Hey everyone, sorry (once again!) for the long wait on another post, but as I’ve said before, I barely have time to breathe with the struggles of a third year. New protocols to learn coming in every day and having to balance that with my social life so I can keep my sanity intact… It’s a mess.
But I have a little bit of time right now to do some stress release which I usually get from writing in here or some other creative type of strategy so I chose to do so. I just love my readers so much and would never want to leave them waiting for so long.
So now it is time for one of my long awaited entries in my notorious, highly-opinionated mess of a blog!
I actually want to talk about something I discovered the other day when reading through some pretty surface level medical news about a tactic for reducing health problems related to diet that was implemented in Chicago that was created to generate revenue for a county health care fund. This idea is what I think to be a very good and ideal strategy for helping the obesity and unregulated food consumption of Americans (although it could be beneficial anywhere).
To summarize this tactic: legislation was passed to add a tax to the sales price of beverages–more specifically–to discourage the purchasing of these beverages which are pretty unhealthy due to their high sugar content meanwhile generating revenue for public health initiatives.
In the article there is a mention of a prestige nutritionist, Samantha Heller saying “research has found a strong association between the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and type two diabetes, obesity, heart disease, kidney disease, tooth decay and gout” which are all very concerning for the health of the general population.
The initiative found success because it reduced public soda consumption by 21% in volume. This probably made a decent impact on the health of the people who reduced their soda purchasing however that wasn’t mentioned.
Personally, I think more places than just Boulder, Colo.; Philadelphia; Seattle; and four California cities: Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco should adopt this policy. Places like the States, Canada, and even the rest of the world would benefit immensely because while yes limiting some of the freedoms of people’s access to a beverage they might like, making it apparent that these beverages aren’t the best choice and should be consumed at rate of moderation a great deal larger than what is the current norm for other places.
So yes, I think this ‘Soda Tax’ to boost health care funds was a brilliant tactic to generate revenue while also doing some good along the way. I just wish it was utilized far more frequently because it is such a win-win and can do a lot of good for a great amount of people (especially the harder headed people who drink soda with every meal).
That is the most of my opinion on this subject and I don’t think there is anything else that I wish to add.
Stick around though because I plan on releasing a few more posts before I go back to missing in action from my blog for a while.
William Martin. 