What is going on with our government attempting to control the diets of the entire population? This large size soda ban stuff is just the beginning it seems. Where is the resistance? This whole idea should be stopped in it's tracks. There is no end in sight to all the various things that will soon be banned if this goes by uncontested. And for what? Because of obesity? First off, I do not believe the stat that is being tossed out that says 2/3 of Americans are obese. That just does not seem to match observed reality. Secondly some folks are just predisposed to be heavier than others. Is that such a crime??? Then again what is their definition of obese? But regardless, eventually this will go from them telling us what not to eat to them telling us what we are allowed to eat. It's all just bad and really needs to be beaten back. On a more absurd note, if obese people are so unacceptable maybe we should just shoot the fat people and allow the non fat people to enjoy a big soda now and then or a box of popcorn, whatever. These obese people MUST be fixed!

Glen

It must be a religious thing, everybody knows that theists are the only ones "trying to shove their beliefs down everyone's throat."
[/irony]

I don't know where you've been but the Big Gulp Ban is getting a lot of push back. Even I agree it's a stupid law and if you wanted to get the point across that no one should really be drinking 64 oz. of sugar water and expect to stay slim then it should have been a series of PSA's and not legislation.

If the government was truly interested in helping curb the obesity issue the first thing they should do is stop subsidizing corn and control exactly what and how much corn syrup you can put into a product. Corn syrup is in almost everything we eat these days and it mostly just adds unnecessary calories. studies have also suggested that the human body is unable to process corn syrup in the same way it does cane sugar. Reduce or remove corn syrup from our food and you'd start to see a decrease in obesity rates.

Well, I was just in New Orleans and based on my observations I would be surprised if the correct statistic is as low as 2/3. I am talking about 'obese' as defined by the National Institutes of Health, which is a bmi of over 30.

Btw, I did some googling just now and it seems the correct statistic is more like 1/3 obese. Possibly 2/3 is how many are just overweight.

Not that some kind of national "solution" needs to be found for this "problem" but why are the solutions offered always resulting in the people being dictated to? There usually is a more rational approach available if more thought and less desire for ever increasing governmental control and power were'nt an objective.

How many decades has obesity been a problem? It didn't happen overnight.

Apparently no one is interested in non-governmental solutions. No food companies have come to the forefront to combat obesity. The corn syrup industry has not withdrawn or healthified its product. And so on.

At least in this case, it seems the government is taking action precisely because no one else is willing to in a meaningful way.

National solution? I thought the Big Gulp nonsense was a law proposed for New York City by Mayor Bloomberg. I doubt very much that it would withstand a court challenge.

If we want to discuss ridiculous laws that are in effect in cities throughout the country there are hundreds that I can think of.

Hi Bob,

It isn's only NYC. The Mayor and Council of Cambridge, Massachusetts have officially asked the Chief of Police to look into banning all sugar-sweetened and soda drinks from restaurants there.

And I suspect that one cause of increasing obesity has been the experts' and the government's recommendation for a carbohydrate-heavy diet in the first place.

Whats wrong with education and options offered? Leave it at that. No more bans! What might cause one person to become overweight might not cause someone else to be affected the same way. It simply is not the governments job to be doing this and I see it as opening another pandoras box. It is already spreading and more and more things are being considered for banning.

Where is the argument that says I can do what I want with my body? Or it is my right to choose??? Let me see if I understand this correctly... A woman can choose to kill her unborn baby because it is no one's right to tell her what she can do with her body, doesn't matter if she's obese or not btw. But, no one is going to be allowed to purchase or have a soda pop that is larger than 16 ounces, regardless of gender! What the heck???

Glen

I am obese!

No, you do not understand it correctly. Pop is not being banned, and even if NYC did its thing you coud still buy more than 16 oz at a time.

I am not agreeing with all of this, it just seemed topical and timely.

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/20/155411564/......esources

WERTHEIMER: Now, your tables show that North Americans are the heaviest - and while we make up 6 percent of the population of the Earth, our obesity rate is such that we make up a third of all the excess weight. Now is that just another way of saying that we're obese, which I think we already know from a whole lot of reports, but is there some other implication?

ROBERTS: When the media talk about obesity in the United States, they always talk about certain individuals that have this problem, obesity, but what they miss is actually the whole population is getting fatter - even the thin people are getting fatter. So we worked out that if every country in the world had the same body mass index distribution as the United States, in mass terms it would be like having an extra billion people in the world. So there's obviously an increase demand on food supplies, but also there is an increased demand on everything. You know, bigger people need more energy to move them. Airplanes take more energy to get off the ground. It takes more of the shares that, you know, of the Earth's resources to actually support all that extra weight.

WERTHEIMER: You know, looking at your list, your chart of overweight and obese countries, the U.S. is number one followed by Kuwait. Can you explain why?

ROBERTS: Well, the U.S. is number one and then we've got a lot of the Arab states in the rest of the leader pack, if we can call it that. And what's common between those is actually the price of gasoline is very low. So where gasoline is really cheap, we over-consume it, it's bad for the environment and actually because we should be using food energy for human movement. If we use gasoline for human movement, then we store the food energy and you know where we store it.

Don't confuse the argument with facts.

Yes, suggesting that someone is trying to ban soda is nearly as silly as trying to suggest that someone is trying to ban contraceptives. (nearly, but not quite.)

It's confusing here. Pot just became legal, but they are cracking down on soda and/or food. When you get the munchies, that can get confusing.

It's hardly "just the beginning." This has been going on as long as there have been people who assume they have the right, justified as a "duty" to control what you can do with/to/put in your own body.

Thanks, balducci, for posting that scintillating conversation. It's striking that no matter what the problem, the solution is always to dismantle industrial civilization and have us all live a life of poverty.

Sorry you think I'm "silly." There's another thread here that says I'm stupid as well and that it's lucky people like me are getting fewer all the time.

No, I disagree this food police stuff is new and I'm glad someone already pointed out the extreme irony by comparing it to the soon to be legalization of pot. Very bizarre. I realize it is a local issue (in practice) and not a ban on sodas altogether (read my initial post) but it is over-reaching and is spreading already. Don't let reading comprehension over-ride your own impressions. They are already pondering other things like milk shakes! Come on, this nonsense has to stop.

Glen