Not only is this a waste of taxpayer money since carbonated soda provides little nutritional value, it also promotes unhealthy eating habits. The paper, titled Using the Food Stamp Program and Other Methods to Promote Healthy Diets for Low-Income Consumers, aims to point out methods to assist low income consumers chose healthy eating habits.

Why subsidize soda when water is available for (near) free? This seems wrong on so many levels.

“The federal government should be doing everything it can to reduce the consumption of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages, which promote tooth decay, weight gain, obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases,” said Jacobson. “SNAP should be oriented toward increasing the consumption of good, healthy food. None of the $65 billion invested in nutrition assistance in 2010 should end up paying for Coke, Pepsi, or Mountain Dew.”

via FoodCEO.

Obama has made some comments about a soda tax in an upcoming issue of Men’s Health. In the article, he states that “There’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that’s been done about obesity shows that there is as high a correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity as just about anything else“. To counter that, he also states “people’s attitude is that they don’t necessarily want Big Brother telling them what to eat or drink, and I understand that“.

They are also calling this a “sin tax” and putting it in the same category as the cigarette taxes. It should be interesting to see how this plays out in the news media.

(via)