Should Taxes be Imposed on Junk Food?
Last August, the UK proposed introducing a ‘fat tax’ to combat the increase in obesity. Researchers at Oxford University and Nottingham University claimed that a 17.5% VAT on unhealthy food could save up to 3,200 lives a year. Besides encouraging consumers to purchase healthier foods the tax could be used to subsidize the cost of more expensive, healthy foods. More recently the Chalmers University in Sweden found that putting a tax on meat would result in reduced consumption. A tax of €60/ton of CO2-equivalent would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from European agriculture by 7% and would also reduce beef consumption by 15%. The study also found that if the land made available by decreasing meat and dairy production was used...
