See David Leonhardt's NYTimes article, published on 19 May 2009:

Sodas a Tempting Tax Target
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/business/economy/20leonhardt.html

This seems like a no-brainer to me (coming from someone who doesn't drink the stuff), but it is a pretty contentious area in this land of freedom we live in, as the comments on Mr. Leonhardt's article will attest.

One thing that definitely seems in order is that something needs to be done about the spiraling cost of healthy foods relative to junk food (as shown in the "Change in Monthly Food Prices" chart in the NYT article). Perhaps it would be best to re-frame any kind of junk food tax as a "fruit and veggie subsidy."

And *most* definitely there should not be taxes on health club memberships (as Mr. Leonhardt claims there is in New Jersey), but rather tax breaks and health insurance discounts for people that have such memberships (and actually use them). I've even considered channeling donations to TeamHuman.org for this purpose, but the logistics on how to make that happen are unclear to me at this point.

This issue came up in the Internet tribe recently:

http://hub.teamhuman.org/tribes/topic/6/

It prompted me to create this News tribe to provide a place to dispel misinformation concerning breaking news items, such as the swine flu.

This brings up a broader question of interest: What impact does social media have on the spread of infectious disease? The experiment is in progress now...