[462436347]

Sugar consumption peaked in 2000 and has been in steady decline since, and not only that, but the decline has been led by a decline in HFCS consumption: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094768

30% of the US was obese in 2000, now it's over 40%, despite per capita sugar consumption reverting to what it was pre-1975.

> The US needs, and has needed, to offset the corn subsidies that get turned into HFCS by adding a "sugar tax" at the consumer side.

If anything, we need a tax on added fat and sodium, the two biggest drivers of food hyperpalatability, when added in excess of the thresholds identified in this paper (> 25% kcal from fat and ≥ 0.30% sodium by weight):

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.22639

> The HPF criteria identified 62% (4,795/7,757) of foods in the FNDDS that met criteria for at least one cluster. Most HPF items (70%; 3,351/4,795) met criteria for the FSOD cluster. Twenty-five percent of items (1,176/4,795) met criteria for the FS cluster, and 16% (747/4,795) met criteria for the CSOD cluster. The clusters were largely distinct from each other, and < 10% of all HPF items met criteria for more than one cluster.

(CSOD, carbohydrates and sodium; FS, fat and simple sugars; FSOD, fat and sodium; HPF, hyper-palatable foods.)

[fortran77]

Why don't we just tax obesity?

[happosai]

The American version would not be tax the Fat, but to make fat pay more for their health insurance.

And the only result would be more people unable to pay their health insurances...

[462436347]

Because adding fat (usually in the form of vegetable oil) and sodium is the cheapest, easiest way to make food hyperpalatable, and the share of the grocery store shelf space occupied by these products has exploded in the last 40 years, greatly contributing to the obesity epidemic. Ominously, this a trend that the researcher behind that paper I linked to attributes in large measure to the tobacco companies entering the packaged food business: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.16332

[wolpoli]

So some kind of annual appointment where we get our BMI measured