Food that enhances obesity & increasing tax rate

With the recent advancement in the medical science & new therapies coming in everyday people are able to live longer & disease free life. In the mid of the 20th century the average life span of  female & male in India was 31 & 32, which is now 69 & 66 years respectively. If we will see this for advanced nations like Japan, European union & US average life span their is 85, 81 & 78 respectively.

However there is a new problem creeping up with increase survival of people. Due to Sedentary life style, improper work life balance & erratic food habits people are encountering a new types of diseases like diabetes, heart disease & cancer. These have been increased many fold in all most all the countries of the world. The tragedy with these diseases are it takes a lot of time to develop in our body. On diagnosis though disease could be controlled by following a healthy life style & good food habit, still we can't get hundred percent cure .

Sometimes due to late diagnosis of these disease it spread rapidly & deactivate most of our important organs inside our body. Therefore these diseases are also called the silent killer. So the most important thing is we should be very cautious in our life style & avoid these type of diseases.

For this first of all we should follow a healthy life style which include regular exercise, consuming  zero tobacco, alcoholic products & stay away from food with high calorie. Today sedentary life style & too much consumption of  junk foods is the main reason for these diseases.

In this regard few countries in the world has already taken some commendable initiatives. In order to discourage high consumption of carbonated beverage & saturated fat these countries have put heavy tax on these foods. Countries like Denmark, France & US are in the forefront in this regard.  Denmark is the first country in the world to apply highest level of tax on saturated fats. In country like Mexico consumption of carbonated beverages ( Cola drinks) has fallen by 5-12% from 2014 level due to increased tax. 

Now time has come so that India should take firm initiative in this direction. Few state govt have already taken the initiative in these regards. For example Govt of Kerala has increased the tax rate up to 14.5% on high calorie foods like Pizza, burger, pasta etc. A study conducted among  children & teenage in Kerala has found that not only cities but in villages also rate of obesity is increasing in lower age groups. So there is a consensus building up on increasing the taxes on foods having excessive calories & fat.

In order to get rid of these life style related disease we require awareness among people towards unhealthy lifestyle & unhealthy foods, however  these kind of govt's initiatives can also help  a lot. It is expected that with increase tax if the price of the food will gradually increase then people will stay away from these kind of unhealthy food.

Article written by;

Dr Chira Ranjan Khadanga

MD RT (Radiation Oncologist)

KIIMS Hospital, Hyderabad

Contact: 9515071031