“Are you pouring on the pounds?” asks the ad, which urges viewers to consider water, seltzer or low-fat milk instead, and warns: “Don’t drink yourself fat.” That’s right folks. Soda, juice drinks and anything that contains sugar are the new enemies of the state. Well not NY State as they just canceled a proposed tax on these drinks but that doesn’t mean Bloomberg and the City of New York can’t do something about the growing fat problem here.
According to the Times, the city is spending $277,000 on a new ad campaign to educate the public on links between high-calorie beverages and your growing waist line. 1,500 subway cars will run for three months which targets those that walk to work… wait… Wouldn’t billboards at the bridges and tunnels for those fat ass commuters be better “targets”?
Of course the ABA objects as Kevin Keane states “The ad campaign is over the top and unfortunately is going to undermine meaningful efforts to educate people about how to maintain a healthy weight by balancing calories consumed from all foods and beverages with calories burned through exercise.”
Not a surprise anything that limits the sale of your product is detrimental but this is like a tobacco lobbyist stating that a health dose of pipe smoke and snuff is a good balance between cigarettes.
Personally I think adding a tax to sugar drinks is attacking the problem at the symptom not the solution. The problem in this country is the over subsidization of corn which contributes to an abundance of product that gets converted to corn syrup. This creates a huge surplus of cheap sugar substitutes that go into our cheap processed foods. I urge everyone to rent/download and watch King Corn to get a broader picture of the industry and how Federal subsidies of certain industries are what’s driving the market for cheap, unhealthy products in this country. We should be subsidizing organic, healthy and sustainable farming efforts, not destructive ones.
BTW I still love Tree Top juice, its what Grandma gave me and I’ll continue to suck it down in between Brita filtered water and Soda Xi Muis at home.
