Nothing will persuade me that officialdom stepping in to tell businesses and their customers that cups over a certain size are forbidden isn’t a gross example of overreach by bureaucrats. I know, I know, it’s all for our own good, the perennial cry of interfering busybodies through the ages. Pardon my impudence if I say that I’d prefer to decide for myself what’s for my own good and that of my family.
So you don’t like the word “nanny state” to describe the act of unnecessary government legislation into the personal lives of people.
I’m not convinced this is unnecessary government legislation. (As opposed to, I don’t know, non-government legislation?) Saying “nanny state” over and over certainly isn’t going to convince me.
The law wouldn’t have prevented you from deciding that. You would still have been able to buy as much soda as you wanted , the seller was free to sell you two 16 ounce sodas for the current price of a 32 ounce soda, there was no limitation on free refills and it only applied to food service establishments , not retail stores.
Sometimes I think I'm the only person around who is old enough to remember when a large soda at McDonald's or Wendy's etc was 20 ounces- not the 42oz Super size or the current 30 oz and a 12 oz wasn't considered "kid's size". When 7-11 's largest fountain soda was the 32 oz Big Gulp, not the 128 oz Team Gulp. When every store had 7 oz bottles of Pepsi and Coke. Funny thing is, people drank less soda then (and were less overweight). Larger bottles were available, but you didn't see people buying a 64 oz (or even a 32 oz) bottle of soda to have with lunch, just like you don't often see that now. The fact that you could buy a 30,40 or 64 oz fountain soda apparently made people think that those were reasonable portion sizes for a single person.
I don’t think it was done properly - it should have actually been legislated by the City Council not enacted by the Board of Health, but that’s a different issue.
Come on, this is BS. Do you really want to be walking into a theater with TWO soft drinks in your hands?
Of course you don’t.
Nope. But that was the whole point. That many, possibly most people aren’t buying the giant-sized soda because they really,really want that much soda. They’re buying that much only because that size is offered and if the largest size were sixteen ounces, they’d buy one and be done with it. They wouldn’t walk into the theater with two, or buy an extra drink with their value meal. But the law wouldn’t have prevented you from buying two drinks before walking into the theater if you really wanted that much soda. And it wouldn’t have prevented the theater from charging you the same price for two smaller drinks as they currently charge for one.
Exactly. People will usually go with the default option, whatever that happens to be. Change the default and you can influence their behavior. It’s the same with organ donation, for example. This rule wouldn’t stop anyone who wanted 32 oz of soda from drinking it, but it’s not intended to. It only affects people who don’t care one way or the other, and that’s the majority. It certainly doesn’t solve the obesity problem on its own, but this type of change is a valid tool in the toolkit.
What I don’t like about the term “nanny state” is that it implies there’s some overarching philosophy to regulations that could be favored or opposed. Whereas in my opinion each individual regulation should be studied and debated on its own merits.
What’s that about the horses? All they have to do is pull a carriage around for a few hours, and then they get to spend the rest of their time in a stall that’s bigger than many NYC apartments. Free room and board- that’s a sweet deal for any horse :rolleyes:
Actually, it was the only issue.
ok - not true, there was another issue: The law was not tailored to meet its stated goal, and could never have achieved the intended effect.
- the NYC Health department in its regulatory power had no authority over numerous vendors of large soda… including 7-11 which is a state-regulated grocery store. So under the regulation, at the McDonalds they couldn’t sell 24 oz beverage, next door at the 7-11, they could. As the lower court noted, enforcement could not be consistent on even one city block in NYC.
- The law was based on volume, not on sugar content, which rendered it completely illogical, or, in lawyer language, arbitrary. Pure apple-juice-from-concentrate, which is no more nutritive than Coke, was not limited. Milkshakes… not limited. Diet coke which has no sugar… limited.
Yeah, it’s a great deal. They spend eight hours a day walking through traffic on asphalt in all manner of weather, then go back to tiny pens. They’re hardly ever even hit by cars and seem to live a fraction of the normal life span for a horse. I’m jealous.
It’s still BS.
I rarely even drink sodas. I haven’t had one in months in fact. But if I go to a movie theater, I want that gallon sized soda to help wash down that five gallon bucket of salty popcorn.
Bloomberg’s attempts to infringe on my right to splurge every once in a while is ridiculous.
Actually, by “different issue” I wasn’t really talking within about the legal case- I meant that the the whole legal issue was separate from whether the “ban” actually prevented people from deciding what was best for them.
And it was based on sugar content as well as volume- it didn’t apply to diet sodas, unsweetened teas, or beverages where sugar is added by the customer. Although it certainly seems arbitrary to exempt drinks that are more than 50% milk even if the other 50% is ice cream and syrup
First a nitpick- you don’t have a right to buy a gallon of soda in a single cup. That would imply that someone has an obligation to sell soda in that size, and that’s clearly not true. Maybe the restaurant has a right not to have portion sizes restricted, but that’s something different.
And Bloomberg did not prevent you from buying two or three or four sodas, or buying one and then making another trip to the concession stand. *You* don't want to do that , but you certainly can.
So fat shaming. As long as I’m willing to wear the Scarlet Letter of having to sodas in my hand, all is right as rain.
And right here you’ve tacitly acknowledged why the movie theater companies sell giant sodas and popcorns: they’re ripping you off by selling you a very high-profit margin item that contains way more food than you would actually eat otherwise. Freedom!
Walking around with two cups isn’t any more shameful than one and it doesn’t target fat people. Other than that, yes- spot on.
This is news to no one, unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past three decades.
And freedom is right, that’s why the judge struck down this nonsense law.
For some reason that refrain comes up a lot when we’re discussing issues like this: “everybody knows it’s bad!” I’m not sure that’s true, and I’m not sure they know the extent of the problem. So at best it seems misleading.
You’re using the word freedom the way some other posters are using words like “scary” and “dystopian.” Words mean stuff. The issue here is that the board didn’t have the power to make this rule. Not “freedom.”
For whatever reason this ban got struck down, it’s a win for the overwhelming majority of people who oppose this ban. Link
That doesn’t mean the ban got struck down because freedom.