New York’s soft drink tax
Last month, New York Governor David Paterson proposed adding an 18% statewide tax to non-diet sodas and sugary juice drinks. Though it does have some supporters, the plan has drawn plenty of criticism from nutritionists as well as small-government proponents. Fox News is even getting their fair and balanced panties in a twist about it. Despite all the criticism, I think it’s a great idea.
I know that nobody likes taxes. At the same time, though, most people like police and fire departments that are operational, public schools that can afford textbooks, and courthouses that can handle enough trials. The government needs to collect some tax revenue. The real question is, where should we take taxes from?
Every time the government taxes something, it changes the incentives for doing that thing. Income taxes make working less valuable, because they lower the wages you receive. Sales taxes discourage making purchases. Property taxes discourage owning property. (All these things are really only visible at the margins. Imagine that you have five dollars in your pocket and you want to buy a sandwich that costs $4.95. After sales tax, you can’t afford it anymore. Now, instead of thinking about how much cash you have on you right now, think of it in terms of a long-term budget, and you’ll get the idea.) If we want people in society doing a certain thing, or we want to make sure they are able to, we should keep taxes low on it. That’s why many places don’t tax groceries; they’re a necessity of life. Inversely, if we want people to stop doing something, we ought to tax it as high as is feasible. That’s why cigarette taxes exist, and why there should be a higher tax on gasoline. Taxes allow consumers to consider the externalities of their behavior. The tax is like adding on the social cost of people’s behavior, spread out over each individual act of consumption.
It’s bad that so many Americans are obese. According to Governor Paterson, nearly one in four New Yorkers fits that description. This puts a burden on New York’s medical resources, both in terms of time and space and in terms of funds available for government healthcare assistance. Therefore, it makes sense for New York to disincentivize obesity. They’re not locking people up in prison for it. Just making it a little less appealing.
If a tax can be used to achieve some social good like this, it means other taxes can remain lower (or can be lowered, depending on the current state of things). It seems to me that it’s a win-win situation. Better health in society, better allocation of taxes. Some people (like our friends at Fox News) think that this is cynical and hypocritical. Steven Milloy writes, “Combating obesity is not grounds for the tax; it is, instead, camouflage for it — and not very good camouflage at that.” This is a serious mischaracterization. What happens is, either New Yorkers drastically reduce their soft drink intake, which is a good thing, or New York makes a bunch of its tax revenue off a negative behavior rather than a positive one like working or buying groceries, which is also a good thing. No one is camouflaging anything.
Now, some of the criticism has been more along the lines of, “This isn’t enough.” It’s true that reducing the amount of soda you drink won’t instantly put you at your ideal weight. There are other types of food that are bad for you. Exercise still matters. However, this sounds to me like arguing that if you have anvils crushing both your feet, it’s not worth it to try to move the one on the right. Doing something in this case is still helpful, even though it isn’t everything.
“Natural” isn’t always better
The New York Times recently ran a story about how best to prepare vegetables. It turns out that raw foods and vegetables aren’t necessarily better for you than they would be if you cooked them — and sometimes they’re worse. Tara Parker-Pope writes:
The amount and type of nutrients that eventually end up in the vegetables are affected by a number of factors before they reach the plate, including where and how they were grown, processed and stored before being bought. Then, it’s up to you. No single cooking or preparation method is best. Water-soluble nutrients like vitamins C and B and a group of nutrients called polyphenolics are often lost in processing. …
Fat-soluble compounds like vitamins A, D, E and K and the antioxidant compounds called carotenoids are less likely to leach out in water. Cooking also breaks down the thick cell walls of plants, releasing the contents for the body to use. That is why processed tomato products have higher lycopene content than fresh tomatoes.
In January, a report in The Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry concluded that over all, boiling was better for carrots, zucchini and broccoli than steaming, frying or serving them raw. Frying was by far the worst.
Surely it’s a good idea to make an effort to include some raw vegetables in our daily consumption. It’s interesting to note, though, that the conventional wisdom that raw is better is not true in all cases. Some people, however, take that supposed wisdom to an unhealthy extreme. The “raw food diet”, typically also vegan, is about the strictest interpretation of all-natural eating. As this About.com summary explains, followers of this diet avoid eating anything heated to over 116° F (47° C).
On face it seems a little silly to me that in the search for the most supposedly natural lifestyle, some people have chosen to go back to before the discovery of fire. But then, even About.com has filed this article in the alternative medicine category, along with articles about acupuncture (equally effective when you’re pretending to do it) and homeopathic remedies (which are based in part upon the premise that diluting something makes it more potent).
Of course, even those of us who don’t follow extreme diets like this one fall prey to this simplistic sort of thinking all the time. Grocery stores can charge higher prices for organic food because so many of us assume that if it’s organic it must be worth the extra cost. And sure, pesticides and other chemicals used on food can be dangerous in large quantities, but worm-filled or mold-covered food isn’t exactly healthy either. (I’m reminded of the Vital Signs podcast from last February that described the case of an infant who contracted botulism from some natural honey.) The healthiest lifestyle is actually a happy medium between limiting the “unnatural” chemicals we consume and avoiding the all-too-natural ways of getting sick.
I believe this highlights a major fallacy in the popular conception of health: that things are better for you if they’re more natural. First of all, “natural” isn’t even an adjective that can be clearly defined, given that we can’t exactly return to some sort of Hobbesian state of nature to look around and take notes. But also, many things commonly viewed as “unnatural” such as technological and chemical advances have actually vastly improved our lives. I’m happy to live in a world with telephones, penicillin, electricity, printing presses, the wheel… and I’m also glad we have pasteurized and vitamin-fortified milk, irradiated meat, and rice genetically modified to have 20 times the beta carotene.
At the end of the day, I think we just have to remember that the story is always more complicated than it seems at first. It’s appealing to think there are clear cut rules for how to live the healthiest life, but following a rule like “natural equals good for you” can actually be detrimental to your health. A little bit of critical thinking can go a long way.
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