Posted on 03/17/2010 12:32:18 PM PDT by presidio9
Is soda the new tobacco?
In their critics’ eyes, producers of sugar-sweetened drinks are acting a lot like the tobacco industry of old: marketing heavily to children, claiming their products are healthy or at worst benign, and lobbying to prevent change. The industry says there are critical differences: in moderate quantities soda isn’t harmful, nor is it addictive.
The problem is that at roughly 50 gallons per person per year, our consumption of soda, not to mention other sugar-sweetened beverages, is far from moderate, and appears to be an important factor in the rise in childhood obesity. This increase is at least partly responsible for a rise in what can no longer be called “adult onset” diabetes — because more and more children are now developing it.
Attention is being paid: Last week, the Obama administration announced a plan to ban candy and sweetened beverages from schools. A campaign against childhood obesity will be led by the first lady, Michelle Obama. And a growing number of public health advocates are pushing for even more aggressive actions, urging that soda be treated like tobacco: with taxes, warning labels and a massive public health marketing campaign, all to discourage consumption.
A tax on soda was one option considered to help pay for health care reform (the Joint Committee on Taxation calculated that a 3-cent tax on each 12-ounce sugared soda would raise $51.6 billion over a decade), and President Obama told Men’s Health magazine last fall that such a tax is “an idea that we should be exploring. There’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda.”
But with all the junk food and U.F.O.’s (unidentifiable food-like objects) out there, why soda? Why a tax? And, most important, would it work?
To the beverage industry,
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
But that's not the stated target of the law of course. Here in NY, corn got so expensive (due to subsidies for ethanol) that Pepsi offered "Pepsi Throwback" (with natural cane sugar) on limited runs last summer, and again at the beginning of the last year. The taste was so superior, that I hoarded it. I wasn't the only run. It disappeared as soon as it appeared on the shelf.
I would be happy to pay more for real sugar soda. They may call it the same thing, but HFCS has a distinct aftertaste that "real" sugar doesn't have. Screw the health issues, I'd PAY the damn tax if I could just buy the soda I grew up drinking.
L
Seriesly(heh), its time to boil the tar and pluck the feathers. I'm not kidding anymore!
We love it here too, I only wish it was bottled in those cool old fashioned Pepsi spiral glass bottles.
That's a childhood dream drinking experience!
Baby emerges with a belch.
Every doctor I’ve ever asked has said “You can’t eat your way to diabetes”.
No but second hand sweat will at least give you the heebie jeebies
Go to a Kosher or Mexican grocery store. If I’m not mistaken, kosher Coca-Cola is made with real sugar and many Mexican grocery stores carry Coke that is bottled in Mexico where they still use sugar instead of HFCS.
oublic health advocates should all have their heads shaved.
There is second hand soda, but most people are smart enough to not drink it.
Then tarred and feathered!
he should have a bucket of paint poured over his head.
Oh you know, the people get fat and put undue pressure on the medical community and it costs us all.
I’ve seen bogus studies lately about all the harm they cause but I don’t believe them, it is just like the cause Du Jour and they will make up the numbers that they need to make up to prove that sodas are killing people and costing the rest of us big bucks.
Pretty soon they’ll be attributing deaths to sodas in obituaries and we’ll find out later that they died in a car accident but they had just finished drinking a soda before they died.
There really isn’t any need for most people to have anything beyond water and hardtack.
you think spending however many hours crushed into the side of your seat quietly seething, as your blood pressure and stress levels go up won’t harm my health? what if the person next to them is claustraphobic? what about contorting your body into an uncomfortable position for hours?
Injesting certain amounts of certain foods and/or synthetic manmade molecules like HFCS will wear out you Islets of Langerhans in your Pancreas.
I agree with what you’re saying, but keeping the conversation selfishly on me, I will restate that I defintely do not need to switch to diet soda. On of my health problems is my thyroid. Sometimes I visit my doctor and she actally tells me that I need to try to GAIN some weight. So switching to diet soda would probably be a negative for me health-wise. Personally, I can’t stand the taste of diet soda, but why should I switch to diet soda any? To lend moral support to underpriveldged fat kids everywhere, who are still going to visit McDonald’s more than they should and pay the extra 35 cents tax on thier supersized Big-Mac combo? Who knows, maybe they will substitute a large “choclaty” (TM) “shake” (includes real “dairy”) for the supersized coke. Then they won’t have to pay the tax, right? How is this MY problem?
That’s the “great” part of socialized medicine, once we all have to pay each other’s medical bills everybody’s bad habits become everybody’s problem.
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