Should Junk Food Be More Expensive?

We eat junk food mainly because it is delicious, but our best intentions to avoid it are not helped by the fact that most of it is cheap. The results of a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggest that we would in fact eat less junk food if it cost more. Researchers compared changes in body weight and the prices of different types of foods in a pool of more than 5,000 men and women and found that, as the price of junk foods such as soda and pizza increased, body weights tended to decrease. Based on these findings, the authors of the study than an 18 percent tax on such foods would result in a decrease of 56 calories consumed per person per day and a loss of 5 pounds of body weight per person per year.