As a Cambridge RESIDENT, I find this sortof ridiculous (Though, as a fellow resident said: “Well, it’s good to know we’re down to our last problem.”) - to say nothing of the mockery we’ve been getting for it.
Even setting aside all the logistical difficulties of enforcement and policy, this isn’t really a good idea in my book. By and large, I’m not in favor of legislating to people that “Thou shalt not do things which are bad for you or dangerous to yourself.”; Drug laws? Sure (Except Marijuana, which, frankly, seems more benign than most legal drugs) since they can often lead to behavior that endangers other people. Smoking? Well, okay, second hand smoke is unlikely to be good for the people sitting at the next table. Seatbelt laws? Honestly, I don’t care - if people are stupid enough to drive without wearing one, the only consequences are to themselves. I think this falls into the same category.
However, I think there IS a problem where people are too ignorant to make wise decisions that they might make with more information. So I don’t support a ban. I do support the idea of a tax that could then be used for education. It’s not like an extra 25 cents is going to stop anyone from throwing down for a Super Big Gulp, but maybe if these folks had had decent health education in school, they’d know better.
I actually knew someone who ate a shitload of broccoli and tofu . . . and was overweight. (He also ate a lot of other things, like cake and pizza and ice cream.)
It’s been established that portions have a big impact on how much people eat. If you give someone a bigger plate, they’ll eat more. If you give them a soup bowl that replenishes itself (so the bowl is “bottomless”), they’ll eat more.
I think that there’s a sort of market failure going on between the various irrational and rational parts of our brain when it comes to ordering food. When presented with the option to get more food or more drink at the same price (or at least at a lower price per calorie or ounce), it seems like a better deal. Once the larger portion is in front of us, we eat or drink more of it because part of our apetite is related to how much food we see. It’s obviously in the restaurant’s interest to offer us more food at a marginal markup, since larger portions generally have very high profit margins. Put that all together, and there are powerful financial and behavioral incentives that push us toward decisions and eating patterns that are worse for our health.
Yes, some people might purchase two 32-ounce sodas. But I think (and hope) that most people won’t. They don’t really want 52-ounces of soda, they just buy the biggest one because it’s cheap and seems like a good deal, and they drink until it’s empty.
I’m not really in favor of this particular law, but I do think that we could do a lot of good with “nudge” type laws that don’t outright ban unhealthy or otherwise unfavorable behavior, but makes the better choice an easier one to make.
As a thought experiment, I wonder how effective a law would be that requires proportional price fixing?
Like, instead of:
20 oz - $0.79
32 oz - $0.89
44 oz - $1.09
52 oz - $1.19
It would instead be more like:
20 oz - $0.60
32 oz - $0.96
44 oz - $1.32
52 oz - $1.56
That assumes a price of 3 cents per ounce. Obviously it’s not a solution that directly reflects the proportion of fixed to variable costs, but I wonder if it wouldn’t make a difference in consumer purchasing habits.
It probably wouldn’t be feasible, and it’s just a random thought anyway. I occasionally think it’d be useful if food prices had a direct and fixed correlation with their calorie counts too, but that’s even less feasible.
HFCS is bad for you in the same way that sucrose (sugar) is bad for you; in other words, they are both pretty much the same thing, a mix of glucose and fructose in a near 1:1 ratio and contribute empty calories, especially when overused, as they both are in pretty much everything. If you are concerned about added sugars, look for products that advertise “reduced sugar” instead of “no HFCS” because the latter will very likely have the same amount of sugar in it (or foods that have no added sugar because there is no reason why you’d add sugar to them). Similar goes for sodium (which is usually replaced with healthy potassium), although for trans fat/partially hydrogenated oils, “no trans fat” is often, but not always, a lie and one has to read the ingredients (why not require than trans fat be reported in milligrams, like cholesterol, with a notice that the RDA is zero).
That aside, maybe the drought developing in the Corn Belt this summer will cause corn and HFCS prices to rise so much that food manufacturers stop using it.
