Want to eat a burger? Pizza? Chips? It may cost you more from now on:

"More than 3,000 fatal heart attacks and strokes could be prevented in the UK each year if VAT was slapped on a vast range of foods, say Oxford researchers.
A 17.5% rise on fatty, sugary or salty food would cut heart and stroke deaths by 1.7%, the study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health said.
One of the researchers declared the time was right to debate a "fat tax"." (BBC)

So more than 3,000 people effectively kill themselves through eating food that is bad for them. So what? People know that fatty foods are bad for them if they eat too much. People know that much of this could be offset though exercise, and that eating healthier stuff would be better for them anyway. But people choose to do it. If more than 3,000 people want to cause their own death each year, what business of the government to interfere?

This is especially amusing considering that it has also been revealed that free fruit doesn't give any long term benefits:

"A government scheme to give free fruit to schoolchildren may not result in any long-term health benefits, say experts.
The government has spent millions of pounds giving daily free fruit or vegetables to four to six-year-olds in state schools in England.
But researchers found that while vitamin levels were initially boosted, they fell away after a few months." (BBC)

So now they know that giving people free healthy food won't make any real benefits, they're going to try to the other tactic - making them pay extra to eat unhealthy foods.

If people want to kill themselves through eating too much fatty stuff, smoking, drinking, or anything else, it is not the governments job to interfere. At all. Making us pay more for what we want will not prevent us from having it. Education of the bad effects of doing it is the only way - and even that needs to be done in a non-preaching manner. Saying don't drink/smoke/eat fatty foods because it's bad will not make people not drink/smoke/eat fatty foods. Providing information on the downsides of too much drinking/smoking/eating fatty foods is far more likely to make people thing about and rectify their lifestyles. But it is, and must remain, their choice.

One of the most amusing things about the idea of a "fat tax" is that "the idea was dismissed in 2004 by former prime minister Tony Blair as too suggestive of a "nanny state""!

Sources: BBC - article 1, article 2