Ironically, his plan fails to account for its own success; he states in his opening sentence that his ultimate goal is to get America to eat healthy. (587) The issue with the core of his plan which would take a tax on unhealthy foods and use it to subsidize staple foods cheap, is that over time, in theory, the public should start to buy less bad food. Should this occur, the funds used to subsidize the healthy foods the public is now buying would gradually dry up; with the funds for the subsidize gone, the prices of the healthy staples goes up putting it back out of reach of the public at large. A similar issue occurs currently with the American Gas tax, a major point of funding for the Highway Trust Fund, for repair of American Interstates. Fuel efficient cars and a failure to adjust the tax rate to account for this change in automotive technology, has resulted in short falls. 15 billion dollars short falls.(Halsey)

3The subsidies would suffer the same fate, as people stop buying bad food and start buying the subsidized healthy food, the means to fund the subsidy would go with it. The reality is that the plan would never reach this point, it would fail, before it could die of its own success, it would die in the American media cycle.

The American mainstream media cycle is a horrific, vicious and downright nasty place, where pandering to one’s base and being the first with information dominate and dictate who the best in the ratings is. Ideas and concepts like fact-checking and admitting you aren’t sure, were withdrawn long ago and as a nation, it’s expected to be fast paced, information light with a blatant lack of depth. Examine the past ten even five years in the media, and you can see where this plan would be destroyed. A news organization who is against this idea, for whatever the reason: anti-tax, libertarian non-interference, threatening big foods profits, would plant ideas, bring in experts, find obscure and false stories from other countries with something similar to frighten and enrage the public. (Kessler) What appears to be a simple error where a host or expert makes a false statement, but it rarely gets corrected on air, or even online later leaving the viewer thinking that a false statement is true, because the expert said so. That’s where this plan would be derailed before it ever started. The American public would be easily whipped into a frenzy about someone coming for their bad foods, make them think that the taxes would be used to fund ‘entitlement programs’ that would lower the prices of healthy foods and subsidize large farming operations. The American public would be presented a picture that they would easily buy since they won’t part easily with their bad foods. Bittman said it himself, an American consumes 44.7 gallons of soda a year. (588) The public will not just stop drinking 44.7 gallons of soda on the drop of a hat. A few well told and repeated ‘misstatements’ and the plan would end up like the tax imposed in Romania. Repealed. (589)

Mr. Bittman’s plan is also flawed in the way contains gaps in various spots that serve no logical purpose to his final goal of a healthy America. His plan states that he would allow diet sodas. The benefits of diet sodas are unclear at best, but due to its basis as a soda, it likely is a better but not healthy drink compared to soda. He also never elaborates why it would be excluded, despite making sure to note it in in his article. He also doesn’t bring up alcohol, which can contain enough sugar to meet a person’s recommended daily limit in a single serving. (Malnick) This ignores other health issues that come with alcohol. A soda may be bad for you, but it doesn’t impair judgment and tamper with a person’s state of mind the way alcohol will. America’s health problems are not just food based, which a person may be led to believe reading Bittman’s article. Issues within major metropolitan areas like smog, emissions from factories and power stations and motor vehicles, are worsening our health. Healthy eating is only part of the battle, if a person eats healthy, but is still stagnant, using the elevator to their eight hours workday sitting at a desk, then returning to a lazy-boy sofa for another four hours. Carrots or potato chips if you fail to exercise, you will still become overweight, because the energy gained from the food will be underutilized. Bittman has missed a serious key in the health crisis of the United States, which would render his plan relatively useless.Concluding, the Bittman essay presents an interesting concept, which in theory should work, but in reality, would fail on multiple points. Its own success would undermine the subsiding of healthy foods. It would be ripped apart in the mainstream media cycle before it even could destroy itself. Finally, it failed to address other systemic issues that are contributing to health problems in the American public, and contains internal flaws that undermined the healthy effort from the food end. Bittman’s plan would require a serious overhaul or likely should be tossed into the trash bin.