Higher Taxes on Junk Food Will Have Positive Effects on Current Food Trends

Current food trends in society are all pointing in a similar direction; more and more people are forming habits of regularly eating junk food and the numbers of people suffering from obesity are increasing rapidly. Scientists have for a long time been able to provide evidence for the close connection between junk food and obesity but several studies have also shown that the consumption of junk food in the long run also increases the risk of having cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain cancer diseases. Too much consumption of junk food is obviously bad but despite the above-mentioned risks the consumption of junk foods is increasing, junk food companies are flourishing and the health cost for treatment of junk food related diseases are growing bigger every day. Governments around the world are now trying to find solutions how to break these negative food trends in human health and one question, which has been raised on the subject, is whether the solution to this problem would be to increase the taxes on junk food. As will be argued in this essay, the answer to this question is yes.


The arguments to why there should be higher taxes on junk food are several. One of the most important is of course the one dealing with human health issues, and on this area there are some very convincing evidence that higher taxes on junk food actually would increase people’s health and decrease the health costs of junk food diseases. One good example of this can be found when looking at a similar case, the sin taxes on cigarettes, where these higher taxes have reduced both the number of people smoking and the number of people dying from smoking related diseases. The example of sin taxes can of course be compared with junk food; people today are aware of the risks of eating too much junk food but this does not however stop them from doing so. As can be seen in the case of taxes on cigarettes, people are in general not inclined to change theirs habits only based on the information they have. Money on the other hand seems to be a very effective instrument for changing peoples’ habits and therefore, higher taxes would be a step in the right direction to improve the health of thousands of people.

Another reason to why junk food should be taxed has to do with environmental issues. In most of the cases the food sold by the junk food companies are produced with the intention to minimize the costs and increase the profits, which in most of the cases means that the companies have their production in several different countries and that the raw- material that is used often is as cheap as possible and therefore seldom ecological. In a world with growing environmental issues, such as ours, it is not tenable that the consumption of junk food, which has a larger negative impact on the environment than ecological locally produced food, is increasing. Higher taxes on junk food would not only decrease people with obesity but maybe also change their habits into buying the expensive but healthier ecological and locally produced food, when the higher taxes would reduce the differences in price between junk food and ecological and locally produced food.

To introduce these kind of taxes would however not be an entirely unproblematic matter and opponents of this proposal would probably claim the difficulty in deciding where to draw the line between healthier food and junk food. As the opponents claim it is of course true that the categorizing of food could be a problematic matter but when consulting all the experts on the area and when using all the knowledge there is about food today it is unlikely that this actually would remain an unsolvable matter.

Another argument that opponents of this proposal might have is that higher taxes on junk food only would make the junk food companies produce even cheaper and unhealthier food. This could of course be risk, but producing unhealthier food would also mean even higher taxes for the companies and with the bad reputation that unhealthy food has today, producing even unhealthier food would give the companies a bad reputation themselves. That the junk food companies would produce even unhealthier food is always a risk but considering above-mentioned reasons it is more likely that junk food companies will try to produce healthier food instead.

A better solution that might be presented by the opponents would be to try to lower the costs on better healthier food. This is a good thought but unfortunately not very easy to carry through. Even though it sounds very good with lower prices on healthier food it would not be possible to produce healthy food as cheap as junk food is produced today. The fact that healthy food has a higher price than junk food is not very strange; healthier food has often better raw material, the food may be locally and ecologically produced and the people working with producing the food have a decent salary. When looking at how the money is used when producing healthy food, one finds that healthier food actually is not very expensive; it is instead junk food that is suspiciously cheap.

To inform people to eat better, as the opponents to higher taxes on fast food could claim to be one of the better solutions, is a very good thing to do. Unfortunately, the human being is good at ignoring good advices and just as the case with cigarettes to only inform about the risks will not be enough. Taxes, which affects peoples economy on the other hand has a big influence on people and if bad habits are expensive it is very likely that these habits, like eating a lot of junk food, change.

To increase the taxes on junk food may seem to be a radical proposal, but the advantages are several. As in the case with the sin taxes on cigarettes where the number of smokers have decreased it is very likely that a tax on junk food also will decrease the number of people suffering of obesity, which is very good. Higher taxes on the cheaper junk food would also give the healthier, ecological and locally produced food more of an even chance to compete with the junk food, which would be a very positive development on the food market. It is a lovely thought that people would change their bad food habits if enough information is given and common sense is used, however this it is not how human beings work. If we want to change the increasing unhealthy habits in food trends among people it is not enough with information. To increase the tax on junk food on the other hand will change peoples’ habits and it will have very positive effects on current food trends.