A speech from a debate course – A speech presented at a public debate on ethics and medicine
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In the past, obesity was seen as an aesthetic problem only. Today, obesity is defined as a disease that leads to additional morbidity such as heart disease, vascular disease and diabetes, it is a chronic disease that endangers life. The obesity epidemic does not miss children either. In the US, about 15 percent of teenagers are overweight or defined as obese. About 60 percent of Israel's population is overweight and 23 percent are obese.

From the data of the Ministry of Health for the years 2003-2004, it appears that the obesity rate has been on the rise among graduates in recent years. Fast food or fattening food of its kind causes direct consequences for the obesity process. Imposing a tax on this type of food will lead to difficulty in consumption and accessibility to these foods, and will also be a negative incentive for eating these foods. I will present two arguments why I am in favor of taxing fattening food, Next article three arguments Different why I am against taxing fattening food. I will start with my arguments, which strengthen the imposition of the tax on fattening foods:

• The first argument is an economic argument
  The costs caused to the country where the phenomenon of obesity exists are enormous, and are spread over all areas of life, health, economy and society. Imposing a tax on those foods will mean that access to consumption will be more difficult, which will lead to a healthier society, and reduce the expenses and resources that the state sacrifices today for those patients.
• The second argument is a social argument
  People who suffer from obesity, or what is called OBESITY in Polish, consider themselves to be less successful people, with lower self-worth and especially with higher social adjustment difficulties than any "normal" person. This move of imposing a tax will be an obstacle to all those frivolous people who want to get to these foods quickly, and therefore will lead to future consequences of a society with lower unemployment rates, healthier people (mentally), and with a higher environmental awareness.

The economic charge

I will base my economic argument on a letter published in the Haaretz newspaper, in 2006, in a research review conducted by a team led by the economist Dr. Amir Shmueli from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The price of obesity in Israel reaches about NIS 6 billion per year. The six billion shekels per year include the direct cost due to obesity (diseases caused by obesity), the indirect cost as a result of premature mortality, and the indirect cost as a result of absences from the workplace.

France is the first country to start addressing the problem, the House of Representatives there raised the issue of obesity awareness to a bill, since its annual expenses, as a result of the obesity disease, reach an astronomical amount of 14 billion euros per year. These amounts are unimaginable. I would like us to think for a moment and understand: we could have invested this astronomical amount in developing the education budget, for a better education, or alternatively, in the health budget for various studies that they could save a person from incurable diseases, if we made it difficult to access fattening foods, our society would be more prosperous and healthier. In my opinion, things would have happened if we had adopted the phrase "Eat to live, not eat to have fun".

In addition, there is a tendency for parents to save time, effort and money, and to provide their children with fast and unhealthy food. This will lead to future consequences that will later cost a lot of money to try and restore the child to a healthy state, this money will be invested in dietetic gyms and more. In Israel there is already a mechanism of taxing harmful products such as the excise tax on alcoholic beverages and cigarettes. I am in favor of the same being done for fattening food, since this food is harmful to health.

In addition, this food is addictive and causes immediate and future results, the solution to which is great mental, economic and social suffering for the people who consumed it to an uncontrolled extent. Many studies in the past have shown that chocolate, one of whose components is caffeine, is an addictive food, chocolate is consumed by all age groups, it is important to know that caffeine is a nutritional ingredient that is not recommended for children at all! The nominal prices of this type of food lead to a lot of consumption by the consumer, and this product lacks any nutritious nutritional component.

Parents and people with a lack of awareness do not understand that these foods are poison, in English these foods are called junk food, which means garbage food. The accessibility of this food at a popular or symbolic price makes accessibility an easy matter, which does not require forethought or a particular order of priorities, is it better for me to buy something else with this money instead of spending it on expensive and harmful food. Obesity leads to many expenses in the healthcare system, since these people suffer from many more diseases and come to more frequent visits to doctors and hospitals, something that can definitely be prevented.

The social argument

If you look at the social aspect, you can see that morbid obesity can cause depression, avoidance of social relationships, and intimate relationships. In addition, it causes difficulties in finding a job. Modern society, whether it deserves it or not, is built on a model of thin is beautiful. In most cases, the people in the media appear to be fitter and healthier people. A fat person is a frustrated person most of the times, with Low self-confidence And with a rather low social adaptability. In our society the thin model is the winning model and the fat model is the inferior model. Therefore, in order to be accepted into organized workplaces, fat people have to prove themselves more.

It is clear to everyone that your initial "business card" is your appearance and then your skills. In the first exam, in most cases, the fat person fails, so he has to prove the level of his skills and performance, more than the other in order to be accepted. When a child eats the same fattening foods, he does not think about his future consequences, as shown above. Hence, there should be increased awareness and the imposition of difficulty on the accessibility of those foods to try and minimize the future damage.

If we look at the theory of utilitarianism, we see that the benefit to society outweighs the harm to the individual. By limiting that citizen's right to choose and making it difficult to access this type of food, cigarettes or alcohol, the social benefit is increased,

When promoting our society to a more aware and healthy one. This attraction to those fattening foods such as McDonald's children's meals that entice children by playing games inside a meal that is defined as suitable for children but is high in calories and full of saturated fat that a child should not consume, these foods and desserts, are dangerous to health and easy to obtain. The personal and environmental harm of eating fattening products, the accessibility and cheapness of which was quite easy to purchase, should be compared to eating poison, these foods break down into fats in the body and have no nutritious caloric value, they are high in calories and are thrown away and harm the body just as much as poison would harm it.

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