The Solution Plan for Bad Food

The Solution plan for bad food.

        Mark Bittman, the author of this article, talks about how citizen in the United States need to change their eating habits in order to decrease the obesity rate. The people eat fast food, despite the fact that it gives people some disease like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Also, people know that the fast food make people fat. In this essay, Bittman asks that how do we change our eating habits? (59). According to Bittman, he suggests that adding more tax to unhealthful foods like soda, French fries, doughnuts, and snacks could be a good way of the solution plan for bad food (59). Bittman gives an example of his suggestion “Sweetened drinks could be taxed at 2 cents per ounce, so a six-pack of Pepsi would cost $1.44 more than it does now.” (60) If prices of unhealthful foods would increase, people may not want to pay for those foods, causing them to eat less. Moreover, that program would generate billions of dollars annually. Then, the government would purchase vegetables and good foods for cheaply prices by tax and subsidization as well as sell to citizens (60). Bittman knows many companies that make unhealthy foods would not like program that adding tax to unhealthy foods such as soda, French fries, doughnuts, and snacks (60). Although many companies that make unhealthy foods do not like the program, U.S government has a responsibility to take care public health (Bittman 60).

        Currently, the government does not implement yet. They just subsidize to unhealthful foods. However, the government subsidies much to farmers for crops that we can usually eat like high fructose corn, vegetable oil, so unhealthful foods are kept their lower prices by government (Bittman 61).

        If people would not eat unhealthy food than now, people and government would get some benefits. Bittman gives a fact “A 20 percent increase in the price of sugary drinks nationally could result in about a 20 percent decrease in consumption, which in the next decade could prevent 1.5 million Americans from becoming obese and 400,000 cases of diabetes, saving about $30 billion.” (64) Also, here is other benefits. First, prices of healthy food would be inexpensive, and citizens including poor would buy vegetables and good foods cheaply. Second, farmers will be encouraged that they could produce a lot of good crops from government. As a result, Bittman says that government should need enforcement a program that adding more tax to unhealthy food as soon as possible (64).