Wednesday, June 9, 2004

In response to my post yesterday on blogosphere calls for a “Fat Tax” to combat America’s obesity, Katie Pratt (Loyola-L.A.) observes that there is far more scholarly meat here than is commonly known:

Commentators from the fields of nutrition and public health (e.g. Yale prof Kelly Brownell and public health advocate Michael Jacobson at the Center for Science in the Public Interest) have written articles advocating food excise taxes, but little has been written by tax commentators. Jeff Strnad (Stanford) has written an article about the normative justifications for a fat tax. I have begun to research fat taxes, snack food taxes (aka Twinkie taxes), and super-size portion taxes. Jeff, Ed McCaffery (USC), and I are going to be on a panel on food excise taxes during a Spring 2005 conference on legal responses to the obesity epidemic.