The idea of taxing unhealthy food has been around for years, but has never actually been used. The obvious reason is because the food lobby would never allow it. But the idea itself is a sound one.

America’s obesity problem has never been worse. Everyone knows this, yet the words “America’s obesity problem has never been worse” become truer every year. Obviously, knowing that we’re a nation of fat bastards isn’t helping many people make better life decisions about diet and exercise. This wouldn’t really be any of the government’s business, except that people who are overweight and obese have far more health problems than average and end up drawing huge amounts of money from Medicaid and Medicare, as well as decreasing worker productivity and hurting the economy because of health concerns.

What other industries have caused similar problems and been slammed with gargantuan taxes for it? Tobacco and alcohol. The government taxes cigarettes and booze and has even allowed the tobacco industry itself to be sued for billions of dollars. Similar lawsuits against McDonald’s failed, as the lawsuits against Philip Morris should have, but the taxes on their toxic products are a good idea. If the government taxed every cheeseburger, soda and bag of potato chips, the revenue would theoretically be used to better fund public health campaigns or to subsidize healthier foods. A tax of even one cent per junk food purchase would generate billions toward these purposes. The tax might even encourage people to make healthier food choices.

One concern that has been raised is that many lower-class citizens buy a lot of unhealthy food–fast food is pretty cheap, it’s true–and the grease-and-sugar tax would hurt Americans who already live in or close to poverty. Even without the proposed subsidies on healthy food, there are healthier alternatives that are at least as cheap. (I survived college on brown rice and lentils; less than a dollar’s worth makes enough for four people. Add some canned chili beans and corn, and it even tastes good.) With the subsidies for healthy food, there shouldn’t be any problem at all.

Taxing the semi-edible garbage sold my McDonald’s and Coca-Cola and all the others, and then using the proceeds for bigger public health campaigns in the media is a nice thought, but couldn’t possibly say anything that people don’t already know. Using the tax revenue to subsidize fresh vegetables and fruit, however, would help out America’s agricultural industry as well as promote a healthier lifestyle. If we can put a sin tax on cigarettes because they kill people, let’s do the same thing to obviously unhealthy food, because it kills people.