When it comes to promoting healthier eating habits, some individuals believe that it requires governmental subsidies of healthy foods while others think that authorities should focus on raising taxes on unhealthy foods. Both views are based on different reasons.
On one hand, the overall health outcomes occur when the government subsidizes healthy foods by lowering the cost of ingredients such as fertilizers. In fact, this is particularly important for low-income households, where the cost of fresh foods is expensive. When healthy foods are affordable, the governmental subsidies could encourage more people to have better choices for consumption. Moreover, by reducing healthy food’s prices, it promotes not only a long life span for citizens but also more job opportunities among producers. For instance, farmers are motivated to produce fresh foods more by the increasing consumption of affordable fresh foods.
On the other hand, taxing unhealthy foods such as sugary drinks, fast food, or snacks with high fats, sugar, and salt can discourage people’s consumption by more expensive prices. The higher prices might deter people from buying unhealthy food, leading them to seek the lower alternatives such as affordable healthy foods. In addition, countries will have more budgets by taxing unhealthy foods as a tax revenue, resulting in funding on fresh foods. Hence, the government can play a key role in the better citizen’s eating habits with taxes on junk foods.
To sum up, in my point of view, I believe that subsidizing healthy foods by the government can play a key role in generating better health standards and more job vacancies.