I applaud Dr. Timothy A. Sanborn’s letter describing the health crisis as really a lifestyle crisis. A very simple way to improve the nation’s health would be to impose a 100 percent excise tax on “junk food” and a 30 percent surcharge on restaurant meals that exceed 2000 calories or 2000 milligrams sodium.
Our obesity epidemic relates to outsize meal portions plus between-meal consumption of liquid calories (sugary soft drinks) and highly enticing, high-fat, high-salt snack foods. Restaurant meals containing more than one day’s supply of calories or salt (strongly associated with high blood pressure and heart disease) should be discouraged.
Discouraging what makes us fat through our tax policy would be the simplest, most effective way of reducing our healthcare costs as well as bring in some needed revenue.
— James Ingemanson, Crystal Lake
