1) Consumers are repeatedly lied to, either directly or through omission, by junk food makers about the nutritional merits of their products. The USDA and FDA are complicit in this.

2) There is evidence that shows that several key ingredients in junk food, alone and in combination, cause people to exhibit classic addict behaviors in order to get them. The junk-food addicted rats study is a good one to mention. In other words, an addicted person’s decision-making abilities are compromised thus making them easier targets for #1.

3) Junk foods are some of the cheapest you can buy.

4) Junk foods require little to no cooking skills to make edible. Let’s ignore raw fruits and veggies for the sake of the argument.

If you believe any the above then it doesn’t make sense to tax the consumer. That is in effect punishing them for being ignorant, manipulated, poor, addicts. Instead let’s punish the junk food makers by taking away their ability to advertise and adding a tax to the producers. It was done with cigarettes and to a limited degree with alcohol. Sure, it hasn’t stopped people from drinking too much and smoking cigarettes but in the case of junk food children and teens are being targeted more heavily and directly than practically any other age group. Kids usually can’t purchase food themselves but they can demand that it be bought for them.

If processed foods were more costly to produce then they would be more expensive in the store and healthy whole foods would become more competitively priced. The revenue could be put into better food education and direct subsidies on whole foods.