Tags: culture arts, fat, Fat Tax, food, food policy, Health, obesity, politics, soda
In his post yesterday, Kelly Brownell of TIME Magazine revived an old idea: tax soda. Various states and cities, he says, are considering leveling such a tax against sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). Besides discouraging the consumption of unhealthful beverages, the economic benefits of such a tax, says Bronwell, would be significant: “$50 billion in health care savings and $150 billion in revenue over ten years.” I’m not sure if these numbers apply to a national tax or to the various local and state taxes Brownell mentions, but either way, this is indeed impressive. I’m all for such a tax.
But I have one big problem with the way this proposal is framed: the tax is designed to combat diabetes and obesity, and often it’s even called a “fat tax.” It’s this demonization of fatness that I’m not comfortable with.
(Disclaimer: I’m not a scientist or a health professional, and I’m in no position to offer an official opinion on health science. What I express below is simply the result of my own experiences, observations, and reading.)
The stigmatization of fat is damaging. Weight discrimination or “sizeism” makes it less likely for fat people to get a promotion, a job, or even adequate medical care. This last point might even help partially explain why fat people are considered to be less healthy on average than their skinnier counterparts. For, indeed, there may be reason to think that the negative health effects of fatness may themselves be overblown. Some scholars like Linda Bacon contend that the research linking obesity so strongly to other health problems is flawed, and that a focus on nutrition and exercise rather than weight is the best way to address personal health.
None of this is to say that no relationship exists between weight and health, nor is it to claim that foods that make you unhealthy don’t also make you fat sometimes. It’s simply to point out that these assertions are likely exaggerated and are mere generalizations that will never apply perfectly to any given individual. I may not be able to say exactly what the relationship between weight and health is, but I can say with confidence that weight discrimination and the stigmatization of fat is damaging on a psychological and health level. For that reason alone, we should stop framing public conversations about health around weight and focus more on factors like nutrition and exercise that don’t marginalize or oppress entire groups of people.
(If you want to learn more about this topic, check out our issue on whether you can be fat and healthy.)
(Photo by Alexander Kaiser under a Creative Commons license)
| Share This: | Tweet |
You must be logged in to leave a comment.
3 Comments
I’ve been tiknhing the identical thing a short while ago. Pleased to find out somebody on the same wavelength! Good posting.
Well put. However, I ultimately disagree that the focus should be on nutrition and exercise rather than weight loss when the two are intimately connected. What’s a result of eating a balanced diet and getting routine physical activity? Most often weight loss. There i something to be said about avoiding obesity not just because it means that the individual is leading an unhealthy life style but also because the individual’s excess body weight itself causes severe medical problems. That all being said, I agree that the stigmatization and discrimination must be overcome in our society and that the term “fat tax” disregards individual sensitivities and dignity.
And here’s where I have a little trouble personally trying to work this out. Some academics (like Dr. Bacon, mentioned above), actually dispute many of the claims that being fat is itself unhealthy, arguing that such claims are either exaggerated or untrue. Here, for example, is a medical phenomenon generally accepted by most medical researchers but that doesn’t mesh with the usual “obesity = unhealthy” message: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_paradox.
I’m not qualified to judge that debate one way or another, but this is my general thought process: set aside for the moment the question of whether obesity itself is unhealthy. We know that weight stigma is real and is bad for psychological and physical health, and we know that improving nutrition and exercise habits positively impacts health. Get people to improve these habits, and whether or not they lose weight (many will lose at least a little, but not everyone will, and very few people can lose large quantities of weight and keep it off for a long period), they will improve their health.