Social Desirability and Effectiveness of a Fat Tax in Countering Essay

Social Desirability and Effectiveness of a Fat Tax in Countering Obesity and Dietary-Related Disease in Canada - Essay Example Food labeling measures have been implemented for years, but despite such policies being in place, people in these nations continue to grow obese. Recently, most governments, especially in America, Europe and parts of Asia have or are considering implementing high tax policies on junk food. Experiences show that food tax policies are withdrawn later for their unintended consequences, with only a few exceptions of countries like Finland that seem to progress well with such policies. Thesis: This paper asserts that fat tax yields unintended consequences by impacting consumers differently in reference to regression effect, and there are challenges in altering consumer dietary behavior. Fat tax alone is an insufficient measure to solve the problem of obesity in any country; it would require combined policies and regulations by different responsible parties to alleviate the health problem. Each government has individually selected which food categories to impose the tax on. Some focus on levying high sugar foods, while others focus on fat saturation or the cholesterol content. These are some of the ways used to evaluate taxable junk food. However, defining junk food is complicated for the reason that it extends even into the healthy food types. First, not every meal that is served at the table even in sizable proportions is healthy or has the right nutritional value. Researchers classify vegetables and fruits among the recommended food types, others extend to healthy fatty acids which can be challenged when high-fat content is considered, but place a bias on the served fast foods at most outlets, targeting those prepared or manufactured with high sugar, salt, fat, cholesterol and fat-saturated or low vitamins contents. Others define unhealthy foods as a combination of the latter category but criticized to be rather harsh on the consumer.