Junk Food Case Study

Nowadays, the increasing rate of overweight society is a worldwide health issue has led to high cholesterol, and diseases such as heart problem, cancer and diabetes. Based from statistical report, the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2011 show that 15 percent of Malaysians aged 18 and above are obese which is the higher than in most other Asian countries (as cited in Health & Beauty, 2013). Equally important, The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2009-2010 stated that in U.S adults age 20 and older, more than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of adults are considered to be overweight or obese (as cited in Overweight and Obesity Statistics, 2012).In response to this, governments around the world are actively

One of many possible solutions could be to impose higher taxes on soft drinks and junk food could encourage healthy eating. Fat Taxes existed since 1994 are the government strategies to discourage consumption of unhealthy food and drink. This approach is focusing on tax levied on individual foods determined to be unhealthy on the basis of their fat or caloric content. "According to Kelly D. Brownell, federal government should tax food with little nutritional values. The less healthy the food, the higher the tax" (as cited in Gilman, 2008). Therefore imposing higher food taxes encourage society to maximize health gains, support nutritional health promotion programs by raising revenue, although likely to be based on consumer 's

For many unhealthy products are very profitable to the country especially junk food and soft drinks. As an example, soft drinks and junk food like Mc Donald’s and Burger King are highly marketed at Malaysia. In 2013, soft drinks experienced considerable growth in both total value and volume sales. It is reported that consumer can consume up to 1000 cans per minute of soft drink, which demands surpassing hot drink as the biggest beverage sector in the world (Lazim Hasbullah & Hazliza Ansagari, 2011). Soft drinks and junk foods taxes are highly paid where the availability of convenience pack sizes and vending machine in Malaysia saw soft drinks as a brilliant marketing strategy. Other than that there are alternatives for government to produce profit such as tourism. In certain year, our government will organize the event called “Tahun Melawat Malaysia” to attract the tourist to visit our country, so it will contributed RM51.5 billion to the government’s income (GNI) in 2013 ("Malaysia 's tourism",2014). Malaysia is well endowed with abundance of natural resources particularly suitable for sustainable tourism through its economic viability. Increasing attention has been given by government through promotion every year “Tahun Melawat Malaysia” to develop sustainable tourism as an alternative source and income of foreign exchange. That might be true to one extend, but this idea