NYC - 40% of Public School Children are Overweight or Obese

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sought federal permission on Wednesday to bar New York City’s 1.7 million recipients of food stamps from using them to buy soda or other sugared drinks.
The request, made to the United States Department of Agriculture, which finances and sets the rules for the food-stamp program, is part of an aggressive anti-obesity push by the mayor that has also included advertisements, stricter rules on food sold in schools and an unsuccessful attempt to have the state impose a tax on the sugared drinks.

Mayor Bloomberg and his health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, said the ban would help curb the city’s obesity epidemic, which they contend has been fueled by rising soda consumption over the past 30 years.

In 2004, the Agriculture Department denied a request by Minnesota to prevent food-stamp recipients from buying junk food. The department said that the plan, which focused on candy and soda, among other foods, was based on questionable merits and would “perpetuate the myth” that food-stamp users made poor shopping decisions.

The city’s campaign against sugary drinks has been especially aggressive. This week, it introduced ads showing a man drinking packets of sugar. But its attempt to persuade the State Legislature to impose a tax on the drinks was met with skepticism and opposition from the beverage industry and grocery owners.

Tracey Halliday, a spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association, said of the mayor’s request: “This is just another attempt by government to tell New Yorkers what they should eat and drink.”

Source: The New York Times

Editorial Perspective:

The public needs to be acutely aware every time a 'special interest', that stands to lose profit, uses the 'big government is trying to take away your freedoms' line. The 'American Beverage Association' is quite obviously a special interest that exists solely, to promote anything and everything possible, in order to 'promote and protect' the profits of the companies they represent.

When a special interest attacks a healthy policy, such as regulating sugared drinks in order to increase the health of the public; and when they claim...

“This is just another attempt by government to tell New Yorkers what they should eat and drink.”

...Be afraid, be very afraid,

not of any imposition on your freedom to buy stuff that will shorten your life span and destroy your health. Be afraid of what the 'American Beverage Association' is selling you. In America, everyone, including corporations, enjoy freedom of speech. So they don't have to say anything relevant. They don't have to be accurate. Heck, they don't even have to be honest. They are experts in marketing, and appealing to your emotions in order to sell their products. They are pulling the 'freedom card' to get you upset. But it's a trick. It's like congress passing a bill called the 'Blue Sky Initiative'. It's not intended to make the skies bluer; it's designed to allow coal plants to pollute more. That's 'American Marketing', at it's best (worst). And it's used in the halls of congress as much as on your television, in the magazines, and in every store you shop in.

They are not trying to protect your freedoms, they are protecting their profits. They will cry and whine about how 'you' are being hurt by their inability to take advantage of you if the big evil government says they can't sell you what essentially amounts to poison for your body.

Of course they are using appeals to your 'freedom emotion' strings. Their goal is to trick you into thinking that it is your right to be unhealthy, consume massive amounts of worthless calories, get fat, lose your quality of life, and then end up not being able to do all the things you used to be able to do. They like couch potatoes that think an enjoyable evening is sitting in front of the TV, consuming their ads, and drinking an extra large sugar drink (You want fries with that?).

Think about it, you buy a bottle of colored sugar water for say, 2 bucks. It cost them a few cents for the plastic and a few mores cents for the corn syrup, color dye and chemicals. Then, through the wonders of mass distribution, they deliver it to you at a good profit. But their profit is your loss!

Don't be fooled. They want your money. That's it. They don't care about your freedom, they don't care about your health. They don't care about how many times you have to go the the hospital. They don't care that you will probably die younger. They don't care about your kids getting 'Type II Diabetes' becoming fat, or obese. They don't care.

Who are you going to trust? The 'American Beverage Association', which exists solely to protect corporate profit; Or the regulation that is designed to help you and your family live a healthier more active life; by reducing the unhealthy foods and drinks that will harm you; and make your future ever more costly, more difficult, more lethargic? They don't care if you are less able to have fun, less able to enjoy life, less able to get out of your chair.

These lobbying organizations don't care if you have a 'lousy quality of life' because you are overweight, get diabetes, or are afflicted with any number of the associated health disorders that follow. They only care that they take your money. Don't be fooled any longer.