Should soda be banned from stores?

Great Debates
1

In the United States there is an increasing outcry over the epidemic of obesity. More people are fatter at a younger age than at any time in recorded history, and it’s become a public health issue. In light of this, I have the following proposal- ban the commercial sale of sugared soft drinks. It sounds radical I know, even ridiculous, but bear with me for a second…

Millions of American children grow up drinking soda every single day. Probably more soft drinks are consumed than any other potable beverage- water, milk, juice or even non-carbonated drinks. For many, soda is simply what you drink when you’re thirsty. And just what is soda anyway? To a first approximation, it is simply carbonated sugar water.
More than one critic has called soda a “liquid candy bar”. And yet millions of people drink it without a second thought, even though they may be drinking the equivalent of a box of sugared donuts every day. Especially cola, which requires large amounts of sweetener to overcome the natural bitterness of the cola. It’s the invisibility of this thats so disturbing. Is any other source of concentrated sugar in the American diet- chocolate bars, ice cream, etc.- so ubiquitous, and consumed so frequently?

And yet Americans have been doing this for so long, that they’ve lost sight of just how unnatural this is. Sweets used to be a treat, not something consumed eight times a day. Maybe it’s time to do something about it. Of course you can’t ban sugar, and probably not even soda. But maybe grocery stores could be forbidden to carry it, the way they’re forbidden to carry alcohol. If people had to go to a candy shop to buy soda, maybe they would stop and think about what they’re doing. Maybe soda would be something consumed as a dessert or a once in a while thing, not used as a replacement for water.

2

Pop has nothing to it but calories. If you don’t use those calories your body stores that energy as fat. If you do, then the worst thing to be said is that you gained only carbohydrates from it and no vitamins, minerals, or protiens.

Ban the bomb, man.

3

Lumpy, We’ve already extended the life expectancy dramatically; do you really want us all to live past 100? Or, do you REALLY want to see how I act without my 8am Pepsi fix?

Only kidding. I drink 2 max a day. I don’t drink excessively, I don’t swear much, I don’t smoke. Take away my sugar and I’ll have nothing left to live for.

No snide remarks from the peanut gallery.

4

Hey, why don’t you just tell us what we can eat. Obviously, we can’t make intelligent choices on our own. Granted, we’ll have to shut up about being the land of the free, but it’s worth it, right? Who needs freedom when we can be healthier?

Oh, wait, I can be healthier on my own even with freedom. I guess in your plan, you could make me be healthier than I want to be. But I don’t see why I should be forced to live according to your value system.

5

Lumpy, there are a few things you need to understand.

One, we already know that soda isn’t exactly good for you, just like anyone with half a brain knows that smoking’s bad.

Two, when nutritional experts keep repeating over and over the extremely freaking obvious, it gets irritating. (BTW, you got something against candy bars?) As an aside, I don’t know what the hell Subway hoped to accomplish with their incredibly patronizing commercials.

Three, it’s still a largely free country the last time I checked. I prefer diet cola, but right now I’m trying to cut back, mainly because we’re running out too fast. And yes, I’m drinking more juice now. But it’s my prerogative, not anyone else’s.

As far as public health issues go, I think things like alcohol abuse, the too-easy availability of cigarettes, and pollution are far more serious than obesity.

Should Americans, as a whole, exercise more? Of course. I fail to see how endless preaching is going to accomplish that.

6

The only way they’ll take my soda from me is when they pry it out of my cold, dead, chubby hand :slight_smile:

7

I lost 40 pounds once. Never had to give up the cola though. Just all the fatty foods.

I don’t think you’re serious about banning soda. As you can probably tell from the responses to this thread so far, people, Americans in particular, love their freedom – even if it means having a few extra fat people around.

8

Well, if soda is banned, then we’d better work on banning like a million forms of candies and snack foods. Soda is actually a minor contributor to the ‘fattening of America.’ Read the labels on snacks and pop your eyes at the amount of fats in them. Fat, in any form, including oil, is 100 calories per teaspoon. One pat of butter or margarine has 100 calories in it. (Many margarine’s today have 80 to 90, but very few affordable ones go below that level.)

The profusion of the car has made a previously walked trip down to the corner store a drive these days, kids no longer a dumped outside to go play because of video games and the scare over sunlight causing skin cancer plus the potential of being snatched by some pervert.

If you really want to see the fattening of America, do one of two things; go into Walmart in the early afternoon or evening when most people shop or go to any elementary school when the folks show up to pick up the kids. You know those electric scooters for the disabled? At Walmart I’ve watched enormously heavy people rumble in, flab down on a scooter, obviously not disabled, just obese, and drive off on them. At the local elementary schools, I’ve watched the kids pour out and not noticed all that much of an increase in fat kids from when I was their age. However, I have spotted a tremendous increase in supersized parents waddling in to pick them up.

A friend of mine, upon seeing this herself, once made the comment that she thought she could understand why there are still starving people in the world because so many fat Americans consume most of the food. She later went to England, where she wrote to tell me that the epidemic was there also.

Consider the amount of fats in popular fried chicken, french fries, those little sweet cakes you buy at convenience stores with your morning coffee, sucked up in doughnuts, and even served as tasty emulsions in high class restaurants. It seems that one of the things to do today is to pour about a cup of olive oil in a blender, dump in some herbs and whip it all into a flavored oil to pour over normally low calorie vegetables.

Wine and beer are not low calorie and both are pushed with the nearly fanatical efforts that once marked cigarette ads. Light beer and wine are not light in calories. One has less carbonation than usual and the other has low alcohol.

9

Ban sugar!!!

10

Damn straight nebuli!

They take my pop away and I’m going on killing rampage! Well, if I somehow manage to find the energy…

11

Scene: Late night in the Big City. A man walks furtively down a darkened alley. He pulls the collar of his jacket closer as he approaches the door of an apparently abandoned building. He knocks, and a small slit in the door slides back. Two cold, calculating eyes are visible through the slit. The furtive man speaks:[ul]“The candyman sends his best.”[/ul]The slit closes and the door opens only enough to admit the furtive man.

Announcer’s voice: Tonight on 20/20! The secret world of the junk food junkie!

12

Hmmmmmm, in Texas, you can buy beer and wine in grocery stores. I’m pretty sure you can buy those products in grocery stores in Missouri, too. I’m almost positive that I picked up some premixed Mudslides in a Missouri grocery store about two years ago.

I don’t drink much soda mostly because of the expense and the caffeine, and because I think very highly of my kidneys. Most diet soda is HORRID. No, you do NOT get used to the taste! Some people are sensitive to the artificial sweeteners, too. I can tolerate the taste of IBC diet root beer, for instance…but if I drink it, I’ll get inflamed taste buds later. Literally inflamed, they swell up and throb like the dickens.

Mostly I drink water, and I’m fortunate enough that I don’t mind the taste of the city tap water that I get.

When I was a kid, most people drank soft drinks made from powders (Koolaid or the equivalent) or iced tea, rather than water. Parents would even fill baby bottles with this stuff. Sure, everyone would be better off drinking mostly water, but most people are going to want flavored water.

13

All I know is that it was a sad, gloomy day when Pepsico stopped making Josta.

Banning all soda could very well shatter the fabric of the universe itself.

14

I don’t recall Josta, but I remember Jolt Cola, and kids buying over the counter no-doze to dump in it to get a major caffine kick.

15

I was going to comment but look at the time, I gotta go finish off my second liter of Dr. Pepper (I drink 2 liters during each 12 hour shift I work) and get back to work.

Alantus

16

Ummmhh, Jolt. Had the best advertising slogan ever- “Twice the sugar of any other soda, and 98% of the caffeine allowed by law.”

17

I lived most of my life in Arizona, and was SHOCKED when I moved to Virginia to see that you COULDN’T buy hard liquor in grocery stores. It never occurred to me that such a thing would be a law. In Arizona, you can buy Everclear at the grocery store if you want, along with every other type of booze.

I’m curious… how many states have these laws? I thought Virginia must be a freak, but maybe it’s more widespread than I thought? Is Arizona in the minority?

18

Those bastards!

::Sniff::

19

North Carolina has these laws too. You can buy wine and beer at the grocery store but you have to buy liquor at a state run ABC store. You can’t buy beer or wine before 12:00 on Sundays and the ABC stores are closed all day on Sunday. Almost every little town has an ABC store. Except the stores in the dry counties and cities where you can’t buy any kind of alcohol at all.

Back to the OP:
I am sorry Lumpy but that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. I know people who never touch soda and are overweight and people who drink tons of soda and are very thin. There is no direct link between soda and obesity. And, even if there were, American’s wouldn’t stand for it. Unless we are going close all of the Kripsy Kremes and outlaw potato chips too.

20

nebuli;
maybe there were different ad campaigns in different areas,
but the Jolt cola here, has , since released, always been touted as
“All the sugar and twice the caffine”…
OpalCat;
Texas has these laws as well,
in some counties you can buy beer and wine at the grocery store,but NOT before noon on a sunday.Hard liquor is regulated to private liquor stores, depending on your county.
I was raised to understand this is the result of so-called “Blue Laws”, which may or may not be related to the NYC weirdness of the Serpico era where you couldnt buy certain types of consumables (not alcoholic or not) on sundays.
OP;
I dont think there is anyone with enough firepower to take soda away from the public at large.