At the request of the lovely and talented (and chic-fit!) author of this blog, I am re-posting my comment from facebook here. :)
I think that in addition to banning the largest sizes of soda, the city should also levy a surtax on all sizes of soda that goes directly to pay for healthcare in NYC. Otherwise, it's all coming out of taxpayer dollars. I'm sure there will be predictable shrieks of outrage at folks who feel cheated out of their super-giant 40 gallon bottles of sugary soda. It's a win-win the way I see it though: the government can make some much-needed revenue while discouraging the consumption of nutritionally barren sugar water. People have demonstrated through their waistlines that they're no better than toddlers when it comes to deciding what to put into their bodies, so I think this kind of monetary disincentive is needed in the same way that anti-chew spray is needed in the house when you have a teething puppy. I know it sounds crass to put it that way, but it's how I feel. Canada has a pretty good system of taxing tobacco so heavily that smokers end up paying for their future healthcare costs, and I think this case should be no different (I'm a citizen of both Canada and the US, in case you were wondering). :)
It's similar to the way I feel about smoking being banned in public parks (another smart move for Bloomberg, in my opinion!). Smokers and smokers' rights advocates claim that it's solely a personal decision. While I can't argue that it is indeed a personal choice, I think it is also a public health issue. Like smoking, the consumption of obscenely sugary beverages contributes to the public health issue of the obesity epidemic, and should therefore be regulated in a similar way.
At the request of the lovely and talented (and chic-fit!) author of this blog, I am re-posting my comment from facebook here. :)
I think that in addition to banning the largest sizes of soda, the city should also levy a surtax on all sizes of soda that goes directly to pay for healthcare in NYC. Otherwise, it's all coming out of taxpayer dollars. I'm sure there will be predictable shrieks of outrage at folks who feel cheated out of their super-giant 40 gallon bottles of sugary soda. It's a win-win the way I see it though: the government can make some much-needed revenue while discouraging the consumption of nutritionally barren sugar water. People have demonstrated through their waistlines that they're no better than toddlers when it comes to deciding what to put into their bodies, so I think this kind of monetary disincentive is needed in the same way that anti-chew spray is needed in the house when you have a teething puppy. I know it sounds crass to put it that way, but it's how I feel. Canada has a pretty good system of taxing tobacco so heavily that smokers end up paying for their future healthcare costs, and I think this case should be no different (I'm a citizen of both Canada and the US, in case you were wondering). :)
It's similar to the way I feel about smoking being banned in public parks (another smart move for Bloomberg, in my opinion!). Smokers and smokers' rights advocates claim that it's solely a personal decision. While I can't argue that it is indeed a personal choice, I think it is also a public health issue. Like smoking, the consumption of obscenely sugary beverages contributes to the public health issue of the obesity epidemic, and should therefore be regulated in a similar way.