Should your government place a tax on the junk food and fatty snacks?

Junk food consumption is responsible for a number of diseases like Obesity, Diabetes, and heat attack, which are world-wide health issues and impose major costs on national health services. Therefore, any measure that can reduce the financial as well as social burden of such diseases will be welcome. In my opinion, taxing on junk food and fatty snacks can hinder people from consuming them very often.

Junk foods and fatty snacks have high calorie content. They are mostly comprised of starch, sugar, and unsaturated fats. Thus, a small amount of them produce extra energy blocks in our body. This extra energy will be stored in form of fat. Increased body fat stores besides sedentary life style of modern world will eventually leads to obesity.

Obesity is becoming a major health problem among the young not only in United States but also in many other countries. It results in psycho-social problems for children and adults. Becoming over-weighted hinders people from being physically active enough. Moreover, their body image discourages them from being involved in social, economical, and productive activities. Therefore, the obese will lose their self-esteem and self-confidence.

Besides psycho-social impacts, obesity usually leads to physical diseases, such as Diabetes Mellitus, high blood pressure and Heart diseases. Heart attack is the leading cause of death world-wide, which means a considerable loss of human resource. Moreover, diseases like Diabetes of High blood pressure affect people for their life-long. Not only reducing their quality of lives, but also cause a large amount of health system resources to be spent on managing the affected patients.

To sum it up, obesity related disease results in an undeniable waste of economical resources. Thus, the main causing factors of obesity which are sedentary life style and unsuitable diet should be restricted and resolved, otherwise the development of the country will slows down and become unsteady. I believe that taxing on junk foods and fatty snacks will help to reduce the unwanted consequences of unrestricted consumption of those food staff.