Will taxing fast food outlets improve health?
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Mobile phone connections versus water services for rural and urban inhabitants in the developing world. Source: Zetland & Gasson.
The City of Darebin in Melbourne is looking at the possibility of imposing a higher property rate – up to four times the standard commercial rate – on franchised fast food restaurants in the municipality. According to the local paper:
A report by council officers into a campaign against Type 2 diabetes found planning controls could not be used to stop franchises opening, particularly in a Business 1 zone. But it found a higher differential rate for fast-food chains could act to “curb the increase” of people developing diabetes.
Council’s concern at the health effects of fast food is understandable – lifestyle-related conditions like obesity and Type 2 diabetes are major public policy challenges. It’s a public health problem that seems analogous to smoking.
It doesn’t automatically follow however that what Council’s contemplating is an effective way to go about addressing the issue. I’m not convinced.
Even assuming Council’s mooted rating plan could achieve its intended goal of reducing the number of franchised fast food outlets within the municipality (in itself a big assumption), I doubt it would actually deliver much in terms of improved community health.
Darebin is not a big municipality (there are 31 in Melbourne) so I expect the vast bulk of residents would simply travel a little further to neighbouring municipalities to get their Red Rooster and Hungry Jacks. They’d do that almost entirely by driving.
That wouldn’t be a good use of their time and the extra driving wouldn’t be good for sustainability. All that, and what they’re eating wouldn’t change. Moreover it would impose the additional travel cost on all fast food buyers irrespective of their health status.
Nevertheless it’s plausible some residents of the municipality would be deterred by the extra travel. I expect, though, they’d mainly be occasional eaters of fast food, not the habitual junk food consumers most vulnerable to the negative health effects of bad diet.
It’s not obvious that residents who’d otherwise happily eat at McDonalds and KFC but for the greater difficulty of getting there, would instead eat something healthier. They’d be very likely, I think, to instead avail themselves of the numerous other non-franchise junk food options within the City of Darebin, both those that already exist plus those that might step into the vacuum created by the departure of the big chains.
For example, they might buy deep fried fish and chips, pies, pizzas, kebabs, hamburgers, cakes, confectionary or dozens of other options from numerous small high street shops or in the food courts of shopping centres. Or alternatively they might pull pies and chips out of the freezer and zap them in the microwave, all washed down with a large bottle of Coke.
Councillors should have a good look at the fat and sugar content of the goods lining the shelves of the municipality’s supermarkets. They might be surprised at how much shelf space is devoted to high calorie confectionary, soft drinks, snack food, prepared meals and frozen food.
There are also some practical considerations Council needs to take into account. How, for example, would Council levy the differential rate on fast food chains located in hard-top shopping centres like Northland? How would it deal with chains like SUBWAY that require customers to choose the ingredients in their sandwiches?
It’s also worth asking if Council could even do what it proposes. Could it lawfully impose a higher rate on selected food retailers in order to achieve a purpose the relevant Act arguably wasn’t designed to achieve? Would it be ultra vires? I’ll leave the answer for the lawyers.
The key problem for this initiative, though, is the idea that junk food is only sold by major fast food franchises. That’s where the seemingly obvious parallel with smoking breaks down.
A better analogy with tobacco is high-fat and high-sugar processed foods rather than one segment of the retail food industry. The issue is high concentrations of these source ingredients in manufactured “fast” foods irrespective of how they’re delivered to market.
Even then, though, the analogy isn’t perfect because obesity and type 2 diabetes aren’t solely a function of what goes into the body – the level of physical activity is also an important factor. (I wonder too if the genetic predisposition to disease is more variable in relation to diet than it is in relation to smoking?)
Reducing excessive consumption of all food with negative health effects for some population groups is the sort of issue that’s best approached at a higher level than local government. Education and regulation of advertising and marketing would be smarter approaches.
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If Council is really serious about increasing the health and wellbeing of its community through its retail rating regimes; would it be possible to achieve greater net benefit by focusing on sellers of nicotine and alcohol?
As long as the extra revenue raised is used to fund helping people eat healthier (e.g. via educational programs or even rates discounts for shops selling primarily healthy food), then I’d suggest introducing into the public mind the idea that junk food represents a community cost is not a bad thing. Yes, picking on big-brand fast food chains is probably not logically justifable, but you have to start somewhere.
While obviously a program like this to be truly effective should be a) national b) apply to all foods with known long-term negative health consequences, realistically it needs to be trialled at a small scale first. The danger is that the program fails to have any measurable impact and hence the whole idea of taxing unhealthy food becomes sufficiently unpopular that we never get the opportunity to examine it properly.
seriously what you put in your mouth is your responsibility, ditto the amount you exercise; how much you drink and also what you think – good food is affordable and readily available especially in the capitals and major regionals
way too much ‘governance’ on such matters
Dear Michael M.
What you aver is correct at a simple level but the problem is that the fast food companies advertising is so skilled and persuasive that it is arguable that it eliminates the operation of free will.
This advertising is directed at the most vulnerable with children being particularly vulnerable. Sure you can say its up to the parents but speaking as a parent I’m pretty much outsized and outspent aand outskilled by the mega corporations who advertise.
This is just one aspect.
Then for people to take responsibility they need knowledge. Is it out there and is it presented competitively?
This is why the scales (pardon the pun) need balancing
Wiz Aus is on the money. Even if the direct effect is pretty small, the additional revenue can be put to good use.
Governments need funds to pay for all the good things they do – the States provide hospitals & education, local governments parks, gardens, swimming pools etc.
Nothing wrong with a higher level of taxation on the less desirable activities, if it helps to reduce rates or taxes for pensioners and battlers.
MM, further to what the Pav wrote, it is just too simplistic to say we should have free choice. Especially if we as a society believe in a open healthcare for all system. Should then, we charge people for the expensive treatment they receive resulting from their self-inflicted dumb life choices, and apply some kind of penalty on treatment (lower positions in any waiting list etc)? And yes of course there are all kind of practical problems with any of that. This ain’t trivial. Healthcare costs by some extrapolations will eventually consume 100% of government’s budget–obviously it can’t but it shows the imperative for action. And most of it entirely preventable, yes just like smoking and alcohol, but possibly far worse in the long-term.
And look at the US. Is that really what you want? Not only is the obesity shocking but the clear class/income divide combined with the healthcare apartheid is nothing I think we want, or any sane nation would want. Least of all in the name of “freedom” for fast-food chains whose sole focus is maximizing profit. (To answer the response that isn’t it what any restauranteur is focussed on: No. Most people crazier enough to go into the restaurant game want a whole lot more than profit or they would be seeking that by much easier means.)
As to whether this is the most effective means to address the problem, no I suppose it is not. We need a significant fraction of both the health and education budgets devoted to remedial eduction on this important topic and other preventative health issues. Beginning with school meals which perhaps could be modelled on the French system which is where French kids pick up, for life, good eating habits plus a development of their palates. But the council has very limited options and no power over most things. I say bravo if they are trying to do something.
As to AD’s usual prevarication and sweeping the problem under the carpet by saying that the neighbouring council will just build more or get all the custom. This was the same lame argument about density of alcohol outlets and you can apply it to everything and thereby abdicate your own responsibility for ever doing anything to fix obvious terrible problems. Really one must address the key issue, ask whether there is something, even if modest, to help counter the problem and then consider the practicalities and legal issues, not the other way around. So, is it an issue worth trying to do something about. YES.
I am sure there are lots of examples but the one that comes to mind is the reprehensible one by the climate change deniers who say that if everyone else is doing nothing about CO2 (itself not true) why should we. (That would be the equivalent of AD’s supermarket argument. It is not necessarily untrue but it is not productive. Mayor Bloomberg in NYC is attempting to put a tax on sugary drinks–it will include soda sold in supermarkets–but I doubt it is within the power of a small council–it may not be within his power either.) Or you could say it is a version of the Tragedy of the Commons–a surefire spiral to decline and impoverishment (and sometimes extinction). Instead of that kind of selfish counterproductive thinking why not think the opposite: if we do something the neighbours might see and say, well it can be done, maybe we should too. Even if it fails it will be a noble failure.
In any case, the proposition that the customers will simply go to the next district is contrary to the immense care and trouble fast food chains take to choose where to position their stores. Plus all the painstaking research they put into enticing people to eat ever more quantity of their toxic products, and the huge advertising budgets across all media to support that campaign.
Finally, on the legality issue, I don’t know how they did it but Byron Bay apparently managed to keep the fast food chains out of town. I wonder how many really complain about that? And I presume (don’t really know) that instead of fast food chains and franchisees making the money, a whole lot of smaller local businesses will survive, and locals and tourists alike will have a better and more diverse choice of restaurant.
Last minute news alert: as I was writing the above, Lateline just had a story on Bloomberg’s sugar tax. Even though Manhattanites are among the thinnest of Americans (and even the other 4 NYC boroughs are also thinner than average Americans) obesity cost NYC $4 bn per year and has 6,000 deaths from obesity and diabetes p.a. As several of the politicians and health officials they show, this is a crisis and they have a responsibility to respond to such a crisis. And as they reported, there is unlikely to be a similar crackdown nationwide on supersized sugary drinks. But is it coincidence that the Disney channel has decided to stop showing fast food ads on their tv network? It has got to start somewhere and it is good to see it started.
Michael: We all agree I think that drastic action is needed to address diet-related health issues like obesity and diabetes. This discussion is about one possible approach. It’s a fallacy though to think doing something is always better than doing nothing. What matters is to do something that gets the outcome and that is worth doing relative to the cost. Education, advertising and marketing are the areas to concentrate on at this time (possibly a tax on sugar/fat, but that looks complex).
Darebin Council’s situation must be different from Byron’s. Darebin already has advice it can’t keep new fast food outlets out of the municipality. The current proposal is to levy a differential rate on existing and new ones.
As I understand it, Bloomberg isn’t proposing a tax on sugar but rather a maximum size of serving for soda (circa half a litre) at places like the cinema and restaurants. There’s a good chance it will get up. AD
AD wrote: “It’s a fallacy though to think doing something is always better than doing nothing. ”
Only some of the time, and even then…
What I mean is that the route to a final beneficial outcome is sometimes very circuitious, and unpredictable. Sometimes false deadend paths and cul de sacs must be tried and eliminated to move onto more effective means. It is comparable to getting progress in a difficult research subject; it can be just as important to eliminate all the false hypotheses to clarify the better path.
AD: .. a tax on sugar/fat ..
Certainly not easy, but I favour a tax and alas it cannot be a small one. (And though it is not strictly proven–see below–I would advocate a tax specifically on fructose because it would encourage alternatives.) And yes, I meant to but omitted in my post last night that surprisingly it looks like Bloomberg is going to succeed (I felt sure NY state or the feds would shoot it down with over-riding law; we’ll see.)
Not so much on the fat; that is almost certainly a false assertion perpetrated by Big Food for the past 50 years or so. But it is very difficult to overcome what appears “intuitive” and the industry irresponsibly exploits it to the hilt. The anti-fat paradigm has had at least 40 years to play out and, well, look at the results. It is time we tried the sugar hypothesis (it is beyond scandalous that this hypothesis has never been properly tested in the equivalent of clinical trials; even with the US-NIH and of course our timid NHMRC any attempt to do so get squashed by the interested parties).
There is a large body of literature on this (if nothing totally scientifically conclusive); there was a long article in yesterday’s Guardian:
Though any of these media articles are necessarily incomplete and sometimes misleading or confusing. So I also recommend–at least as a starting point–David Gillespie’s earlier book on the subject which is very readable and you will find at discounted price in our bookstores.
Having broached the fat topic I feel the need to just elaborate a tiny bit for readers.
The reason why fat is not as important as it intuitively would seem, is not that you cannot get fat by eating (too much) fat. You can get fat by eating too much of any energy-rich food. Rather it is that our bodies have mechanisms that naturally stop us over-eating most things and fat has a powerful effect on these mechanisms.
BUT NOT fructose (half of all the sugar we eat but not the lactose in natural yoghurt or milk or beer or many other things which have other sugars, most commonly glucose). There is now pretty convincing evidence that fructose’s main evil effect is via suppression of these normal appetite controls (and perhaps other complex direct diabetogenic mechanisms). Fructose is exclusively metabolised by the liver while glucose is transported and metabolized throughout the body. Thus fructose leads to local–belly-deposition of fat. But that is not its major undesirable outcome. By suppression of one of the “hunger” hormones (leptin) it seems it even makes us more hungry, so you can easily see where that leads. It leads to supersized sugary drinks and all the other processed industrial food foisted on us. So much for this phenomenon being an issue of free choice. It is not that silly to compare it to the days Coca Cola had cocaine in it! Who knew that sugar was even more powerful agent.
End of sermon.
michael r james:
Re your comment at #7, what do you say about Nutrition Australia, who’re critical of Gillespie?
Slightly off topic, but re the article in The Guardian you referenced at #7, did you also see this one reporting on new research which finds that exercise, on average, doesn’t help with depression?
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