Q08213

Should GST Be Excluded on Healthy Foods?

Is the New Zealand Government making healthy eating extremely hard for New Zealand families and pricing healthy foods way too high to reach?  It is certainly obvious that healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables are priced way out of reach for most New Zealand families, and therefore New Zealand should exclude GST from healthy foods.  If the government introduces the removal of GST from healthy foods we would have less obesity which would mean that New Zealand would be a healthier nation. New Zealand would also save money on tax emissions and also the removal of healthy foods would mean that New Zealand children would have a brighter future.

In New Zealand it is obvious that we have an issue with obesity and is killing a huge number of New Zealand citizens.  It is estimated that obese people cost New Zealand around 500 million dollars each year.  This is a huge amount of money and which affordable healthy foods would help the people in New Zealand buy healthy foods.  It is completely clear that most people eat unhealthy simply just because it is more affordable for the average income family.  For example an average family would try and choose the cheapest option.  Let’s say that a two litre drink of fizz would cost around $1.50 and a two litre of milk costing around $4.00 or more.  It is obvious that most families would easily go for the fizz simply just because New Zealand families can afford it.  Prices have shown that in the last three years food has risen 20% and still rising.  It all comes up to if the Government is trying to persuade obese people to eat healthier.  So why doesn’t New Zealand make it affordable to buy healthy foods. 

It is clearly obvious that in New Zealand we spend too much on tax and the Government is also trying to save money that our country spends.  There is one thing that the Government does not understand is that excluding GST would help save money in the tax department.  This is because if New Zealand eats healthy which they should be encouraged to do, we would have healthier people, and healthy people do not usually go to hospitals.  This means that we would have far less hospital emissions because people would not be going to hospitals as frequently and would be saving a huge amount of tax payer’s money for just being healthy.  Another big spender in tax payer’s money would be ACC.  ACC is something else that drains New Zealand’s money so it would be helpful if the recovery process was reduced.  For example a broken leg.  If New Zealand ate healthily affordably, this injured person would be able to eat healthy.  If an injured person ate healthy the injury of a broken leg or any other injury would recover more at an accelerating rate because healthy foods do help the body recover from injury and sickness.  So just by having our nation nice and healthy could help money spent in New Zealand and spend the tax payer’s money on more valuable things. 

It is important for everyone in New Zealand that children get the most out of life such as education, their behaviour and the chance to have a bright future.  Enabling children the chance to eat healthy would guarantee that they would get the most out of everything.  It is proven that eating food that is good for you would help brain activity.  This is very important for a child because having an increased amount of brain activity would guarantee that they would get the most out of their education.  By making shore that children have a high performance in education would mean that children would be prepared for the future and would be able to get more out of life and get a well payed job or career.  Also it is proven that children that eat healthy are more likely to be well behaved.  This just proves that children are eating unhealthy simply because so many families can not afford healthy foods and that is why there are so many behaviour issues in New Zealand.  It we tackle the bad behaviour from when children are young it would stop children from distributing bad behaviour when they turn into adults and this would help stop the amount of crime in New Zealand.  This just means that children eating healthy means that helping eat healthy foods would provide a healthy future.

In conclusion there are not very many reasons why GST should be included on healthy foods except that it only would be helping out the Government.  So just by making it simple to eat healthy foods would for most families make all the difference between obesity, the burning feeling in our pockets of to much money being spent and the most important our children’s futures.  It just means that the Government needs to make a healthy option an affordable option.