To Bloomberg's defense:
Some scientists have found that high sugar intake delivers a similar
kind of pleasure in the brain that you'd get from some recreational drugs. The problem, then, is that simply "informing" the public just isn't going to be enough to change behavior because people are quite literally addicted to this shit. At this point, you have to balance two evils. Do you:
a) Police people on what they can and cannot eat (a nanny-state)
or
b) Deal with ballooning health care costs which are literally and figuratively crippling our country?
With diabetes
alone costing this country
more than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, telling people they can't buy big Cokes seems to me a much more sensible option.
People are going to drink the stuff no matter what.
Restricting the amount they drink, I think, is a good idea.
Like I said above, the real problem is government subsidies. People will always eat the foods that are easy to consume (e.g. cheap, convenient) and high in calories. This will never, ever change because it's just how we're hardwired to live. So until the government stops making the worst foods the cheapest, I don't see this problem going away anytime soon.
Start charging companies like McDonald's $10 to produce a Big Mac and a Coke (which is probably closer to their real cost when you factor in all the tax money that goes toward paying for corn and meat) and you'll start to see some big changes very quickly.
