Do you think it's about time that the government became more responsible with the quality of food people eat in USA? A lot of big corporations design food/beverages to be extra salty so you drink more (and so meat absorbs more water making it heavier and sell for more), they put a lot of fat and starch in your food because it's cheap, and tons of sugar because it's also cheap.

McDonalds used to advertize their meat as 100% Beef, but in reality, it's the company name. 100% Beef was the producer of 20% Beef McDonalds patties, the rest was just corn starch filler.

In fact most of the food available in the USA is cheapened with some sort of corn produce because corn is the cheapest produce the USA can grow. The problem is that corn isn't really healthy as a vegetable, and provides no nutritional value except for some empty calories and sugar.

However the rest of the world doesn't work like this. In Europe there are stricter regulations on food quality. High Fructose Corn Syrup is banned in pop, so Fanta, Sprite, and Coke all taste much much better there. It's because they use Beat sugar instead, and actually flavor the drinks with real orange/lemon/lime juice and real sugar cane (for Orange Fanta, Sprie and Coke respectively).

If the USA banned things like Grade F meat, buisnesses like Taco Bell and KFC would be hurt, pretty bad, but if they survive, their food will taste a lot better, a lot more authentic. If we ban salt in drinks, then pop will no longer make you still feel thirsty, and banning HFCS would give drinks and gummie candies a much better taste.

Plus if Junky things like Chips, Chocolate, and low grade fast food, were taxed, we would all eat a lot healthier. I mean chips are already expensive, imagine if they cost $8 a bag, and if a Medium pizza cost $15. Would you buy Pizza and chips as often? No. You'd probably switch to crackers and a healthy dip (like humus or avacado), or start making you own pizza. Or maybe pizza restaurants would stop adding salt to their pizza's and make pizzas to the stricter guidelines, then you can still get $5-6 pizza's, but they would be much healthier.

I think if we taxed Junk food, most products wouldn't change in price, they would just suddenly taste better. It's not that much more expensive to make pop out of beat juice over HFCS is it? Okay maybe there will be a small increase in price, but that's not to offset costs, but to be used as an excuse to charge more for pop and junk food.

Still, I think with what 38% of Americans and 18% of Canadians Obese, we could learn a thing or two from the Europeans (which are 16% Obese including UK, and 13% without them).

Link: World Obesity Rates: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2228rank.html

Edit: I changed the poll to include regulate. Regulate meaning control the amount of either corn products or salt in food.

While these options are good. They could back fire to hell. Image if this was fully enforce. Chain after chain would close down. Because, let's face it. People are cheap as hell. And who's fault is it really? Themselves.

100% disagree.

Absolutely, 1000% opposed to any sort of bans. How about just ending the corn subsidy?

It's no more expensive to make Fanta out of Beat Sugar then HFCS.

Adding salt to food doesn't make it cheaper, it makes people thirstier so they buy more. making heavy regulations on salt in food would make food cheaper, since you are buying less to drink.

There are a few things which would work, in USA and Canada they severly taxed trans-fats in foods, and now most food doesn't contain trans-fat (unless it's from a natural source, like eggs). i.e. when you buy eggs, they aren't taxed extra for having trans fats, but chips would be.

The only reason corn is the cheapest food to grow in the US is because of the government.

Rather then crazy junkfood bans and the like they should just remove the corn subsidies so junk food naturally costs more.

There is a reason why even mexico uses sugar over HFC... (and they have a bigger obesity problem then we do.)

I can imagine a Neo-Al Capone selling burguers at midnight if they ban junk food.

I won't deny that fast food is very unhealthy, but did you really believe McDonald's, the most closely scrutinized franchise in the world, who actually got sued for overheating coffee, ever would do something as stupid and legally actionable as selling 20% beef patties?

http://www.snopes.com/business/market/allbeef.asp

Absolutely not.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

No they don't

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

Mind you those statistics are old, I know USA is approaching 40% and Canada is about 18%.

Also I think if you take a Europe average, and exclude UK, obesity rates are actually lower then 13%. A lot of countries like Sweden, Denmark, France, and Italy hold 8-10%.

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Oh wait, now I get your point. I don't think corn is subsidized in Canada, I think it's subsidized in the USA because USA and Mexico are the world lead producers of corn. So one of the options I gave was to ban (I should have said ban/regulate) corn fillers and HFCS. I guess removing the subsidies would make a similar affect.

As for Sugar over HFCS, what's that reason? Pop in Europe uses Beat sugar over HFCS and not only does it taste better, but it's better for you too because you body recognizes it as a sugar.

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What's your take on strong salt regulations?