Question

Have you seen calorie information menus? Does it affect what you decide to order? Is being a able to buy a super-sized beverage important to you? Do you support increased taxes on unhealthy foods? What do you think needs to be done to stop the nationwide problem of obesity from escalating even further out of control?

Answer 1

Yes i have seen calorie information menus specifically in Ireland.

It 100% affects my decision to order food. When calories are on menus, the amount of calories in each food item for sale is shown. This helps consumers to make more informed choices about what they eat. Calories on menus can help consumers make healthier choices about what they eat. Calories on menus can help consumers to choose smaller portions.

Being able to buy a super sized bevarage is no big deal the real concern is drinking that super sized bevarage which is nothing but a package of increased obesity (I mean calories)

Yes i support increased taxes on unhealthy foods but i have a lengthy back up theory to share:

With obesity and diabetes at record levels, many public health experts believe governments should tax soda, sweets, junk food, and other unhealthy foods and drinks. Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, and Mexico have such taxes. So do Berkeley, California and the Navajo Nation. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is waging a high-profile campaign to get Britain to tax sugar, and the Washington Post has endorsed the same for the United States.

How to Avoid the Obesity Epidemic

As we continue to modernize our lifestyles — riding instead of walking, working in a cubicle instead of in a field, playing iPods instead of sports — more people are becoming overweight and, worse, obese. In fact, there are so many overweight and obese people that some public health officials now call it an epidemic, particularly because of the many resulting health problems.

Obesity: A Worldwide Problem

Around the world, more than one billion adults are overweight and about 300 million of them are obese. In the United States, 66 percent of all adults are overweight and, of those, 32 percent are obese.

Obesity levels in Japan and some African nations are below 5 percent, but they’re rising. Obesity rates in China overall are not high, but in some of that country’s larger cities, rates are up 20 percent.

Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions, too. The number of overweight children in the United States has doubled since 1980, and for teens, it's tripled. And the problem with children is now a global issue as well.

Obesity: Why It’s Happening

Although your genes play a role in your body weight, there are other factors involved. In many places around the world, particularly the United States, we have plenty of nutrient-rich food to eat and easy access to fattening fast foods and sweets. Also, because of our modern lifestyles, we are not as active as we once were. The end result: We're eating more calories than we can burn.

Being overweight or obese can cause a whole cascade of health problems, from heart disease and diabetes to stroke and even some types of cancer. These diseases can seriously impact a person's quality of life and lead to premature death.

Obesity: How It Differs From Being Overweight

Obesity and overweight are terms used to describe a level of excess weight that's considered unhealthy for your body size. One way to determine if you are overweight or obese is to figure out your body mass index (BMI), a calculation you make by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in meters (kg/m2). Don’t worry — you don't have to do the math; you can find BMI calculators online.

Note that for adults:

• A BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight
• A BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese

When assessing teens and children, BMIs that are higher than normal weight ranges have other labels, such as "at risk of overweight" and "overweight." Also, health professionals take into account the differences in body fat between boys and girls as well as changes in body fat at different ages.

Obesity: Finding a Solution

Getting our obesity and overweight epidemic under control will involve more than just telling everyone to go on a diet. The World Health Organization says it requires an integrated approach that includes:

• limiting sugary soft drink sizes in theaters, pubs, hotels etc.
• Promoting healthy eating habits and encouraging exercise
• Developing public policies that promote access to healthy, low-fat, high-fiber foods
• Training healthcare professionals so that they can effectively support people who need to lose weight and help others avoid gaining weight
• Here's what you can do to lose weight or avoid becoming overweight or obese:
• Eat more fruit, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains.
• Exercise, even moderately, for at least 30 minutes a day.
• Cut down your consumption of fatty and sugary foods.
• Use vegetable-based oils rather than animal-based fats.
• So walk a little more, eat a little less

Many nutrients and ingredients have been suggested as possible targets for taxes, including fat, saturated fat, salt, artificial sweeteners, and caffeine. Our sense, though, is that only sugar might be a plausible candidate.

Sugar in foods and drinks contributes to obesity, diabetes, and other conditions. By increasing the price of products that contain sugar, taxes can get people to consume less of them and thus improve nutrition and health. Health care costs would be lower, and people would live healthier, longer lives. Governments could put the resulting revenue to good use, perhaps by helping low-income families or cutting other taxes.

That’s the pro case for a sugar tax, and it’s a good one. But policymakers need to consider the downsides too. Taxes impose real costs on consumers who pay the tax or switch to other options that may be more expensive, less enjoyable, or less convenient.

That burden would be particularly large for lower-income families. We find that a US tax on sugar-sweetened beverages would be highly regressive, imposing more than four times as much burden, relative to income, on people in the bottom fifth of the income distribution as on those in the top fifth.

Another issue is how well sugar consumption tracks potential health costs and risks. If you are trying to discourage something harmful, taxes work best when there is a tight relationship between the “dose” that gets taxed and the “response” of concern. Taxes on cigarettes and carbon are well-targeted given tight links to lung cancer and climate change, respectively. The dose-response relationship for sugar, however, varies across individuals depending on their metabolisms, lifestyle, and health. Taxes cannot capture that variation; someone facing grave risks pays the same sugar tax rate as someone facing minute ones. That limits what taxes alone can accomplish.

In addition, people may switch to foods and drinks that are also unhealthy. If governments tax only sugary soda, for example, some people will switch to juice, which sounds healthier but packs a lot of sugar. It’s vital to understand how potential taxes affect entire diets, not just consumption of targeted products.

A final concern, beyond the scope of our report, is whether taxing sugar is an appropriate role for government. Some people strongly object to an expanding “nanny state” using taxes to influence personal choices. Others view taxes as acceptable only if individual choices impose costs on others. Eating and drinking sugar causes such “externalities” when insurance spreads resulting health care costs across other people. Others go further and view taxes as an acceptable way to reduce “internalities” as well, the overlooked harms consumers impose on themselves.

Policymakers must weigh all those concerns when considering whether to tax sugar. If they decide to do so, they should focus on content, not proxies like drink volume or sales value. Mexico, for example, taxes sweetened drinks based on their volume, a peso per liter. That encourages consumers to reduce how much they drink but does nothing to encourage less sugary alternatives. That’s a big deal because sugar content ranges enormously. Some drinks have less than 10 grams of sugar (2 ½ teaspoons) per serving, while others have 30 grams (7 ½ teaspoons) or more. Far better would be a content-based tax that encourages switching from the 30-gram drinks to the 10-gram ones.

Focusing on sugar content would bring another benefit. Most sugar tax discussions focus on changing consumer choices. But consumers aren’t in this alone. Food and beverage companies and retailers determine what products they make, market, and sell. Taxing drink volumes or the sales value of sugary food gives these companies no incentive to develop and market lower-sugar alternatives. Taxing sugar content, however, would encourage them to explore all avenues for reducing the sugar in what we eat and drink.