Mayor Bloomberg’s ‘Big Gulp Ban’ and the Health of New York City

03 Jun, 2012

by Tom Laskaway, via Grist.org

Big GulpIf the food police has a chief, it may very well be New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. His bat­tles with the food indus­try are quickly becom­ing the stuff of leg­end. And his lat­est gam­bit is his bold­est yet: Bloomberg just announced a plan to ban the sale of any sweet­ened bev­er­age over 16 ounces at all restau­rants, delis, and sports are­nas in New York City.

And just so the soda indus­try doesn’t feel sin­gled out, this ban would apply to sports drinks and sweet­ened iced tea, along with pretty much any­thing with added sugars—although the Starbucks Frappucino likely makes it through on a tech­ni­cal­ity; dairy prod­ucts like it (as well as fruit juice, “diet” drinks and booze) are exempted.

This lat­est move comes on the heels of the city’s suc­cess­ful (and much copied) trans­fat ban as well as its pub­lic media cam­paign against soda  called “Don’t Drink Yourself Fat”—not to men­tion its pro­posal to limit salt in processed food. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control con­firmed recently that these and many other efforts may be start­ing to pay off for the Big Apple. The obe­sity rate in NYC among kids dropped five per­cent over the last five years.

So why enact an out­right ban on large drinks when there’s evi­dence [PDF] that a penny-per-ounce soda tax would have cut con­sump­tion while gen­er­at­ing needed rev­enue for the pub­lic cof­fers? Do you really have to ask?

The short answer is because it would be impos­si­ble to get one passed—thanks in large part to the efforts of the deep-pocketed mem­bers of the American Beverage Association (ABA). PepsiCo was will­ing to spend $40 mil­lion in a sin­gle year to help kill a fed­eral soda tax while the ABA itself buried a pro­posed Philadelphia soda tax through a $10 mil­lion dona­tion to a local hospital’s anti-obesity efforts. And now comes word of Pepsi’s plan to co-opt the youth of the world by host­ing “live-streamed con­certs” on Twitter. Wait. Concerts? On Twitter? Just win, baby.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at Grist.org.

GD Star Rating
load­ing...
GD Star Rating
load­ing...
Mayor Bloomberg’s ‘Big Gulp Ban’ and the Health of New York City, 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

1 comment

About the author

Marty Kassowitz

Related Posts

  • marys­tod

    This is a highly con­tro­ver­sial and unin­formed deci­sion on the part of a Mayor who is obvi­ously out of touch with both sides of the reg­u­lar v diet soda issue. Exempting Aspartame & Neotame sweet­ened drinks is not an intel­li­gent move, based on our con­tigu­ous 27 year study of the issue.

    Aspartame has been shown, in peer-reviewed Medical Journal stud­ies, to cause weight gain and at least seven types of deadly can­cers: Brain; Pancreas; Uterine: Breast; Leukemia; Lymphoma – along with Seizures and Parkinson-like Tremors, to name a few. Including at least 5 deaths on record with FDA.

    The sci­en­tific evi­dence has grown greater each year, since Aspartame’s approval in 1981. Two and a half decades ago, Senate Hearings were con­ducted, many law suits have been set­tled out of Court (for undis­closed $$$$ amounts) and thou­sands of con­sumer adverse reac­tion reports are now on file with FDA and our Dallas/Washington based Aspartame Consumer Safety Network.
    Years from now, we will look back on our use of Aspartame arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers the way we see, in hind­sight, the folly of ever think­ing cig­a­rettes were safe. Until then, we need to famil­iar­ize our­selves with both sides of the sweet­ener issue, while at the same time real­iz­ing that bil­lions of dol­lars are at stake. The Sugar Lobby is frag­mented and pales in com­par­i­son with the gigan­tic Artificial Sweetener Lobby, which includes giant cor­po­ra­tions like Monsanto.
    Refined sug­ars are a ‘Quality of Life’ issue (much as white flour, white rice, etc.) Pharmaceutical-type sug­ars like Aspartame and Neotame are Quantity of Life issues, mean­ing they are capa­ble of caus­ing death.
    Respectfully,Mary Nash Stoddard/author Deadly Deception Story of Aspartame (Odenwald ’98)Founder Aspartame Consumer Safety Network and Pilot Hotline (since 1987)

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
    GD Star Rating
    loading...
QR Code Business Card