When Lucas Pohl boarded a flight last summer, he didn’t know it would mark a turning point in his life. The Berlin resident had always carried extra weight, but when he couldn’t fasten his seatbelt and had to ask for an extender, “something inside me broke,” the 27-year-old said. Pohl, who weighed 150kg at the time, had been eating mostly cheap junk food and ready-made meals while earning ₹1,000 ($1,170) a month as a trainee. Fearing for his health, he decided to check into an obesity clinic. Public health insurance in Germany doesn’t pay for the use of drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy for weight loss, but Pohl was able to access nutritional counselling and bariatric surgery. His insurance covered the costs, which came to ₹10,000 ($11,687) in total, and he continued to receive his salary during his three-week leave after the procedure.About half of adults in Germany are overweight, with obesity rates projected to keep rising if current trends continue. Researchers have linked this to Germans’ low vegetable intake and sugar-heavy diets. In a country where mandatory insurance means health care costs are shared by the public, the lack of oversight around unhealthy food is a political issue. Obesity and its associated diseases not only “cause a great deal of human suffering, they also incur extremely high costs,” said Barbara Bitzer, MD of the German Diabetes Society. Estimates put the economic toll of weight-related health problems at between $31.55 billion and over $100 billion a year, further straining a system already under financial duress.Chancellor Friedrich Merz promised to initiate a “fundamental reform” of social security systems this year, yet a policy plan released in spring by the ruling coalition made no mention of nutrition or unhealthy eating, which directly impact health care costs. Instead, it called on consumers to “make their own decisions.”For members of the Greens and the Left, that’s not enough. The parties are pushing measures such as sugar taxes on soft drink makers – an effort the conservative CDU/CSU opposes, trusting markets to self-correct. At a moment in which much political discourse in Germany is focused on the divide between populist factions and establishment parties, the debate over food regulation shows the classic tension between market freedom and state intervention is still very alive.While Germany doesn’t levy so-called “sin taxes” on products deemed harmful, it does have a system in which foods are taxed at either 7% or 19% depending on whether they’re essential. The idea is to ensure that basic necessities are always affordable, yet critics have attacked the VAT model as full of inconsistencies, noting that pet food falls into the cheaper tax bracket while baby food does not.Having failed to take key steps in food legislation during their four years in the previous govt – an outcome blamed on their pro-market coalition partner – Green party lawmakers are once again calling for VAT reform. In this, they do have public support. An effort to remove the value-added tax on healthy foods has been met with 91% public approval. Separately, a proposed sugar tax on soft drink makers has the backing of 79% of Germans.
