely that some benefits and disadvantages are going to be difficult to attach exact, and broadly accepted, values to.
Those statistics may be true,but smokers get a myriad of diseases, not just lung cancer. COPD is far worse. They can live for years and are often admitted to hospitals again and again because of exacerbations and pneumonia.
Just personal anecdote on my end, but the COPD patient were the ones I would see coming back almost monthly while working at an ER. And although not all COPD sufferers are smokers/ex-smokers, most of them are.
A lot of smokers say that smoking is fine because they don’t want to live long lives anyway. I tell them that it’s not about lifespan, it’s about quality of life. And let me tell you, feeling like you’re dying of respiratory failure every time you clean the dishes or walk up the stairs is not a good life.
Perhaps because I do research on a common inherited cancer syndrome (and work with individuals who have the disorder), I find the discussions of how much people “cost the healthcare system” somewhat disturbing. Millions of people have genetic or congenital conditions or predispositions, or have had environmental exposures pre- and postnatally, which are going to affect their health and lifespan significantly. With a Trumpesque, ultra-capitalist mindset, blame must be assigned, of course, yet in so many (and probably most, IMO), no one or nothing is directly at fault. You could legitimately blame certain corporations and their practices in a few cases, but that’s not what happens: the innocent and vulnerable in our society are considered to be at fault for their own suffering.
I’ve overheard surgeons discussing “high RVU procedures.” In contrast, an office visit with a dementia patient is a low RVU activity for a neurologist. This is the business of healthcare in America: medical coding and bean-counting and how much compensation do we get for this illness or procedure.
Replying to self to add that one’s microbiome also affects overall health. It wouldn’t surprise me if gut microbiota influenced one’s dietary choices. Whose fault is that? Who can we blame or judge for bad microbiomes??!!??
I’m not talking about blame. If anything, I’m being less judgmental because some people would blame a smoker for costing the taxpayers more money, and I’m saying that isn’t even true. It was the original article that brought up the cost to society (I think he was talking about financial cost, though it isn’t 100% clear). I was just bringing some real data in.
Everyone worth respecting is a libertarian. It’s the Libertarians you have to watch out for. There’s a huge difference.
A liberal, for example, is someone on the libertarian left. Contrast with the authoritarian left (i.e. virtually all feminists and the group informally known as Social Justice Warriors).
Liberals are for equality (of rights and opportunities, not outcomes), regardless of sex and race (i.e. actual social justice). But they are also for personal liberty, reason, and truth (not Truth – no such thing).
Nanny state tactics are all well clear of liberal principles. It’s only acceptable to restrict activity that has a risk (well above background levels) of harming someone else. So seatbelt laws for drivers and front seat passengers are reasonable, as being kept near the controls (without being hit by another front seat rider) is conducive to avoiding (or mitigating the severity of) collisions with other things and people. Motorcycle helmet laws are not reasonable, as the only person injured is the rider.
Unless, of course, you want to say that in socialized systems of health insurance, increasing safety reduces costs to everyone. But that’s a long, incredibly slick slippery slope that ends with everyone housebound without a permit. Or, perversely, to the abolition of motorcycle helmets, as that would produce more organ donors. Only primary effects should be suitable for considering the regulation of behavior. Much like proximate cause is the standard in legal matters (i.e. you can’t be held responsible for being an early cause in a long chain of events leading to some illegal outcome).
In my not so humble opinion.
It’s not a slippery slope. We are perfectly capable of deciding where we want the line to be. I think the liberty lost saving money and lives by requiring helmets is well on the acceptable side of the line.
Meh. Taxing doesn’t take away the ability to buy the problem – and it can help to reorient the market to better reflect the costs. It’s not like the markets are neutral on this – they are skewed by factors wholly unrelated to health.
If they ever try banning them, however, then there’s a problem.
Tobacco taxes are a public health measure.
The status quo ante was enslavement. The companies’s business model was addicting children starting at an average age of 13. Adults would then have to overcome the addiction. Most did not so there is a lung cancer epidemic. Yet, even worse, more people die and are maimed by its causing COPD, heart attacks, and strokes.
Children are price sensitive and the expense can keep kids from getting addicted.
The other issue with tobacco was billions spent on promoting it and there was no balanced paid speech with the experts writing ads expertly motivating young consumers.
You shovel five spoons of sugar into your tea, and you get weird looks. By spoon eight, you have everyones attention. Spoon number nine will leave the audience bewildered and eager to see your face when you drink it. We largely go by conventions, and get an idea what is OK to do.
A can of coke contains nine spoons of sugar, and many people think it normal to have several of them. Nine! The WHO regards 6 spoons per day as Ok.
One question is whether taxes are a good way to go about this. It’s certainly a cheap and effective solution. I’m of two minds. I guess it would be better if advertisement can no longer pretend their drinks have to do with sports and athlethes, or that they are drinks at all. They are effectively liquid sweets, and cosumers are systematically mislead.
Even better would it be, if everyone was well educated to know better, with access to good healthy food and drinks, and without frustrations that make many long for sweet gratification. But that is difficult and maybe far away, and requires a large shift in culture: that drinking such beverages is not drinking, but snacking, and this is as odd as shoveling six spoons of sugar into your cup of tea. Instead of taxes, my preference would be education.
And what about adding sugar to frosted flakes? Yikes!!
I am a bit surprised that Professor CC (and others here) reacts so strongly to a tax on unhealthy stuff like sugar or fat.
Firstly, the only thing the government is doing is nudging you in the direction of living healthier, which will benefit you (and may also save the rest of us money). But you can still drink or smoke or eat yourself to death if you feel so inclined. No freedom is taken from you, there is just a tiny little push in a healthier direction.
You might compare it to some modern buildings, where the staircase is right next to the entrance, but the elevator is somewhere far away down the hall. This induces people to take the stairs rather than the elevator. Would you consider this to be an intolerable intrusion on your freedom to choose?
Secondly, tax is a nice way to solve the dilemma: should we give a person that got heart trouble through his own unhealthy lifestyle an expensive operation? In case smoking, sugar and fat are taxed there is no problem, because such a person already paid up front!
Thirdly, a sugar tax works. From what I read about the Mexican sugar tax, it seems to have a huge positive effect on public health (and that was the opurpose, wasn’t it?).
Of course obesity is a complicated thing, but the core is simply that poeple eat too much (too many calories in, not enough burnt). So eating less sugar is definitely a step in the right direction.
P.S. And as we all know, you never had any choice in the first place, because you have no free will.
So do dentists. I figure the people who have violated Ancient Greek and Latin the most are, in order of violation:
1) The Catholic Church
2) Dentists
3) Philosophers
“Not everyone gets obese from drinking soda”. Maybe not, but soda is deleterious to your health. Not everyone gets lung cancer from smoking cigarettes, but far too many do. Soda is bad for you, and has high health costs. As does smoking cigarettes, and driving without wearing your seatbelt. Society pays those costs. Stop whining like a petulant teenager about “nanny states”.