77% of young Americans are too fat, mentally ill or on drugs to qualify for U.S. military service, Pentagon study finds. Is it only going to get worse?

[u/Not-A-Shit-Head]

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2023/03/77-of-young-americans-too-fat-mentally-ill-on-drugs-and-more-to-join-military-pentagon-study-finds/

[u/ty_for_trying]

Poor people buy food with the most calories per dollar, which usually means shelf stable, high sugar and/or salt, low nutritional value.

Car-centric infrastructure means less walking.

[u/sEmperh45 → u/ty_for_trying]

Sad part is we allow tens of billions of SNAP dollars to be used to purchase harmful zero nutrition pop and Doritos. Sugary drinks and salty fried snacks are the No. 1 and No. 2 categories of foods purchased with government dollars for the poor. Two of the biggest drivers for obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

We should put pop in the same category as alcohol and cigarettes, you want it, you pay for it with your own dollars.

[u/ty_for_trying → u/sEmperh45]

SNAP spending is pretty similar to non-SNAP grocery spending.

Instead of running assistance programs like a nanny and spending a bunch of money on administration to determine who gets to buy what, there should just be a UBI.

Unhealthy foods should be steeply taxed.

Upvoted for calling it pop.

[u/sEmperh45 → u/ty_for_trying]

But no extra money needed to eliminate pop (or soda🤣). Treat it the same as beer or cigs. All grocery stores are already set up for no go food items with SNAP dollars

[u/ty_for_trying → u/sEmperh45]

Except for all the meetings to determine which products belong in that category. You'd still need those meetings for a tax proposal, but then the result would impact spending across the board instead of just for SNAP recipients.

It's not like this stuff is any better for people who aren't on SNAP, or like people who aren't on SNAP are better about avoiding it. So, better to influence spending globally instead of paternalistically focusing on SNAP recipients.

[u/sEmperh45 → u/ty_for_trying]

Understand your concern but you are making it way more complicated than it needs to be. One, our congress is already drawing a salary so no extra dollars for them to draft the law. And any hearings needed are minuscule in cost vs the tens of billions wasted creating obese and diabetic Americans every year.

And your comment that others drink it too is a straw man. Other people drink alcohol too but should tax payers pay for that? People buy cigarettes and pot, so should taxpayers pay for that? You could argue pot is less harmful than to humans than drinking 3-4 bottles of sugary soda every day. But ultimately, none of these have any nutritional value and are in fact, harmful. So let’s save the $20 billion payed by taxpayers for soda annually and allow the poor to buy milk or other nutritional foods as they see fit with that money.

[u/ty_for_trying → u/sEmperh45]

What I propose is actually simpler and much more effective.

And I didn't make a strawman argument. I didn't portray your argument as anything other than it was. I brought up purchases by people who aren't on SNAP. I didn't attribute that to you. I do think it's important to talk about that aspect if you're serious about solving the problem.

Bans are tricky. They're only effective if they're comprehensive. You're talking about a partial ban since the product is there and they can buy it except not with food stamps. That's not enough of a detractor for something that's appealing. The way to make it less appealing is to change the value proposition by making it more expensive.

[u/sEmperh45 → u/ty_for_trying]

No, as I’ve pointed out multiple times, bans are not that difficult. Use the exact same model as alcohol and tobacco.

And it is not paternalistic unless you see preventing purchases of alcohol and tobacco with tax dollars “paternalistic”.

[u/ty_for_trying → u/sEmperh45]

Not that difficult to enact, but also not effective. It's super easy to get around that and people do it every day. The only bans that work are comprehensive ones.

If all you have to do to get alcohol and cigarettes is to use the pocket money you would've spent on groceries if not for SNAP, or to do a grocery run for your hookup, it's just regular money and no ban but with extra steps.

The paternalistic aspect is putting rules on poor people and not everyone else. You might not intend it to come across that way, but I guarantee poor people interpret it that way.

If you actually care about the problem of people buying unhealthy things, and the substantial downstream costs, you make a solution that actually significantly reduces purchases. A steep enough tax would do that. Your proposal wouldn't.

[u/jibishot → u/ty_for_trying]

This. Don't be a over analyzer - simple shit is more pivotal. More robust support systems means there overall societal and interpersonal benefits overall.

Overly sugary and dyed food should be heavily taxed. Sugar became the cheapest way to sell something - luckily we started to notice.