State Appeals Court Ruled In Favor Of Sugar Sodas: Should We Be Allowed to Poison Our Bodies?

[N'Zinga Shani]

GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH! IS THAT WHAT THE COURT RULING IS SAYING?

The New York State Appeals Court Ruled In Favor Of Sugar Sodas.  It said Mayor Bloomberg cannot prevent NY residents from poisoning their bodies with these oversize sodas, even when the state of New York has to pay the excessively high medical bills for many of its indigent residents who have diabetes and other obesity-related illnesses.

Should We Be Allowed to Poison Our Bodies? Especially when someone else has to pick up the bill?  Should the state try to protect those who do not know how to protect themselves?

“Excessive soda consumption can cause obesity. Obesity can cause diabetes. Diabetes can cause blindness. Blindness is an apt description of the ruling’s reasoning, or lack thereof.”

 Drinking the Kool-Aid: A State Appeals Court is Dead Wrong on Sugar...
Daily News, Editorial Board, 08/01/2013
As New York’s obesity problem catches up with smoking as the city’s leading cause of preventable death, a state appellate court has whistled past the graveyard — striking down Mayor Bloomberg’s pioneering effort to limit the size of sugary drink servings. Excessive soda consumption can cause obesity. Obesity can cause diabetes. Diabetes can cause blindness. Blindness is an apt description of the ruling’s reasoning, or lack thereof.

 Under the Bloomberg policy, sodas larger than 16 ounces would be limited in some settings. Good idea.

As New York’s obesity problem catches up with smoking as the city’s leading cause of preventable death, a state appellate court has whistled past the graveyard — striking down Mayor Bloomberg’s pioneering effort to limit the size of sugary drink servings.

Excessive soda consumption can cause obesity. Obesity can cause diabetes. Diabetes can cause blindness. Blindness is an apt description of the ruling’s reasoning, or lack thereof.

The Board of Health’s 2012 restrictions on empty-calorie sodas in excess of 16 ounces made good legal and public health sense: When there’s a direct connection between excessive consumption of a product and death, make access to that product a little more difficult.

The evidence here is clear. There’s a difference between sugary soda and other food and drink. Namely, large quantities of the stuff can be consumed without sating the appetite. That drives thousands to become overweight — and, as a result, suffer from a host of health problems.

Obesity is responsible for 5,000 deaths in the city every year. Those deaths — this is crucial — occur in wildly disproportionate numbers in poorer neighborhoods. People in East New York are four times more likely to die from diabetes as those on the upper East Side. And it’s kids, low-income kids especially, who, bombarded with soda ads, start binging in their teenage years.

What did the court say about this mountain of evidence? Approximately, it yawned.

The plan, wrote Justice Diane Renwick, “looks beyond health concerns, in that it manipulates choice to try to change consumer norms.” And the fact that the city made exceptions for milk-, fruit- and coffee-based drinks and for some drink sellers was supposed proof of unconstitutionality.

In other words, if you can’t do everything, you can’t do anything.

Hogwash. Bloomberg was right to try to curb food-stamp purchases of sugary soda (thwarted by the USDA). He was right to push for a higher soda tax (thwarted by the state Legislature after heavy lobbying by the soda industry).

Bloomberg will correctly ask the state’s highest court to overrule this terrible decision. And the next mayor must keep fighting the rising tide.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/drinking-kool-aid-article-1.1413242

Sugary Drinks and Obesity Fact Sheet – Harvard School of Public Health’s Nutrition Source

The Problem: Sugary Drinks Are a Major Contributor to the Obesity Epidemic

Read much more about Harvard School of Public Health's nutrition Report at the link below

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/sugary-drinks-fact-sheet/

This fact sheet assembles key scientific evidence on the link between sugary drink consumption and obesity.