I remember fighting with my children about products they saw during the Saturday morning cartoons. As a little background: my children are 30+ years old and were raised on Sesame Street and Public Television except for Saturday morning cartoons. We fought about how many times we needed to go to McDonald’s so they could “collect” the latest fad items in their happy meals; we fought about General Mills’ sugar cereals, etc. What they saw on commercial TV they wanted, as it marketed directly to them and bypassing the parents. So a tax on soda, fast food, etc. is what the producers of that product should have had years ago!! Maybe then they would’ve considered what they were doing to the youth of this country.

I also believe that taxing them would show people the true costs of these foods – the obesity and diabetic rates and the health care costs behind them. Yes, it’s really a parent’s issue, but how many outside influences do we have to fight daily??

Sorry, you hit a real sore spot with me in remembering how I was always the “bad guy” when I wouldn’t allow them to do what the advertisers wanted. Yes, to taxing junk food of all kinds!

That being said, Sin Tax on soda can be beneficial. I don’t think such a small tax will deter someone from drinking soda, but it would bring in the revenue to fund programs that can educate citizens on healthy nutrition, in turn deterring future drinking of soda in excess. These funds should not be given to government entities such as the Department of Human Services. They should be given out as grants to NGO’s. Programs such as those that teach kids and their families how to eat well or how to grow their own food would be good ways to spend the money.

It’s not as much a problem with being lazy as it is that as a society we’ve become more sedentary in nature and more reliant on a food system that wasn’t intended for human health. Our work is more sedentary, our schools have become more sedentary. This is not an excuse, because overall we do spend less time being physically active now than we ever have in our history. It is to say that this combined by bad food choice is a major problem.

It is my belief and that of many others that the link lies within the change of the food system. (some will go as far as the beginning of the agricultural revolution) The introduction of chemicals, biotechnology and processing systems of foods have contributed enormously to the obesity epidemic and current health epidemic we encounter today.

As far as putting “god” into the classroom, this has nothing to do with physical health. You cannot quantify it nor can you really say that this one element would deter the current problems with our society. A religious pursuit should always be kept outside of the formal education system.

My last and final note is the government is made by the people and for the people. We’ve chosen as citizens of the United States to remain apathetic to government and the political process. We allow small interest groups the right to run our country and have forgotten the theories around strength in numbers. If many of our citizens would simply step back, see the big picture and have the courage to take action, we would be a different and stronger country.

I hope you take what I’ve said into consideration and look forward to your response.

Good Day.

the couch and get back to nature. I do not believe

taxing soda and pizza will solve the problem of beeing

lazy. For years it has been okay to set on our butts

playing games, watching tv, etc. and know everyone is

concerned about the number of fat people in America. If

the government would get out of our lives and do there

jobs and let the parents do theres, put God back in

school and running our government a lot of problems

would be solved.