In the following Article, there's a great recommendation: add a tax to sugared sodas.
To quote from the article:
The average American consumes roughly 250 calories more today than they did two or three decades ago, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Thomas Frieden, said at the "Weight of the Nation" conference on obesity held in Washington this week.
"And of that, about 120 calories is in the form of sodas and other sugared food and beverages," he said.
And, if you were following other discussions here and elsewhere, you know that obesity is an enormous and expensive problem for our country:
Obesity article
A new study finds that the increasing prevalence of obesity could wind up costing the nation almost $147 billion a year, the AFP reports. The study, published in the journal Health Affairs, shows that money spent to treat chronic conditions associated with obesity has doubled in the past decade. More than 25 percent of Americans are now obese, compared with 18.3 percent in 1998, the researchers reported.
I believe that taxing soda pop is a win-win: it generates money for the government, it gets people to reduce their caloric intake, and it is not so addictive that people really can't cut back. At least, I don't think it is.
I'd love to see a gas tax too but that's a more regressive tax because some people really have no alternative transportation.
Perhaps we could even get the insurance industry to fight for this tax...
I'd love to see other opinions on this.