Obesity A Growing Disease - 1853 Words

Introduction Obesity is a growing disease within our ever quickening, largely sedentary society. The American Obesity Treatment Organization reported the current obesity problem in the US as 72 million people dealing with this disease and associated risk factors. Obesity is a disease that affects both adults and children. The CDC lists related risk factors of this disease as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, Type-2 diabetes, sleep apnea, and stroke (Adult Obesity Facts). Obesity is highly prevalent in Florida with rates as high as 25-30% (â€Å"Obesity Prevalence Maps†). As a nation, the goal set by Healthy People 2020 is to reduce the rate of obesity to less than 15% and as the data and statistics clearly show Florida is nowhere†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"Sin† taxes have been proven as a way to curtail known unhealthy behaviors. Soda taxes are most accepted if taxes collected are earmarked for health specific programs (Chaufin et al., 2010). The cons are the con sumers are the voters and taxing may equate to loss of votes, taxing may not be equitable to individuals that do not have the disease, and finally, an undue burden may be placed on lower socio-economic demographics as these groups often have limited access to food vendors that primarily sale what would be considered taxed foods. Though these sin taxes are proven to work well with tobacco and alcohol consumption, altering a persons’ diet needs to be more individualized and realistically approached. Lower socio-economic individuals should not feel added burden as a tax; which would be a negative impact (Kuchar et al., 2005). Legality issues are regarded as low, but would require state government support to enact. This would likely not be popularly accepted and have a minimal impact for any increase in tax rate. Tax snack-food and fast food production This will be similar to the last as the increase in taxes from the producers will result in increased prices to the consumers. Unless this effort is nationwide, it is not believed to be worthwhile as it would not change the landscape of food production. The price increase is likely but not guaranteed depending on how manufacturers decide to absorb the impact. Pros and cons would be very