Fast Food tax

picture from here

Romanian leaders are very inventive when it comes to collecting money for the state budget.

They come up with a fast food tax that it’s supposed to be paid by all the entities that produce or import food with a high level of salt, fats, sugar and additives: fast food, pastry, cakes, snacks, chips and fizzy drinks.

You may think that this is a good thing and Health Minister is concerned about the people of this country, but let’s take a peek into the deepest of this “business”: it doesn’t exist a term that definitely separate the healthy and unhealthy food so almost all the food you can find on the market may be considered unhealthy (excepting the vegetables, fruits and all the raw food). People are poor so most of them eat what is cheap and easy to get. Introducing a fast food tax will only bring higher prices and lower consumption. All the food will be expensive and people will still continue to eat it because of the lack of healthy food alternative. Healthy  food is still very expensive and not many people can afford to buy it.

How can you introduce a fast food tax in a country affected by the economical crisis, with a lot of poor people and then say that this is in the benefit of the people? They said that fast food affects the health of the people but if these products will be more expensive, people will go back to bread and french fries because it’s cheaper and I don’t agree that these last 2 products are very healthy.They will not eat a hamburger, a sandwich or a hot-dog, they’ll go back at eating pretzels. Health Minister initially said that this is only an idea but it was already announced that this tax is going to be collected starting March. This smells like another attempt for rapidly collecting money from the poor people for the state budget.

Well, we are going to have a hell of a life. But it’s ok, we still have the hope for a better life!

picture from here