The corn farmers, getting much more benefit per person than the masses who are inconvenienced by the subsidies (both in terms of tax revenue and things like the ethanol fiasco), will fight harder to keep the subsidies than the anti-subsidy forces will fight to get rid of them, and thus they will stay until some seismic shift should come.

Igonrance. It's not fat that makes us fat, it's sugar. Eliminate sugar (i.e. the powdered white stuff that you don't snort, smoke or inject) from your diet and fat more or less doesn't matter.

So a fat tax, on food, is misdirected, You can stay fat on white bread, potatoes, and rice and low fat (but high sugar) icecream easy enough.

A fat tax on people is ridiculous: You are rich and fat, you can afford to pay the tax and live like you always have; you are poor and fat, the tax makes it even harder to buy good quality food (more expensive) because you have even less money, so what do you do? Buy the cheap stuff loaded with sugar (and cheap fats) which just makes you fatter.

Drs who treat obese people will tell you diet has a very low success rate, and it's extremely difficult to get a decent exercise regime going. The best (most reliable) results is surgery: stomach stappling, gastric bypass, that sort of stuff. My friend was about 130Kg (~285lbs) 4 months ago, he's always been an active guy even tried dieting but to no avail. He had the stomach surgery and now he's at about 90kg (~200lbs) after only 4 months.

I say, if we're serious about wanting to reduce the long term health and social costs of obesity, every obese person who wants it (i.e. there should be no coersion) should get stomach surgery at minimal or no cost. They WILL loose a lot of weight. Within the space of about 5 years you'll have a vastly reduced obesity rate with major long term benefits for the individual and society.

Then all that's left is prevention, which is not about taxing food, but educating kids and parents about healthy diet and exercise choices. Which also means health / diet / nutrition experts demonising sugar as much, or moreso than fat.

That's misrepresentative.

Afterall, it's not like calories are equally filling.

Healthy food is perfectly cheap... and in general price has been shown not to be a factor.  Food deserts have mostly been proven to be a myth....

people are obese largely because... people WANT to eat unhealthy because Unhealthy food tastes better to most people/is easier.

Just cut the subsidies for corn, it cuts the budget, and achieves a similar goal to yours, anyway (bringing the prices of healthy/unhealthy food closer to each other).

Also, get government out of regulating school meals. A lot of dietary habits are set during youth. Activist health organizations will have far more effect campaigning to individual schools at a time, rather than campaigning to district/city/state/federal governments.

Yeah, I don't know if you noticed, but most of the things I propose have no chance of passing without a seismic shift. In fact, relative to my other believes, this one's kinda realistic.

In inner cities, and where poor people are, end up devoid of supermarkets, for a number of reasons, you will get fast food places stepping in with cheap stuff.  I end up picking up stuff a local dollar stores, in the frozen section, and it isn't optimal there.  Lots of corn syrup and so on.  Similar goes with inner cities not having banks, but check cashing places.  You add that on top of other things, and the end result is that you have people falling behind in the area of health and finances.

You can also factor in the inner city if people are doing several jobs and working a bunch, fast food ends up food that most easily fits into the diets of the lifestyle of people there.   Here is one article that looks at the issue in the city of Birmingham in the USA:

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/06/for_birminghams_inner-city_dwe.html

Beyond this though, food stamps, if people are on it, can't go for fast food, so people eating at fast food places end up having to work for the money.

You all will be thanking the slow, the overweight and the old when the Zombie apocalypse breaks out and they give you the chance to get away just because they can't.

OT:

Not a fan of overweight people at all, but putting a tax on particular types of food is dumb and not going to deter anyone.

Like I said.

Research shows that food deserts don't really exist... or rather, rates of obesity there aren't any greater then in similar neigherhoods with more food availability.

See the recent National Institute of Health and Public Policy of California studies.

Two orginizations if anything would prefer to make a big deal out of food deserts to fit along with administration policy.

Also... if you learn how to cook you'll realzie it's actually a LOT cheaper to cook... if you cook the right things.  (IE not your usual meat intensive US diet.)

I mean hell, Dollar stores by me have those $1 breakfest sandwhiches.  They also have everything needed for multiple servings of Pasta.

Though having money upfront is helpful granted.  I get basically 75% of the food i eat for $21 a week because I bought into a local CSA... and they deliver to me.

Forget the money. I find it disgusting the lack of self control and greed obese people have. lets be honest people have far less respect for you if your fat. there's no excuse really people say they have slow metabolisms what a load. If you do naturally then do more excersice and just eat healthy food. try harder. fat people annoy me

You don't need to do that.

The vast, VAST, majority of subsidies go towards corn and dairy. You remove them, and the price of meat, dairy and cheese goes up. Therefore, by default, the other veggies are going to be significantly cheaper.

Oh, and the government saves billions, rather than spends them.