Ladies and Gentlemen, you heard it here first. Derrick Z. Jackson, a modern day Harry Anslinger, has fired the shot heard 'round the world . . . the first shot in the War on Soda.

After all, we've got the War on Drugs. Why not a war on soda?

Traction Bump

MOST of The processed food we eat is loaded with hidden sugar.

I worked with refugees from many countries for years... many of them said that even our ham and bacon is sweet tasting to them....they wanted to know WHY SO MUCH SUGAR in meats????

The true fallout from the War on Drugs....

We need to allow the BEA (Beverage Enforcement Agency) to confiscate the property of people suspected of operating a soda machine!

America's obscene consumption of fried foods and processed sugar trash has led to 60 percent of adults being overweight or obese.

Compared to European cultures, Americans accept a phenomenally bad daily diet. Yes, I said 'accept.' If we demanded better food, we'd get it. Instead, we all line up at the drive-thru fryer for another bag of death.

Excellent post. I would add mere that American soft drinks are the worst in the world. If you've ever tasted a Coke overseas you know what I mean. Unlike the horrible corn syrup we use (with its myriad of health questions), other countries still make Coca-Cola the way God intended it--WITH REAL SUGAR! It may not be better for you, but at least the stuff tastes better.

You can have my Pepsi when you pry my dead, cold fingers from around the can.

The kids wouldn't be so fat if their parents let them run around like kids instead of chauffering them to planned activities. And if the schools brought back recess instead of having kids sit there for 7 hours a day cramming for their high-stakes tests in order to ensure that teachers and administrators keep their jobs -- not to mention keeping property values intact.

Believe it or not but a glass of OJ has almost as much sugar as Coke/Pepsi.

Good Find.

The compuserve news item on this said that Satcher was indeed pushing for government standards(and regulations).

Any resident FR soda warriors care to tell me why I can't go order the fast food I want? If you want to keep your kids healthy it is YOUR responsibility. Don't make me suffer more government intrusion because it's "just too hard and I'm just too busy to watch my kids ALL the time."

Of course, don't take the above rant to personally, however, I think this whole "for the children" crap is getting out of hand. This just proves it.

Hopefully GWB and Congress ignores "compassionate" Dr. Satcher.

I suppose we will see new leftist "food activist" groups out within the year.

So if Ted Kennedy nixed the mixed drinks and went straight up he wouldn't be so fat?

And yet, we're taller and stronger than the average citizens of all the places they say eat better than us. And we regularly kick their butts both in the Olympics and war.

The fact is the SG keeps moving the obesity line down and it has no realistic bearing. They don't measure by body fat, they have a sliding scale of weight to height that keeps moving down. Kalista Flockhart is probably the only celebrity not considered obese by the SG. Every athlete we have is probably considered obese because they have built up muscles that increase their weight. Meanwhile weight related ailments and deaths have remained stagnant for 30 years and our life expectancy has increased.

Yet another nonproblem provided to you by the people that are afraid you might enjoy life.

Go ahead and laugh, but every person I know with diabetes has Type II, and they ate their way to it. And every single one of them, in addition to looking and feeling poorly, runs up anywhere from four to five figs in doctor bills annually. I've spent enough time in cardiac wards (as a family member/friend, not a patient). I don't want that for anyone. A crusade that encourages healthy eating and exercise if fine by me. And if it lowers my insurance premiums along with mortality rates, even better.

The cultural root of all drug warrior's is Puritanism, or neo-Puritanism and its cousin on the Right Fundamentalism.

Both groups enjoy a humanist view of Christianity and seem to be fizated in either what we say or think, or what we injest. The body is a temple, I suppose.

None of this is new to America, but gosh does it seem absurd to soveriegn individuals.

A crusade that encourages healthy eating and exercise if fine by me

I agree with you completely. A crusade would be good -- an ad campaign, stuff like that. However, this fool wants to legislate our diets. I think that he should be diemboweled just for suggesting it.

Compared to European cultures, Americans accept a phenomenally bad daily diet.

Maybe, then again, maybe not.

Any school superintendent who takes the surgeon general seriously should let their soda contracts expire, then call a van to cart the machines out of the schools. They would be carting off more than an empty vending machine. They just might be hauling off a coffin that thankfully goes unused.

This man is a public menace. We should hound him and make him suffer for trying to peddle this new hysteria.

I don't think he's planning on doing that. W wouldn't allow it, and it would work about as well as prohibition. But obesity is a public health nightmare, and it has to be addressed. If not for the sake of our health, then for the sake of our wallets. Or are your health insurance premiums too low?

MOST of The processed food we eat is loaded with hidden sugar.

Two points: First, of course "processed" food has sugar in it. What do you expect? Second, in Latin America, packaged foods are much, much sweeter than in the US.

Sample label from a box of rice cereal, the cooked kind:

Ingredientes: Azucar, arroz...

There is no "azucar" in Cream of Rice in the US.

No, the astonishing thing here is the revealed corruption of Derrick Jackson -- as though we didn't know already. He simply rewrites a press release from a leftist activist authority (the holdover Clinton surgeon general) and calls that a column. He does it all the time. The man ought to be fired for sheer laziness.