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Britain should introduce the world’s first tax on sugary and salty food, a report recommends today. The “snack tax” could add £3.4 billion a year to families’ shopping bills, with a 60p Mars bar costing 9p more. With 56 million people currently living in England, it means £60 per year will be added to each person’s food bill on average — £240 for a family of four. The money should be used to pay for GPs to prescribe fruit, vegetables and cookery classes on the NHS to help prevent obesity and ill health, the Government-commissioned review says. The radical proposals...

Jonathan Gruber, long credited as the architect of Obamacare, once discussed the necessity of taxing fat people by body weight in order to fight obesity. “Ultimately, what may be needed to address the obesity problem are direct taxes on body weight,” Gruber wrote in an essay for the National Institute for Health Care Management in April 2010, just months after helping design Obamacare with the president in the Oval Office and during the period in which he was under contract as an Obama administration consultant. …

Denmark has decided to abolish its fat tax after barely a year, citing too many negative side effects hitting businesses. A proposed sugar tax that was meant to be introduced in 2013 has also been scrapped. In October 2011, Denmark became the first country in the world to introduce a fat tax on meat, dairy products and cooking oil. The centre-left government now plans to abolish the tax in January 2013. The previous right-wing government introduced the fat tax to limit the population's intake of fatty foods. The Danish National Health and Medicines Authority says 13% of the Danes are...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Health experts have been trying to combat obesity in America for years and have recently suggested a new way to solve the growing problem. A new study suggests that imposing a fat tax on unhealthy food and drinks could help slim down expanding waistlines. According to reports, more than 60 percent of Americans are overweight. Under the tax, a $4 cheeseburger would cost an extra 80 cents, RTV6's Stacia Matthews reported. Some Hoosiers found the proposed fat tax hard to swallow. "I don't think we should tax people and the way they run their lives,” one man said....

For French residents fond of sugary drinks like Coca Cola, life is about to get more expensive. The country's top constitutional body, the Constitutional Council, approved a new soda tax on Wednesday. The tax, which works out at about 1 euro cent per container, is part of austerity measures passed in France to combat the debt crisis, and is expected to generate around €120 million ($156 million) in revenue for the government. … The "cola tax," as people are calling it in France, will now go into effect on Jan. 1. French media are reporting that most companies will raise...

Americans are familiar with the high taxes on items such as cigarettes and alcohol — conversationally referred to as “vice taxes.” Taxes of this type serve a twofold purpose. On one hand, they raise revenue for the state, like any other tax. On the other, they attempt to deter the abuse of such substances, which are or can be dangerous to the body. Denmark levied a similar new tax on saturated fats on Saturday, which the country hopes will bring in revenue and make unhealthy foods a less attractive item to consumers. The tax is 16 kroner — which translates...

The Food Police have stormed Denmark, where it is now a little more expensive to eat fattening food. The country’s so-called “fat tax” went into effect on Saturday. The tax rate is 16 Danish kroner per kilogram of saturated fat in a food – in terms Americans can understand, that’s about $6.27 per pound of saturated fat – and it kicks in when the saturated fat content of a food item exceeds 2.3%. The complex formula takes into account the amount of fat used to produce a particular food, not the amount that’s in the final product, according to Ole...

Offering incentives for lifestyle choices likely to cut medical costs is an idea worth considering. If an individual's body mass index isn't a purely personal matter, what is? We have the right to choose between healthy food or junk food, even if the latter is more likely to result in obesity and related health problems. But once our choices affect others, there's a natural conflict between individual freedom and social responsibility. In a nation where rising healthcare costs and diminished access to medical care are issues of grave concern, personal decisions are no longer strictly private. The treatment of obesity-...

One of the unexpected side effects of Obama’s socialized medicine plan could be the state claiming the right to determine what you can eat or drink. When your good health becomes a matter of fiscal policy, you can predict the “fat police” stepping into your life, regulating nutrition as they see fit, and it appears early salvos in that battle are now sounding in Illinois. Murmurs from “public interest groups” located in the Land of Lincoln are suggesting a mandatory state tax on sugary soft drinks that could potentially raise the price of high calorie sodas by one or two...

New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records--that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year--must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity. The obesity-rating regulation states that every American's electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.” The law also requires that these electronic health records be available--with appropriate security measures--on a national...

According to a report released Monday by the Archives of Internal Medicine, there is a growing epidemic across developed nations like the United States. The study recommends that one possible sure fire method for slowing the escalation of obesity in America would be to add a “surcharge” ie.added taxes or fees. Ann Arbor, America are you ready to may more in order to eat less? Mitchell H. Katz, MD; Rajiv Bhatia, MD, MPH, author of the study is betting that Americans might be willing to “put their money where their mouth is.” Oh really. Perhaps the notion of paying more...

Barred from indulging in public spaces, taxed on their habit, targeted by public health campaigns, shunned socially?

Chalk up a loss for the nanny-staters. Gov. David Paterson (D-NY) thought it would be a cool idea to tax non-diet soda to penalize people for drinking something that he thinks will make them fat. We have been following this glittering jewel of liberal arrogance since he made the proposal in December. Then, last month, some modern-day Sons of Liberty decided to protest the tax by throwing a New York Tea Party, where they dumped soda into the Susquehanna River. (Video at the link) Finally, after weeks of protest by sensible, ordinary folks (and probably the Beverage Lobby), the Governor...

Liberals are keen on making the rest of us uninformed, self-absorbed bundles of God-obsessed narcissists, i.e., conservatives, “aware” of things. ("National School Backpack Awareness Day," "National Pit Bull Awareness Day," "National Self-Injury Awareness Day" - all real). New York Governor David Paterson, if nothing else, has made us all “childhood obesity aware” now that his “fat tax” proposal looks like it will fail in blue-state New York.I appreciate the Governor’s willingness to open my eyes, but I happen to drive past McDonalds, the Greek diner and the impoverished who live in the housing projects on my way into Manhattan...

NY officials want older trucks fitted with emission-reducing equipment; cost put at $195M ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- New York is taking steps to reduce diesel emissions in its construction fleet. The Department of Environmental Conservation is floating proposed regulations requiring trucks made before 2007 to be fitted with emissions-reducing equipment and to use ultra-low-sulfur fuel by 2011. The new regulations would apply only to state-owned trucks or trucks used for state contract work. The DEC estimates it will cost $195 million to retrofit about 30,000 state trucks. The New York State

Today we get our first “obesity tax.” In New York, the governor is going to wheel out his new budget, a document that is hoped to somehow, through miraculous means, balance the state books. There is broad-based support for across-the-board cuts, but the teachers, government employees and welfare queens are screaming that their money is sacred, and it remains to be seen whether the governor will side with the taxpayers or the tax hogs. That’s the big story. But hidden away in the details is a small story that will come back to haunt New Yorkers and all Americans. It’s...

New taxes, deep cuts to education and health care, and a restructuring of the state's economic development programs will be hallmarks of Gov. David Paterson's first budget plan to be released in two days, according to interviews of people briefed on components. The plan will come with a host of revenue raisers — increased taxes on hospitals and insurance policies, for instance — and at least one new assessment, a so-called obesity tax on non-diet soda to raise $404 million. The governor also is contemplating requiring new license plates to raise cash, reviving sales tax on clothing purchases, removing the...

Life insurers to impose 'fat tax' on the obese, costing up to 50 per cent moreBy BECKY BARROW - More by this author » Last updated at 22:37pm on 22nd February 2008  A "fat tax" is to be imposed on the obese by life insurance firms, it emerged last night.  Around 50 per cent extra could be charged on new premiums - and the threshold at which the higher rate starts will be lowered. The increased charge can be up to 400 per cent if you fall into other high risk categories, such as being a smoker or having...

Nutritionist: Tax Sugary Drinks To Fight Obesity Drinks Should Be Taxed Like Cigarettes, Alcohol, Popkin SaysPOSTED: 7:46 am EDT September 4, 2006 SYDNEY, Australia -- A leading nutritionist said we're "drinking ourselves into obesity" and sugary drinks should be taxed like cigarettes and alcohol. The University of North Carolina's Barry Popkin said Americans are gulping down more sodas, fruit juices and sugar-laden energy drinks than ever before. But he added, people aren't cutting their food intake to compensate for the extra calories. Popkin thinks one way to slow that trend is to put a high tax on the high-calorie sweeteners...

DETROIT - Would you like fries with that? Either way, the Detroit city treasury would like a bite. Faced with a $300 million budget hole, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is hoping people in this already heavily taxed city won't mind forking over a few extra cents for their Big Macs and Whoppers. Kilpatrick wants to ask Detroit voters to approve a 2 percent fast-food tax — on top of the 6 percent state sales tax on restaurant meals. The mayor says consumers will barely notice the extra cents at the cash register, but critics say the tax would unfairly burden the...