The Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council have recommended taxing high-calorie, low-nutrient food and drink in order to combat childhood obesity, in a new report released on Tuesday.

The report, entitled Local Government Actions to Prevent Childhood Obesity, also suggests that local authorities consider giving tax breaks to grocery stores that open in underprivileged neighborhoods, create bicycle lanes and require restaurants to carry calorie counts on their menus, among 14 recommendations, eight of which focused on food policy.

“We want the healthy choice to be the easy choice,” said Dr Eduardo Sanchez, chair of the panel that wrote the report, and vice president and chief medical officer of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas. “Sometimes it’s important to be cognitive about the behavior that you are engaged in but too much of what we do is automatic and it’s not always the healthiest automatic thing to do.”

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