Tax on bad food tough to implement

Richard Rychtarik, Las Vegas

Friday, July 27, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.

Listening to KNPR last week, I heard Assemblyman Harvey Munford promoting a tax on any and all “bad for you” foods, including food served in restaurants if the calorie count exceeds 500 calories. How could anyone think Munford’s tax proposal is a serious attempt to fix an ingrained societal problem?

While there has been an enormous expansion of not-so-good-for-you fast foods available in restaurants and grocery stores, this is only a microcosm of the total problem. Bad habits don’t die easily. Just like tobacco, good-tasting but not-so-nutritious food can be very addictive. Couple this addiction with the sedentary lifestyle adopted here over the past 40 years and this becomes a recipe for the early onset of every horrible health issue anyone can think of.

While heavily taxing a single item like tobacco does have a positive effect, there are thousands of food items. Even those that are good may not be when eaten in excess.

Munford needs to find another windmill to tilt at. If by chance the Legislature does pass this food tax, I recommend that they identify all the good and the bad foods. Then the taxes collected on the bad foods must automatically subsidize the purchase price of the good foods. Both the additional bad food tax and the good food tax subsidy amounts should immediately appear on the purchaser’s register receipt. At least then we can see what choices our government believes we need to make and how we might benefit in more ways than one.