I'm for just about anything that'll get people to eat fewer meals at fast foods joints. The "super-sized" carb- and vegetable grease-saturated meals sold in these slop-shops are in large part responsible for the extreme widening of America's girth, and the rise of obesity as this nation's number one health concern…
But putting a "fat tax" on them that'll only line the pockets of bureaucrats is the wrong solution, in my opinion. Yet that's exactly what's being proposed in Detroit, Michigan - voted "Fattest City in America" in 2004 by a popular Men's magazine.
In a completely predictable move to cash in on people's vices, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is using an ostensible "concern" for Michiganders' health as a mechanism to shore up his $300-million-in-the-hole budget - with a tax on all products sold in fast-food restaurants (even the salads and other so-called "healthy" eating options), according to CNN.com and other sources.
It's a plan others have tried before - just look at how the Feds and the states tax other "sin" items like tobacco and alcohol. Such taxes raise millions (or billions) of dollars for the government at multiple levels. Other states have enacted similar "snack taxes" and other measures. New York currently has a proposal on the table to tax not just junk food, but video games and TV commercials - supposedly to fund anti-obesity efforts. If such plans become the norm, it's only logical that soon, every municipality that's short on funds will be taxing something "unhealthy" to make up the difference. This in essence, will be an involuntary tax IN ADDITION to your county tax, your state tax and your federal income tax. It can be twisted to apply to almost anything from water to watermelon.
Critics of the Detroit plan say that the young, the poor, and the elderly will be the hardest hit by the new tax. Ironically, these are the very folks who should be avoiding fast foods at all costs! Of course, Mayor Kilpatrick says the 2% levy will have little effect on the consumers' bottom lines…
But if that's the case, how can it be a meaningful disincentive to eating fast food?
It can't. It'll just make the REAL fat-cats (those in government) a little fatter.
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How much food would a food-buff stuff?
A month and a half ago (Daily Dose, 4/22/05), I wrote to you about what was universally acknowledged at the time as the world's biggest hamburger - the 11-pound "Old 96er" (actually a 6-pound burger with 5 pounds of trimmings) from Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in rural Clearfield, Pennsylvania.
What made the behemoth burger newsworthy, aside from its size, is the fact that no one had ever downed the entire burger in the 3-hour finish-and-it's-free challenge posed by the restaurant's owner. One 425-pound world-renowned "professional eater" (only in America, eh?) took 3 attempts to even finish it - and his time was more than 7 hours!
That is, until a 100-pound college sophomore named Kate Stelnick polished it off in a tidy 2 hours, 54 minutes on her first attempt earlier this year…
Naturally, that means an even bigger burger was necessary. Enter the $30 Belly Buster, Denny's Pub's latest creation that tips the scales at 15 pounds: 10.5 pounds of beef, 25 slices of cheese and another 4 pounds or so of trimmings. The question that's surely on everyone's lips: Will the dainty Stelnick return to Clearfield to give this one a whirl? I wouldn't be surprised.
But if she's smart, instead of attempting it herself, she'll bring fourteen of her friends and eat it like a pizza. I'm a huge meat fan, as you know - but that much in one sitting would definitely be "too much of a good thing."
Pressing button and dissuading gluttons,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
