The USDA recently rejected a proposal from New York City to ban the use of food stamps to purchase soda/soft drinks. Grist has much more on the decision. It made me wonder what would be the health impacts of such a proposal?
There seems to be an awful lot of paternalistic assumptions underpinning the proposal. Further I doubt it would have much of an impact at a population level. What are your thoughts?
Related: Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables [New York Times]
I think you're right, its a very top-down 'authoritarian' approach to public health, dare I say, a classic political 'knee jerk' approach to public health - what seems like an easy approach that doesn't cost much time and effort and the group affected aren't in a position to complain while the majority will look on it kindly (and give you votes) or indifferently.
ReplyDeleteFrom a HIA perspective though, and most importantly, it does not think through the unintended side effects - people will just use their own cash money to buy the soda. I judge it will have almost negligible impact on consumption. It targets a vulnerable, at risk group, while doing nothing at a population level to reduce the widespread consumption of soda (my understanding of US dietary trends).
A fat/sugar tax would perhaps be the better and population based 'paternalistic'/top-down approach, that might see more success. I'm not sure about that as a policy measure either but it has a better chance of generating behavioural change.
There is business dimension which is not tackled how can we move food companies towards genuinely healthy mass produced packed foods.
My sense is that behaviour change is massively difficult thing to achieve and requires policies at many levels and many areas to achieve a long term shift.