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Six Ways to Cut Our Debt and Advance Obama's Agenda

How about a tax on foods, snacks, and drinks based on positive or negative food (health) value. Slap a tax on foods with high saturated fat, transfats, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, high fructose corn syrup, high calorie count, high sugar content, low nutritional value, and high amounts of artificial color and/or flavors. Offset the tax by a reduction based on the amount of vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber the item has. Few shoppers would buy an $8.00 12 oz. bag of Cheese Dooldles or a $4.00 2 pack of Twinkies. On the other hand, fresh vegetables or low fat meats would be discounted so a rational eater's grocery bill might even be reduced from current amounts.

The income from the tax would go towards Medicare and Medicaid helping to slow the coming insolvency of those programs. Also helping, would be the improvement in the health of the population as people slowed the rate at which they have been poisoning themselves with junk food. The cost of the programs would go down if people were in general healthier. Those healthcare programs should also automatically exclude smokers and those who have no genetic or accidental cause for their fatness and/or poor cardiovascular fitness. Those are usually preventable conditions caused by poor lifestyle choices just like smoking, excessive drinking, or non-medical drug use. The general population of tax payers should not have to pay for the poor choices of others. Reductions in benefits could be on a scale graduated by the degree of excess fat or poor fitness. That way people would be rewarded in dollars for improvements in fitness and/or reductions in their fat to weight ratio.

I am looking forward to comments and additions or exceptions readers have.