BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE NEWS FLASH! June 26, 1997
Edited by Richard S. Dunham
HOW ABOUT A BIG, FAT TAX ON
JUNK FOOD?
Move over alcohol and tobacco, it's time for the Twinkie tax. Given that the public-health price tag on obesity is about $40 billion a year -- and 7% of Americans eat at McDonald's on any given day -- Yale psychologist Kelly D. Brownell and graduate student E. Katherine Battle are proposing a tax on fatty foods. They would spend the proceeds on promoting physical activity and nutrition education. And since the average child sees 10,000 food commercials a year, 95% of them for junk food and sugared cereals, they also advocate regulating junk-food advertising.
Battle and Brownell, a psychology professor and director of the Yale University Center for Eating & Weight Disorders, make their case in the latest edition of the journal Addictive Behavior. They track the increases in obesity, which now affects one-third of the population, and discuss eating disorders.
Their observation? Few environments could be more conducive than American culture for "nearly universal body dissatisfaction, preoccupation with eating and weight, clinical cases of eating disorders, and obesity," while at same time encouraging the consumption of food that is fatty, caloric, delicious, widely available, and cheap.
McDonald's officials were unavailable for comment.
By Susan Jackson in New Haven
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