Mayor Bloomberg is going to create some controversy with this:
The proposed ban would affect virtually the entire menu of popular sugary drinks found in delis, fast-food franchises and even sports arenas, from energy drinks to pre-sweetened iced teas. The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited under the first-in-the-nation plan, which could take effect as soon as next March.
The measure would not apply to diet sodas, fruit juices, dairy-based drinks like milkshakes, or alcoholic beverages; it would not extend to beverages sold in grocery or convenience stores.
I’m pretty sure that your reaction to this is a pretty good Rohrshach Test of where you stand on a whole host of issues. Progressives who have a libertarian bent, like myself and most of the A-List bloggers I know, are going to find this to be overly intrusive, even if we are sympathetic to the basic idea.
To me, it falls in same category as recreational drug use. Yes, it’s bad for your health and probably your mind, but the government isn’t making things better by creating a massive black market and turning otherwise law-abiding citizens into petty criminals. So, you now have to get your 20 ounce Coca-Cola at the supermarket instead of Shea CitiBank Stadium. That solves what?
Yet, there is a strain of progressivism that is very strongly in favor of legislation of this type. That’s why, for example, cigarettes are six dollars or more a pack, even though the money raised generally acts as nothing more than a subsidy for rich people so they can pay lower taxes.
mmm, opens the door for Rumsfeld sugar replacements but also encourages use of stevia and the like products.
can you explain the Rumsfeld reference? I must be uninformed about something.
Aspartame and Rummies involvement. Old news.
Ah, I see.
January HuffPo piece on Rumsfeld’s connection with deadly asparthane.
I don’t mean to say that obesity isn’t a “real” problem, but NYC has plenty of much more pressing issues that could use attention and I wonder if city hall’s energies are being put to the best use with this.
You really know what this is, right? Another attempt by the 1% to misdirect and confuse people. Misdirect from what, I bet you can figure it out.
But you can still buy as much beer as you’d like.
But isn’t beer one of the basic food groups?
for monks, definitely. That’s why you have trappist ales, bocks, dubbel-bocks, and biere-de-gardes. The elitist monks and elitist French peasants made these incredibly malty beverages to tide them over through the cold weather months and through fasting periods.
Elitists, all of them.
The main problem with it is that it’s not addressing the root cause, which is subsidies for the corn (sweetener) that make such drinks so cheap in the first place.
Bloomberg bought his 11th house and he feels he can tell people what to do.
Bet if it goes into effect, it will go to court.
The government has no business telling people how much soda they can drink in what size container.
Bloomberg also wants Food Stamp recipients to be unable to buy any soda at all.
He must be running for King.
I am cautiously optimistic. There are many people who just need a little help to lose some weight and raising barriers to binge eating/drinking can help keep you from going overboard. I and other people I know, have said that it simply seems unfair for companies to sell those huge soda cups as cheap as they do. Or provide food with 100% of the salt content you should eat in a day. You can be good all day, and then eating a relatively small amount of food can explode you calorie/salt/sugar/fat whatever limits.
Does this have potential to go wrong? Sure. But I’m willing to try it out and see what happens.
Stupid idea, flawed right from the get-go. Milkshakes, fruit juice, and beer excluded? Hello, calories! Diet soda? Makes you crave more sugar!
This is a fake attempt to look like something’s being done to fight obesity, but outlawing products isn’t a good way to go about it. I agree that HFCS is where the real battle should start.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-new-york-citys-big-gulp-ban-could-be-a-big-s
uccess/2012/05/31/gJQAuvkJ4U_blog.html?wprss=rss_ezra-klein
I understand the libertarian sentiment here, but these things shouldn’t be manufactured at all. My parents were pretty strict about us kids drinking such stuff. We weren’t allowed to drink Coke, other colas were (for some reason) allowed but rarely partaken, but we did drink some soft drinks that were (or at least seemed) less sweet, like grapefruit soda (what ever happened to that?) and Tom Collins (what ever happened to that either?) To this day I have practically never drunk stuff like Mountain Dew or Sprite.
As a result, I personally dislike such drinks, I don’t like the taste, I don’t like the aftertaste, and I don’t like the way they make me feel after I drink ’em.
I hate sugar in iced tea anyway.
Now I have three young children, and it is a daily struggle to prevent them from ingesting this crap. I am actually stricter than my own parents, because the stuff prevalent today is even worse than what we were exposed to. Do you realize that when I was their age, there were no highly sugared cereals? Now, in an ordinary supermarket, it’s hard to find anything but
. . .
Rather than preventing their sale in delis, and other retail venues, I would like to see them banned entirely, in terms of certain ingredients like refined corn syrup, any GMOS, and above a certain percentage of calories,and artificial dyes. I am sure it contributes tremendously to bad health in this country. But admittedly, it’s easier for me to say since the avoidance of these things takes no Herculean effort against sin on my part, because I truly dislike them.
I’ve got to say, I’m not a puritan, I do like such things as good cake, good ice cream and good chocolate. It’s the artificial crap people put into their bodies that horrifies me.
But the issue here is not artificial ingredients — HFCS, whatever its other crimes is as natural as any other sugar. It’s the sugarless pop that Bloomberg promotes that has the really questionable crap in it. I hate the sugar marketing, too, but spoiling peoples’ fun at the ball game or music fest is not going to win any converts.
In my memory, you’re mistaken about pop now being worse than it used to be. I grew up slurping orange, grape, root beer, and some kind of cola like it was water, at least when my grandparents were involved, and I assure you it was at least as sweet as pop now, and full of coloring and flavoring that’s probably banned.
Bloomberg-style grandstanding does nothing useful. Getting junk food/drink out of schools is a good think, but ending government subsidies to the agribiz outfits making and peddling the stuff would actually get something done.
Take a look at the graph on this web site that documents increased consumption. It increased by 400% from 1947 to 2004.
http://www.cspinet.org/sodapop/liquid_candy.htm
Also, consumption of soda pop in the US is nearly double any other country
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_sof_dri_con-food-soft-drink-consumption
Well, in any case, I don’t know why we’re supposed to connect limiting the consumption of utter crap with “the nanny state”. I never had a nanny and neither did my kids, but daddies are pretty good at saying no.
Yeah, I’m no fan of Bloomberg. He doesn’t have great people skills.
Refined sugar is not goodfor you, but HFCS is in fact worse. Here, read this.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
We try to use raw honey and muscovado sugar (delicious and nutritious) at our place.
Maple syrup also has great health benefits.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/05/news/la-heb-maple-syrup-superfood-20110405
At least he’s a Republican, so righties can’t use this as yet another example of the liberal nanny state. To me, this is just more stupid political flimflam, posturing to seem aligned with some vague and complex cause, in this case “health”. Who can be against health, right, and BTW think of the children. Treating grownups like children who must be compelled to follow the wisdom of mediocrities like Bloomberg just makes grownups more childish. But to the authority lovers across the partisan spectrum, it feels sooo good to be publicly aligned with the good and the nice and the true.
You’d think when making such sweeping pronouncements, the King would at least do a little bit of research. The facts seem to be that sugarless pop does absolutely nothing to lower weight and brings in even more threats to health.
I applaud banning sugar, salt, and fat saturated “food” from schools — these are not adults we’re talking about here, and the example might even make an impression on sloppy parents. But Bloomberg’s latest pose is the kind of thing that breeds Libertarians because it validates their meme that adults have a right to choose their poison and take responsibility for whatever consequences fall upon them.
I’m completely against it: (1) Because it’s none of the government’s damned business what I eat/drink/smoke as long as I don’t put anybody else at risk, and (2) because if we’re going to do this “Legislating Habits” bullshit — and, for full disclosure, I’m a smoker who thinks Bloomberg should go get fucked by a llama — we might as well tax it and make some money off these landwhales (because I’ve, quite frankly, had enough of being blamed for all of America’s health problems).
The answer, to me, is to cut the bullshit and let people live their lives as they see fit.
One of several reasons why, despite loving New York (or what little remains of proper New York), I’d never live in New York. New Yorkers are apparently — going by their voting habits — for the most part whiny little shits and badge-carrying members of the Habit Police these days. Every day Bloomberg is in office is a day it becomes more Disneyfied. One more Whole Foods, one less CBGBs, day after day.
It’s a playground for rich assholes at this point.
Smoking is a completely different issue than consumption of soda pop. If you smoke, unless you’re a hermit who works from home, you inevitably affect people around you–against their will, in most cases. No one should have to inhale your smoke because of where they work, where and whom they live with (especially children), because they are in a waiting room at a hospital or car repair shop, or because they are in an airplane or bus. And so forth.
If you want to smoke, it’s your business. If you smoke where someone else is subjected to the smoke, it’s their and society’s business.
Clearly the portion size of soda pop is no one’s business except the person who drinks it, unless you consider the healthcare ramifications society’s business, since we all pay the price. The is a suitable topic for discussion.
“unless you consider the healthcare ramifications society’s business, since we all pay the price. The is a suitable topic for discussion.”
Yeah, it’s the same issue that’s involved with “the mandate”.