Odd moms

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by The_Tyrant

isn't tax the governments standard way of putting people off a product?

why isn't that done here?

luxury foods are already taxed by VAT.

In general I think your idea is a good one. There are terrible dangers with it of course and a quick look at the demographics of voting will tell you that it'd be a suicidal move for labour.

To make courageous moves you need two factors: a strong leader (both in person and position) and for the issue to be of great national importance.

[The_Tyrant]

Then why not have it as a tax cut on healthy food? sure there are reasons this isn't viable but not sure what.

edit: i guess i'm talking subsidies in the supermarket, you know, cheap apples all round.

[Furious]

Originally Posted by Yahwe

luxury foods are already taxed by VAT.

Proportionally you pay more VAT on more expensive products.

If you look around todays supermarkets it appears that the healthy foods are the more expensive ones. Label something organic and you're quids in.

[The_Tyrant]

Originally Posted by Furious

Proportionally you pay more VAT on more expensive products.

If you look around todays supermarkets it appears that the healthy foods are the more expensive ones. Label something organic and you're quids in.

not sure that true, isn't VAT 17.5 on everything (but fuel) in England. so proportionally you pay the same amount on everything.

I know ireland has a couple of VAT bands at least (i know of 21% and i think its 13% for hotels) but didn't think we did.

[Furious]

Originally Posted by The_Tyrant

not sure that true, isn't VAT 17.5 on everything (but fuel) in England. so proportionally you pay the same amount on everything.

I know ireland has a couple of VAT bands at least (i know of 21% and i think its 13% for hotels) but didn't think we did.

what i mean is:

Item costs £1 you pay £1.18 which is 18p VAT
Item costs £2 you pay £2.36 which is 36p VAT

So the more expensive the item, the more VAT you pay

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Furious

what i mean is:

Item costs £1 you pay £1.18 which is 18p VAT
Item costs £2 you pay £2.36 which is 36p VAT

So the more expensive the item, the more VAT you pay

not all food carries VAT only luxury foods do

[Furious]

that i didnt know. Im sure there was some large supermarket chain that, in the past few years offered to "pay the VAT for you" on certain products.

The swindling pirates!

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Furious

So the more expensive the item, the more VAT you pay

In the example you gave, it's still proportionately the same.

[The_Tyrant]

Originally Posted by Furious

what i mean is:

Item costs £1 you pay £1.18 which is 18p VAT
Item costs £2 you pay £2.36 which is 36p VAT

So the more expensive the item, the more VAT you pay

the word proportionally had me thinking you meant something different.

[Furious]

perhaps the wrong chice of words there...sorry about that.

The point remains that more costly foods, which in this day and age are generally more healthy also attract more tax and therefore you could say the government are discouraging healthy eating.

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Furious

perhaps the wrong chice of words there...sorry about that.

The point remains that more costly foods, which in this day and age are generally more healthy also attract more tax and therefore you could say the government are discouraging healthy eating.

actually that's genuinely not true.

the supermarkets have a large part in creating this idea. you blame tax when you should blame the supermarkets.

Several healthy foods sourced properly are actually cheaper. For the price of a big mac meal which feeds one you can buy trout vegetables and potatoes to feed four.

We've forgotten how to cook and cooking needs to be less threatening ... less how you say ... 'posh'.

I can buy one bannana for 50p in my nearest pret. Or i can buy a bunch of 7 25 yards away from a trader at £1.20 a bunch.

[Nadval]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

What information do you think theyre lacking? That brussel sprouts are better for you than hamburgers? That eating too many Mars Bars makes you a fatty? Pretty much everyone over the age of 8 knows that; they just dont care, and I dont really understand why you care that they dont care. Some people value physical health more than others, and fat people are generally fat out of choice, not because there's some crucial item of knowledge that they're lacking (other than how to best lose weight).

I don't think people choose to be fat. I think people get fat and then find it too difficult to change. I think a lot of people wished they hadn't got fat in the first place. Many people might wish that someone had stopped them. I know quite a few people who blame their parents, at least in part, for letting them get fat.

I would agree that most people are misinformed about what a healthy diet looks like, but repeating the same old wives tales about "eat 3 healthy meals a day"/"one item from each food group per meal"/"dont eat too much meat"/etc isnt going to change this. Neither is forcing people to eat food that they dont want to eat, or to care more about health than they do.

Ok, perhaps I meant influence accompanied with adequate information. If i know generally that heroin is bad for me, it means nothing whilst my parents are shooting up every day and telling me that they have the time of their life. Similarly, it doesn't mean much for a child to be told that too much sugar/fatty foods are bad for them, whilst their parents are feeding them excessive amounts every day. Parents are role models, and if we know they're too often bad role models with respect to food, then shouldn't we be finding ways of influencing children out of the home? Teaching NOTHING on drugs would be worse than telling children that it's bad for them, and offering drugs in schools to make money would simply be abuse. The same should apply for unhealthy food.

Unless the chocolate is being secretely laced with morphine, I think its more than slightly dishonest to describe sweets and crisps as being 'addictive', let alone dangerously so.

Well perhaps 'addictive' was a lazy term, but it certainly doesn't seem unreasonably to suggest that a lot of people have a problem giving up food that's high in sugar/salt/fat, and that children are susceptible to wanting only food that tastes sweet, regardless of how unhealthy it is. This isn't a reason to shrug and say "well it's up to the parents to act", but to make an even more concerted effort in diverting their attention towards food that is healthy to eat.

Since you apparently beleive that these previous government initiatives have failed to produce a nation of people capable of making basic choices such as what to feed their children, I'm curious as to why you think that 'more government' is going help matters.

What initiatives are you talking about? I don't think I can name any government initiative that made any real effort to help children lead a healthy life that wasn't, at best, half-hearted.

No, since I would cite things like the development of state education and the national curriculum as being significant causes in most people's stupidty.

Because the nation would, on average, be more educated if there was no state education and no standards in what children should learn? Should we go back to the days when only the richest 5% were educated, and the majority were working in the factories by the age of 6? What do you suggest people who choose not to go to school would do to be more educated than they currently are? I think the national curriculum could be improved, certainly, but I don't think giving teachers guidelines on what a child should learn is a bad idea.


I would agree that taxing more unhealthy foods and subsidising healthy foods would be a good idea if done carefully, but as Yahwe said it is cheaper to live on veg than McDonalds - It has to be accompanied by some sort of educative influence. Allowing school canteens to continue exclusively offering unhealthy food is not a viable option in my mind, and if we're going to change it then why not weigh it in favour of healthy food? Perhaps staggering it over a few years would make things easier for children to cope with, but a general attitude that schools should be encouraging healthy diets doesn't seem, to me, a bad idea.

[Leshy]

Originally Posted by Furious

The point remains that more costly foods, which in this day and age are generally more healthy also attract more tax and therefore you could say the government are discouraging healthy eating.

This is, however, still not correct. Tax is a percentage, and presumably all food carries the same amount of tax*. Of course the absolute amount of tax paid over a £4 item is more than over a £2 pound item, but they would both carry the same tax.

By your argument, it's not the government at fault**, but the base pricing of healthier types of food. Although I'm inclined to agree with Yahwe and say that if you go to the supermarket, you can buy plenty of regular, varied, and healthy food for cheaper than going to a fastfood restaurant.

* I am not familiar enough with the British tax system, so feel free to correct me if there are different tax percentages being applied to different kinds of food.

** Unless you want to blame the government for not applying a lower tax to healthier types of food or something.

Originally Posted by Nadval

Should we go back to the days when only the richest 5% were educated, and the majority were working in the factories by the age of 6?

That might prevent 95% of the children over 6 getting fat, sounds good to me!

[Dante Hicks]

Looking at costs in isolation is misleading. I suspect most people eat unhealthily because it is cheap and convenient. My evening meal costs £2 per day and requires zero effort to obtain. No doubt I could make something with £2 worth of ingredients but this would probably require considerable more time and effort.

If we look at the time people spend at their work places and/or commuting it is no wonder that a lot of people choose the lazy option.

[Furious]

Originally Posted by Leshy

Unless you want to blame the government for not applying a lower tax to healthier types of food or something.

Not blame as such, but perhaps they should encourage all these healthy foods to be competitivly priced Vs you average 5 meals for a fiver down at asda

[Furious]

[quote=Dante HicksIf we look at the time people spend at their work places and/or commuting it is no wonder that a lot of people choose the lazy option.[/QUOTE]

The alternative ofc is to educate people that, whilst saving time in the short term they are wasting it in the long run by potentially shortening their life span.

What a morbid thought eh?!