To the inevitable backdrop of John Philip Souza marches and Presidential photo-ops, Big Soda has announced that it will do some vague kind of something about the excesses they contribute to our intake of calories and sugars over something like ten years. Big Soda might have said: “we know you are getting fat and sick, and feel we are implicated; but frankly, we don’t give a damn as long as you are foolish enough to keep buying what we sell.” Actually, that would have been refreshingly honest. But I guess we can be grateful just the same that they didn’t say that. I don’t think it would have earned a hug from Bill Clinton.
Do we really need soda companies to cut calories for us? The aphorism is: the best way to predict the future is to create it. It is NOT: the best way to predict the future is to hope that those currently profiting at the expense of your health will come around and create it for you. After all, they not only concoct these potentially addictive formulas, but spend lavishly on highly influential marketing.
Why do we need Big Soda to reduce calories for us? It’s a bit brutal folks, I admit, but here goes: the fault is not in our sodas, but in ourselves -- that we allow ourselves to be underlings to the bullying of marketing aiming for profits at the expense of our health. Continue here....
Stop drinking the stuff.
-- David L. Katz
