Breast cancer prevention with a political twist!

We have discussed in previous blogs the adverse effect of weight gain on breast cancer occurrence, but today I want to commend to all a New York Times article in the Personal Health section online now (www.nytimes.com).  This article: Attacking the Obesity Epidemic by First Figuring Out Its Cause, by Jane E Brody reports on a series of studies published in the scholarly peer-reviewed journal, Lancet (www.thelancet.com) in August.  Experts from Harvard's School of Public Health, the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health and others,  report, in a series of four papers, the results of their two year study.

They list three cost-saving and health-savings measures, but I will leave you with just one.  This one measure is a tax on unhealthy foods and drinks.  It is a tough measure to sell, but cigarettes are taxed.  Such an attempt to tax sugar-sweetened beverages was recently defeated in New York State by industry pressure.  However according to their research, a 1 penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in California, alone, would bring in 1.5 billion dollars a year! Dr. Gortmaker, one of the authors, calls a tax on such beverages a "no-brainer" in the interview.  Can you imagine 2 cents or 10 cents?