Taxing our way to better eating.

• Position: Food Choices

A call for the implementation of taxes and subsidies to improve dietary quality in the U.S. has been put forth in a "Viewpoint" published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers--from Tufts and Harvard universities and Boston Children's Hospital--write that policies taxing nearly all packaged foods and subsidizing healthier foods could help people make meaningful dietary changes and substantially reduce health care costs.

"With climbing rates of obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related illnesses helping to drive health care expenses to an all-time high, we are at a crossroads," declares first author Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. 'The strategies we rely on now--labels on food packages and dietary guidelines--place responsibility squarely on the shoulders of individual people to find, purchase, and eat healthy foods. Given the complexities of our modern food environment, that is an uphill battle. We must start looking at enacting policies that help people navigate our complex food environment and adopt a healthier way of eating."

Mozaffarian; senior author David S. Ludwig, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children's Hospital; and coauthor Kenneth S. Rogoff, professor of public policy and economics at Harvard, claim the goal of taxes and subsidies is to improve overall dietary patterns rather than reduce calorie intake. They suggest a 10% to 30% flat tax on nearly all packaged...