The Interesting Thing About My Topic

When I first chose my topic I kept my focus on researching specifically for taxing the unhealthy food and subsidising the healthy food. It wasn't until I started to lose some words from my specific searches that I started to come across some other valid ideas in regards to eating healthy verse eating unhealthy.

I found an article that commented on how successful imposing a 'sugar tax' is in Mexico, then I later found an article that commented on how it is our mindset and habits that need to change, not the price of food and it got me thinking about the other lanes this topic could take me down.

Are New Zealanders finding it hard to eat healthy because unhealthy food is so readily available and cheaper or are we just lazy and can't be bothered spending 20 minutes creating a healthy meal with a protein, fat and carbohydrate portion? Would increasing the price on unhealthy food make healthy food seem more affordable without the need to subsidise it? Why is fresh produce so expensive and why do fresh produce prices continue to rise?

The most interesting thing about my topic is not so much that no-one disagrees to impose a tax on unhealthy foods, it is that people have different opinions as to where to spend the collected tax money. Although subsidising healthy food is the answer in my question, I am also looking into funding more education in schools for cooking and growing fresh produce and even the possibility of easily accessible community gardens.

There are so many questions that I now have and I am very eager to answer them all in my position paper. I have decided to only pick three major questions and areas of interest for my paper that you will have to wait and see what they are.

Comments

Unknown said…
Such interesting ideas you have come across in your research. The topics we look at in this course seem so straight-forward when you approach them with your blinders on, but in a similar way to you I also found that by broadening your search you can really appreciate the many complexities that make up any scientific argument - such as this one that is subsidising healthy food (or as you've found, perhaps taxing unhealthy foods). - Courtney