Fat tax" could save 3,200 lives each year


LONDON (Reuters) - A "fat tax" on salty, sugary and fatty foods could save thousands of lives each year, according to a study published on Thursday


Researchers at Oxford University say that charging Value Added Tax (VAT) at 17.5 percent on foods deemed to be unhealthy would cut consumer demand and reduce the number of heart attacks and strokes.

The purchase tax is already levied on a small number of products such as potato crisps, ice cream, confectionery and chocolate biscuits, but most food is exempt.

The move could save an estimated 3,200 lives in Britain each year, according to the study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

"A well-designed and carefully-targeted fat tax could be a useful tool for reducing the burden of food-related disease," the study concluded.

The team from Oxford's Department of Public Health said higher taxes have already been imposed on cigarettes and alcohol to encourage healthy living.

They used a mathematical formula to estimate the effect of higher prices on the demand for foods such as pastries, cakes, cheese and butter.

However, they said their research only gave a rough guide to the number of lives that could be saved and said more work was needed to get an exact picture of how taxes could improve public health.

Any "fat tax" might be seen as an attack on personal freedom and would weigh more heavily on poorer families, the study warned.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070712/hl_nm/britain_fat_d...YiJMZ9nCVv_TmerMWM0F

Saw this at "The Smokers Club" about Calif.

England anti's are going full bore with their hate!!

Smoking Mad About Prop 86


November 6, 2006
George Lewis


I stopped to drop off a carton of cigarettes for a disabled veteran at a nursing home. They have a bleak area outside where they can enjoy a cigarette at fixed intervals. He was reading an absentee ballot about Proposition 86.


He said, “This is crazy! We can’t afford $70 for a carton of cigarettes. That’s the most prejudiced, hateful proposition I ever read.”


Then he asked me, “Can this pass?”


I said, “Are you old enough to remember bus segregation, because some people didn’t think some people looked as nice as they did?”


He said, “Haven’t we learned anything from history? Who’s promoting this crime, this time?”


I said, “They are people with a drug addiction. The drug of venomous, vindictive, cold-hearted hate. A drug ten times worse than heroin. It forms a hard callous around the heart, like a stone, and destroys logical, reasoning ability, so they can’t quit.”

He lifted his head from his hand, and looking up, through eyes like a saint’s, he said, “Then I feel sorry for them. Their burden is greater than mine.”


Not wanting to contaminate the virtue of his words, I said, “Yes, I guess we should feel sorry for them.”


What I really thought was, the trail of their whole life is littered with their victims. If they could eliminate every smoker on earth, they would just channel another fanatical, inflictive vendetta. It’s their drug of choice. They can’t quit.

quote:

"fat tax" on salty, sugary and fatty foods

oh yeah that what they say but the real truth is taxing and targeting the heafty people.. like whats being done to the targeted smokers group..

Once all the guilty pleasures are removed from life what's the point of living?