No problem.
Posted on 04/12/2002 5:02:05 AM PDT by TheRedSoxWinThePennant
Soft drinks can be as addictive as cigarettes
Published April 7, 2002
When those of us who eat our bran and exercise for 45 minutes a day are done purging cigarettes from society, we will need a new moral crusade to embark upon.
After perusing a list of potential villains, the new target is obvious -- carbonated sucrose water. Or as they call it in the Midwest: pop.
No longer can we ignore the increasing carnage to society caused by soft drinks.
Cigarettes kill 400,000 people a year, but close behind is obesity with more than 300,000 victims. The main cause of obesity is sugar. The main source of sugar is pop.
Soft drinks are nothing more than a delivery vehicle for sugar. Each American consumes an average of 115 pounds of sugar per year. Sugar is an addictive drug and should be regulated by the FDA.
Health officials say 61 percent of adults are overweight or obese. Even more alarming, 13 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 11 are fat, triple the percent from 20 years ago.
If you look at this statistically, everybody in America will be waddling in a few decades.
Soft drinks provide 9 percent of all calories consumed by boys ages 12 to 19. The more overweight a child, the higher percent of calories he or she gets from soft drinks.
Twenty years ago, kids drank twice as much milk as soda. Now the ratio is reversed.
We are headed for a health-care crisis that will dwarf anything caused by cigarettes. Obesity costs the United States about $117 billion a year. That number will skyrocket as the current generation of obese adults enters the disease phase of their condition.
Expensive medical advances will keep them alive much longer than nature intended, gobbling up huge chunks of our gross national product.
Soft drinks are destroying the American economy.
Coke once came in 6½-ounce bottles. Now teenagers knock back two quarts in one giant Double-Gulp.
Is it any wonder there is an epidemic of adult-onset diabetes in children?
The marketing of cigarettes and soft drinks is remarkably similar. Each relentlessly pursues the youth market to build brand loyalty.
Just check out the Mountain Dew ads. They portray kids who are cool and rebellious, thin and athletic.
They are little Marlboro Men with a yo dude twist.
Meanwhile, soft-drink makers pay off elected officials to put their dispensing machines in our schools.
Remember when cigarette makers refused to admit the danger of their product? Soft-drink makers actually claim that caffeine-laced sugar water has a place in a child's nutritious diet. They blame the epidemic of obesity on a lack of exercise, without acknowledging their own guilt.
Exercise is a problem. But we will deal with that later, in the mandatory aerobics phase of our movement.
So what should we do?
Take soft drinks off the store shelves and out of schools. Stop marketing to kids. Start a Truth-style advertising campaign.
States should file class action lawsuits against soft-drink makers to recover Medicaid money spent treating obesity-related diseases.
Put a sin tax on soda, an idea that already is being floated.
You think I'm crazy? The soft-drink makers don't. Read the industry newsletters. They know their day is coming.
I suppose diet drinks/foods would be exempt.
If we allow these bastards to put a dollar tax on a soda pop, or another 2 or 3 a pack on smokes, we are the most spineless people in the history of the planet.
This is nothing but propaganda from the "we are all victims" crowd of the brain dead.
They are so many half truths in this article, I can't even begin.
Sugar is an addictive drug
Yeah, right.
Put a "KICK ME, I'M A LIBERAL" sign on the author's back.
In eastern Missouri, which would obviously be the "Midwest," we call it SODA, not pop.
The first time I heard "soda" referred to as "pop" was in New Jersey, in 1970.
I was looking for the "Onion" or "BSNN" link.
Didn't see it and considered it legit.
It would not suprise me in least bit, if it was a real article.
True or fiction? It's getting hard to tell the difference nowadays
I gave up sody pop one year for lent. Haven't 'had' to have a coke, pepsi or whatever for years.
Now, french fries, on the other hand...
No problem.
Power is an additive "drug" that was intended to be regulated by the United States Constitution. That such notions as the one in this article (even if this article is intended to be "humor" as some have suggested, others are very serious about the same issue) can be advanced is solid evidence that the Constitution has been severely breached.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.