'Fat Tax' Debate Lands In Australia

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

07 October 2011

In the week that Denmark imposed a ‘fat tax’ on food and it has been suggested that Britain and France could follow suit, a visiting American obesity expert has called on Australia to start taxing soft drinks.

Professor Kelly Brownell from the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, speaking at the Australian Psychological Society Conference in Canberra, said that governments need to take a stronger role in addressing the factors that contribute to obesity, including tightening food regulations and taxing soft drinks.

Professor Brownell is part of a multi-disciplinary team, drawn from psychology, health, nutrition, economics, public health, business and the law, focusing on the causes and prevention of obesity and other nutrition problems. The group is examining the factors that affect obesity from eating behaviour through to food pricing, and the marketing and advertising of food products.

“The public got angry about cigarettes and rose up to demand that government take action to curb the extraordinary toll this product took on health and well-being. People are becoming more aware of parallels with food and are asking government officials to become involved,” Professor Brownell said.

He believes that governments need to take a stronger role, so that taxing sugar beverages, or soft drinks, is a possible place to start.

“We have seen how effective tobacco taxes have been in reducing rates of smoking so there is no reason to believe such taxes wouldn’t be as effective in reducing the consumption of high sugar and fat foods. A soft-drink tax is a good place to start,” Professor Brownell says. “We need to help people to change their eating behaviour by creating a more positive food environment.”

Denmark’s pioneering measure provides for the introduction, from October 1, of a tax levied on fatty foods, including butter, milk, cheese, pizza, oil, meat and processed food containing saturated fat levels of over 2.3%. The provision was approved by the Danish parliament by a large majority earlier in the year.