An Urban's Rural View

Not only did voters reject California's proposed GMO-labeling initiative. In two California cities, Richmond and El Monte, ballot proposals to tax sodas failed, too.

And now Denmark has dropped its year-old tax on saturated fat and abandoned plans to tax sugar.

The Danish tax drove the price of a half-pound of butter up 37 cents. Businesses complained compliance was a nightmare. Unions said jobs were lost. Some Danes began buying food in Germany.

And the tax didn't work. It failed, the government said in rescinding it, to change peoples' eating habits.

"Now," the country's food minister reportedly said, "we need to try to do something else to address public health."

But what?

That's the problem governments in many countries face. Obesity is a serious problem. In the U.S., more than a third of the country weighs in as obese. (In Denmark, it's 13%.) Obesity drives up society's health-care costs, so governments want to act. So far, though, they seem to be floundering.

In September 2022 Hungary, which has an 18% obesity rate, introduced a 50-cent tax on fatty foods and raised levies on soda and alcohol. Israel and France are considering fax taxes.

New York has banned sodas in servings bigger than 16 ounces. USDA-subsidized school lunches now have fewer calories and more veggies. Many governments are requiring more disclosure of nutritional information.

Suspicions linger, though, that much of this may be sound and fury, signifying nothing. Eating habits aren't easily changed. We learn them as children and they often stay with us all our lives -- and in the two-worker households of the last several decades, many of today's young adults didn't learn good ones. Foods abounding in fat, sugar and sodium are an easy habit to acquire. Vegetables are less easy.

Proponents of the tax weapon say higher taxes on tobacco helped reduce cigarette smoking and will do the same for fattening foods. They could be right, but you have to wonder. Food habits are formed much earlier in life. They could prove harder to change. The Danes appear to have come to that conclusion.

And while taxes may have played a role in the decline of tobacco consumption, other things were going on. Don't discount the contribution of decades of Surgeon General warnings on cigarette packs. Information has its limits as a solution -- many will ignore the nutritional disclosures -- but information combined with intensive seducation over long periods of time may be the best hope for obesity fighters.

Urban Lehner
urbanity@hotmail.com

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