Brownell calls for food tax to fight 'epidemic'

By Molly Ball

COURTESY OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS Kelly Brownell continues to lead the charge against obesity.

In a 1994 Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, Brownell presented a four-part plan aimed at fighting diet-related illness on a national level. "[Diet-related illness] is a public- health problem. It's an epidemic," he explained. "We live in a toxic food environment where high-calorie and high-fat foods are available at low cost." Health problems related to diet, such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension, kill approximately 300,000 Americans every year, a 25 percent increase since a decade ago.

Brownell decided that attacking the problem on an individual basis was not enough. "I've spent 20 years in the field of obesity and weight disorders trying to help individuals. Finally, I began looking at [the problem] from a national point of view. It's an American crisis," he said.

He suggested subsidizing the sale of healthy foods to lower their cost, raising the price of unhealthy foods, regulating deceptive food advertising, and mounting a national campaign to encourage increased physical activity.

Public interest in the plan has centered around waging a tax on foods based on their nutritional value. "I was hammered by Rush [Limbaugh]--some pointy-headed Yale professor trying to tell us how to live our lives," Brownell recalled. "But [the tax] was listed in U.S. News & World Report's `16 Smart Ideas to Fix the World' issue, as number seven."

Some people worry that such a tax might be an unwarranted invasion of privacy. "The intrusion into people's lives worries me," Brian Osias, BK '99, co-coordinator of the Yale Bioethics Society, said. "Should the government be doing anything to affect how people make choices in their own lives?"

Brownell often compares his proposal to the federal government's control over the advertising and sale of tobacco, which claims an estimated 500,000 lives every year. "The case of tobacco shows that when price goes up, consumption goes down in a linear relationship," he said.

Brownell also sees advertising as a bad influence. "What's the difference between the effect of Joe Camel and Ronald McDonald?" Brownell asked. "It's McDonalds' stated corporate goal to have no American more than four minutes from one of their restaurants. If a tobacco company put up a `Billions and Billions Sold' sign, we'd be outraged."

Some students believe Brownell's proposal could be an effective way of fighting diet-related illness. "[The proposal] is an interesting idea, and I think it's a good one. Fast-food chains are taking over the country," Emmy Betz, SY '99, said.

For now, Brownell is not sure whether he would support his own proposal to tax unhealthy foods if it were introduced as legislation; he believes more research needs to be done. "My students and I are interested in finding out the degree to which food consumption is sensitive to price," he said. "We're just starting to collect data, but I'm pretty sure what we're going to find."

In recent years, three states (California, Maryland and Maine) enacted "snack taxes" on the sale of junk food. All but the Maine law have been repealed, but "since the states saw [these taxes] as a convenient way to reduce their budget deficit, not a way to affect behavior, no data was collected," Brownell noted.

Since 1990, Brownell has served as director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders (YCEWD), one of the world's only centers that deals with both obesity and eating disorders. "The two fields are usually studied separately, but they have a common interest. They've been studying all the same things, completely independently."

As a psychology professor, Brownell has taught courses in health psychology and human sexuality. He also holds a joint appointment at the School for Epidemiology and Public Health. Brownell noted that his colleagues, especially in the nutrition field, have been mostly supportive of his proposals, "not because they think [the ideas] are a good solution necessarily, but they like that someone is finally bringing up the issue of environment [in diet-related illnesses]."

The inevitable question, of course, is whether Yale dining hall food gets Brownell's stamp of nutritional approval. "I think if one is inclined to eat a healthy diet, one can in the dining hall," he said. "Some unhealthy things are there because people want them, but there are also plenty of healthy choices."

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