...potential ways to fight the epidemic. For example, in the year 2013 America tried to implicate a new taxation law on unhealthy foods called the “Fat Tax”. Any foods that were high in fats were going to have higher tax rates. However, could this taxation really have...
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...becoming America’s next controlled substance. Background: The United States is currently in a dangerous cycle of sugar consumption and disease with nearly two out of every three adults categorized as overweight or obese.(Figure 1,2) Among those characterized, their bodies were given a surplus in calories without an equal response of physical activity. Obesity restricts productivity, lower one’s quality of life, and reduces life expectancy. The excess body fat results in significant health problems such as an increased risk of developing high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, depression and even orthopedic problems. Additionally, the society bears the bulk of the costs associated with America’s extra pounds. Cawley and Meyerhoefer estimated health care costs accumulated up to $209.7 billion a year treating obesity-related health conditions, and this is a large jump compared to the averaged $38 billion obesity costs in the mid ‘80s. These outcomes should be of no surprise to Americans with our substantial reliance on processed foods and larger portion sizes. Besides...
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...Tammy Thacker Obesity and the Proposal of Fat Tax English Composition II Dr. Wells October 27, 2014 Obesity and the Proposal of Fat Tax Obesity has become an epidemic in the United States of America. It is affecting our children's health to the point where they are being diagnosed with early onset diabetes and hypertension. . Obesity is the result of eating high fat, high protein foods along with a serious sedentary lifestyle. I intend to show that although obesity is on the rise applying fat tax is not the answer to our problem. Obesity is defined, medically as having a body mass index of more than 30. However, it can be effectively curtailed by lowering your caloric intake, exercise, and implementing healthier school lunches. The medical risks associated with excessive body weight is many and varied, include: osteoarthritis, coronary artery disease, stroke, and high cholesterol. Some people with obesity suffer from stress, low self-esteem, social disadvantaged and depression. According to data collected in the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1999), amongst U. S. adults aged 20-74 years obesity has nearly doubled from approximately 15% in 1980 to an estimated 27% in 1999. (Clark & Dittrich, November 2010) The obesity epidemic affects the world in the form of increase health insurance cost, medical bills related to different illness that occurs while being obese. It also poses for an increase in regular taxes so that the government can accommodate...
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...Why Should Unhealthy Foods Be Taxed Around The World? An Exploratory Essay Nicholas Jackson Goldey - Beacom College Why Should Unhealthy Foods Be Taxed Around The World? An Exploratory Essay I normally eat French toast sticks with bacon or waffles with bacon for breakfast in the morning because it is the most convenient for me - it comes in a pre-cooked package that I could throw in the microwave and be ready in the minutes – and it tastes good to me. Even though it may taste good to me and will settle for a breakfast meal for my stomach, I know it isn’t good for my body in the long run. However, after reading some of the writings of food activist Gary Sacks, I began to think more about what I should be eating healthy foods because there will begin to be taxes on unhealthy foods that are made. A prime example is in his article, “Traffic-Light' Nutrition Labeling and 'Junk-Food' Tax: a Modeled Comparison of Cost-Effectiveness for Obesity Prevention,” published in Nature Publishing Group, Sacks states junk-food' tax, price elasticity’s were used to estimate a change in energy intake in response to a 10% price increase in seven food categories. Sacks advice about the junk foods, my breakfast foods, starting to get taxed 10% makes me start thinking about what I should be eating. The waffles/French toast sticks with bacon have been pre-cooked and made so that the packaging can be heated up in a microwave oven, but on the same note, the food items look to be similar to...
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...Over the past years, the obesity epidemic has been becoming more of a problem in the United States. In 2010, one-third of children and adolescents were deemed overweight. This fact alone should be very scary as this generation holds the future of our nation in their hands. Obesity is an issue that should be a focus for nutritionist, economic analysts and all those concerned about the future of this nation. It has been proposed that taxing sugar sweetened beverages would solve the obesity problem in the United States. It is important for everyone to begin fighting obesity now before it gets worse. Obesity leads to diseases such as Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Coronary Artery Disease, Coronary Vascular Disease, Heart attack, stroke, and even...
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...Outline Structure I. Introduction A. Thesis: The use of drone strike’s is morally and ethically sound based on evidence that shows drone warfare saves American lives, are just as accurate as conventional air strikes, and save tax payers millions of dollars. II. Body Paragraph 1: The use of drone strikes has enabled the United States to neutralize thousands of terrorist targets without direct threat to American lives. B. Supporting evidence: 1. Explanation: You cannot put a dollar amount on a human life, however a U.S. military pilot has millions of dollars of training invested in them and the aircraft to make combat aviation safe. Look at the F-35 program for example it is highly experimental and has costed 1.5 Trillion Dollars. The most advanced drones such as the X-47B have only cost the United States 900 million dollars to develop and deploy due to the removal of the human element from flying the aircraft. 2. So what? If you look at all the aircraft crashes over the past decade they have killed 277 Americans. If you would have had drones in those combat areas versus manned aircraft those are 277 lives that could have been saved along with hundreds of millions of dollars in death benefits, lost training, and the cost of the aircraft. III. Body Paragraph 2: Topic sentence goes here. C. Supporting evidence 3. Explanation 4. So what? D. Supporting evidence 5. Explanation ...
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...A Pricing Strategy to Promote Low-Fat Snack Choices through Vending Machines Simone A. French, PhD, Robert W Jeffery, PhD, Mary Story, PhD, Peter Hannan, MStat, M. Patricia Snyder, RD, MPH Introduction There is general agreement that measures that would reduce the fat content of the diet in the population as a whole would be helpful in preventing or delaying the development of several chronic diseases.1-4 An important question for public health policy, therefore, is how to encourage the population as a whole to make lower-fat food choices. To date, environmental intervention strategies to reduce the population prevalence of high-fat food consumption have focused primarily on improving consumer knowledge through mass media, schoolbased, and point-of-purchase education.-"-- Such interventions have shown positive effects on nutrition knowledge, but changes in food-choice behaviors have been modest in magnitude, variable, and often short lived. Environmental strategies designed to influence food choice through mechanisms of availability and cost rather than nutrition education have received less research attention.5-14 Perhaps the most impressive of these studies in magnitude of effect was a recent cafeteria-based study that examined pricing and availability influences on food choice.'4 Prices of fruit and salad were reduced by 50%, and the number of fruit and salad items available was increased. Purchase of fruit and salad increased threefold during...
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...test it on humans at all. Only once the Golden Rice is tested on animals and there are no harmful effects, then can the product be tested on humans (Coliherr 2011:2; Pryor & Mackenzie 2014:2). Golden Rice is made to overproduce beta carotene. There are retinoids in the beta carotene that are toxic and this can cause birth defects. Feeding adults and children beta- carotene enriched foods could cause an overdose intake of vitamin A which could thus lead to Hypervitaminosis. The effects of Hypervitaminosis are: birth defects, liver abnormalities and reduced bone density that could lead to Osteoporosis (Coliherr 2011:2). The environmental factors that one should be concerned about are that in the poorer communities and developing nations this grain is being planted as the main source of vitamin A. This will lead to there being a very poor biodiversity. Depending on a multiple of vitamin A substances is not healthy as Vitamin A is fat soluble, one will need fat and protein in their diet to be able to intake the vitamin A. In the poor communities and developing nations, there is no protein and fats available or affordable. This can cause the concern of whether the Golden rice will provide the health benefits that it was created for (Coliherr 2011:2; Riley...
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...Fat Tax in the United States Abstract The United States has one of the least healthy populations in the entire world. That seems out of skew because we are also considered one of the most powerful. In the near future we will have a universal healthcare program that will basically enforce everybody to have health insurance of some sort. You would think you would want this for a nation on route to good health. This is not the case now, but there is one way in starting the path. Fat Tax in the United States The United States of America is the most obese nation in the world. In the United States obesity is estimated to cause an excess 111,909 to 365,000 deaths per year, while 1 million (7.7%) of deaths in the European Union are attributed to excess weight. Not only is obesity taking lives, it is the cause of numerous health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Our country, as a whole, needs to start being more careful about what our bodies intake. Various ways have been introduced in doing this. The majority of them would not be enforced and are typically in the form of a dieting or a workout regimen. Yeah, like everybody wants to do that. One of the most overlooked ways in reducing health risks in America is implementing a tax on fat of all things. It seems a little far-fetched at first but many would be surprised how genuine of an argument this is. The idea of a fat tax is so obscure to many. This is probably because it has never been in effect...
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... The Fast Food Epidemic On Health In today's society, fast food has become a large part of many American's lives. With the rising numbers of obese people, it is hard not to draw a correlation between the increase in fast food and obesity. Most obese people don’t want to be obese and wish they could lose weight, yet they continue to struggle with their fast food intake and obesity. This is due to the advertising done on the consumers, the highly addictive food itself, and most importantly, how advertising and addiction combine with children to form habits that are kept once they become adults. These factors are the reasons that fast food restaurants are to blame for the rising obesity and health risks across America. The government needs to step in and place regulations on these fast food restaurants so they will stop taking advantage of people's weaknesses. Before it can be gone into detail about how fast food companies are to blame for people over eating their food, it first must be proven that fast food is indeed the main problem causing today's obesity in America. It is known to many people how the number of fast food restaurants in America has increased tremendously over the past several decades, but it is difficult to calculate by how much due to the lack of historic statistics. Also, it is difficult whether or not to categorize certain restaurants as fast food. Although,...
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...success in the food industry is marketing. The food industry is the best at manipulating and altering perceptions and persuading its customers that their product is a necessity. Big food corporations have had a major influence on the spread of obesity in America. Fed Up argues that if we want to see change we need to be the change. According to the film, kids watch an average of 4,000 food-related ads every year; that’s about 10 per day (Fed Up). Additionally, 98% of food related ads that children view is for products high in fat, sugar, and sodium (Fed Up). Fast food companies are targeting kids in their marketing strategies and it is leading to kids developing bad habits and ideas about food at an early age....
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...doubling since 1980” (Nestle, 2006); this is of huge concern because soft drinks provide empty calories, or calories that only bring with them a high-density of energy but not of nutrients. If 10% of your calories consistently does not provide the nutrients you need, the amount of optimum nutrients is curtailed and could eventually lead to a form of malnutrition or a vitamin deficiency. Overweight children are at an especially high risk because they tend to “consume 1200 to 2000 calories per day from soft drinks alone” (Nestle, 2006) and not only does this cause a form of malnutrition but it makes it more likely that these children end up with an excess of calories, which leads to obesity....
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...is causing the most harm. I fell that whether for medical or recreational use marijuana needs to be removed from its Schedule I status because it does not meet the definition of what a Schedule I drug is, it does not have adverse health effect if used properly, and it could positively affect the United States economy if taxed and/or used as a renewable resource. Many studies have found that marijuana meets none of the Controlled Substance Act’s criteria for placement in Schedule I, and therefore the government is required by law either to permit medical use or to remove the drug from federal control altogether. In regards to what a Schedule I drug is, Section 812 of the Controlled Substance Act states: Substances in the schedule have a high potential for abuse, have no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and there is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision. Some examples of substances listed in schedule I are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), peyote, methaqualone, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphtamine (“ecstasy”). (“Title 21 CFR Excerpts, Section 1308.”DEA Diversion...
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...their territories, in late 1800 the first diary cooperative was found and trough 1900 the cheese engineering and producing developed to the today’s applicable high industry level (Yiva Ardo). In 1999 the Arla foods diary company was founded (Yiva Ardo), which today is the largest diary company in the Europe (William Reed) ‘and it commands 51% value share’ (Euro Monitor) of Danish cheese market the rest of market share is saturated with thirty smaller diary companies (Danish Agriculture & Food Council). The Danish cheese market is marketed by domestic diary production, imported cheese and dairy products measures approximately 25% of domestic consumption, on the other hand the value of the dairy export totals to EUR 1.8 billion annually (Danish Agriculture & Food Council). As the EU cheese market including Danish market stepped in a mature life cycle, the activities became more competitive and volatile; the main task of current players should be to consolidate current market positions (The Diary Site), on the other hand the maturity of the cheese market and high volume production, demanded a structure change in milk production sector as well, from many mid-small sized farms the market was restructured to small number of large farmers. The growth of market and the changes in trends pursuing healthy life style the Danish food regulatory body submitted the tax filling on cheese ‘to be in line with other unhealthy consumer products like alcohol and tobacco’...
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...drinking soft drink more frequently than water, 90% of adults being classified as overweight or obese, Australian families spending over 25% of their food budget on take away and obesity being the leading contributor to diseases within the country. Scenes of delicious, juicy burgers and sickeningly sweet soft drinks were broadcast, when the nation’s obesity deniers held a press conference on ‘National Obesity Day’ to depict exactly what the statistics must before they believe that Australia has an increasingly large problem with obesity. The group of sceptics...
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