The Evil Soda Corporations are Getting Away With Murder!
Well not really. Today it was announced that Governor Jerry Brown and the Democratically controlled legislature of California were forced via a "gun to the head" to pass a moratorium on new soda taxes and an added provision that will do the same for packaging like the effective ban on plastic bags passed by ballot measure two years ago (it actually just forces shoppers to subsidize retailers' plastic bags purchases to the tune of ten cents a bag). The hyperbole surrounding this legislation is incredible. All of this was done as an effort to put a stop to a measure the soda companies were trying to fund which would prevent local taxes from being raised without a two thirds majority vote, just like is currently done on the state level.
In a state that has been controlled by the left for several decades, the 2/3 vote requirement for raising taxes has been the only thing preventing taxes from being raised even higher than the already high taxes we deal with here. Honestly I wish the corporations would have told Brown and the Democrats to take their deal and shove it, and had rather moved forward with the initiative.
In my eyes, this tax is like one of the "sin taxes" we have in things like cigarettes and alcohol, and even gasoline taxes. Politicians think correctly that voters believe it's the government's job to run people's personal lives and dictate what they should do with their own bodies as long as it's "for their own good". Take this from a guy who doesn't eat anything with sugar in it, who doesn't drink or smoke anymore either, taxing these substances will do little more than cost poor people a lot of money they don't have enough of, and give voters an emotional charge for having done nothing useful.
Back when I was a smoker living in upstate NY, I actually just figured out a way to circumvent the taxes altogether (which were several hundred percent by the way). There were cigarettes manufactured and sold by Native Americans on the nearby reservation (the Rez as we called it) that I switched to when the taxes got out of control. Some of my friends also resorted to literally rolling their own cigarettes to get around the exorbitant taxes. I didn't quit because it was an expensive habit for my wallet (it wasn't due to my circumventing), I quit because I wanted to. Nothing the government tried would have convinced me otherwise, and the taxes even gave me reason to want to shove it in everyone's faces that I was still gonna smoke no matter what they said.
Given my experience with smoking and my belief in The human right to self determination, the effort to get people to quit eating too much sugar while combating obesity should be conducted by voluntary means. Not only will those efforts end up being cheaper and more efficient, they will afford people with the respect and human decency that they deserve.
In short, choose peace. Choose human decency and respect. Love your fellow man by offering them a way to help themselves through voluntary means. Coercive force is never the answer.
The sad thing is its not really the sugar sodas. Its the HFCs. And worse, its the artificial sweeteners that cause diabetes.
But, to politicians, its just another way to raise money for their pockets.
They don't see that they are killing the state. They probably don't care, except that they would hasten their efforts to line their pockets.
I haven't heard of a connection between artificial sweetener and diabetes, but I wouldn't be surprised. When I took organic chemistry one of our labs involved synthesizing aspartame. Looking at the structure of that molecule it's got mutation and cancer written all over it in my opinion (lots of chemicals with aromatic rings like this one have been shown to interfere with DNA replication, causing an increase in point mutations) . I've always been suspicious of eating things that aren't actual food though, so my bias there is showing. I did check the research available back in the nineties and there didn't seem to be any evidence for a link with cancer, but I say better safe than sorry. The stuff tastes horrible anyway.
As far as sugar goes, now that I'm older, I know a high sugar diet is certainly unhealthy for someone my age. I was waking up most mornings with headaches for a few years now, and I've been getting frequent canker sores even when I'm not otherwise sick. Cutting most sugars from my diet (completely eliminating them is near impossible) has made a world of difference and has almost completely eliminated both.
It didn't seem to effect me negatively when I was young though. I ate shovels full of the stuff on my cereal and in my coffee. I used to drink about a 2 liter of soda every day too, so lots of fructose too. I was eating a few hundred grams of sugar a day at least. Never had any problems with either, no weight gain, no other ailments. I did start to notice in my twenties that I would get tired in the afternoon about 3pm to the point that I would literally start to pass out while working. Just couldn't keep my eyes open. Turns out the big gulp of coke at lunchtime was the culprit. After that only water for me with meals and that problem went away even though I still rocked plenty of table sugar in my coffee in the morning, so HFCS was probably effecting me more negatively earlier on.
There is a strong correlation between aspertame and breast cancer. Just don't tell the FDA, they ain't having none of that.
The artificial sweeteners... the nose is above the mouth for a reason. The brain gets signals about what will soon be in the belly and the stomach starts producing the correct acids. The artificial sweeteners basically start a train wreck as the body was expecting one thing (sugar) and got none. So, the sugar balancers had to go somewhere. And then it is just downhill from there. Add to that the factory food industry that adds sugar and gluten to everything, and the train wreck is assured.
Plus, the nutrasweet actually increases appetite.
I feel that in a dozen years, most of the stuff in stores will be banned, not by govern-cement, but by no one touching the stuff.
But, i probably just have high hopes, as people still smoke even though they know of all the harmful chemicals they put into cigarettes.
Its the last acceptable way to commit suicide.