The US senate is considering a tax on sodas as one way to help pay for the planned health care overhaul. This seems to be unfairly directed at the soda industry.

If the government instead taxed high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the main ingredient in high calorie sodas, it could achieve the same short term effects -- get money and raise the price of soda to try to reduce consumption -- but it would spread the burden out slightly, since it would target all users of HFCS.

Furthermore, an HFCS tax would have a long term effect, of causing manufacturers to gradually shift to less unhealthy sweeteners... like old fashioned sugar.
-- goldbb, Jul 09 2009

What's the evidence that old fashioned sugar is less unhealthy than HFCS?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 09 2009


It'd be kind of redundant/ridiculous to tax something that is (heavily) subsidized. Then again, I wouldn't put it past the US Government.
-- Spacecoyote, Jul 09 2009


no actually HFCS is just as bad for you as glucose or sucrose. I doubt a tax on it would do anything for consumer health. Corn syrup is an "old fashioned" sweetener; Corn syrup in one form or another is as old as corn cultivation.
-- WcW, Jul 09 2009



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