I'm sure you've all heard about the 16oz soda limit in restaurants. Some places have approved it. I overheard some mormons talking about this the other day. They were saying "Oh! that's such a good idea! I bet a ton of people will loose weight!" I thought "Oh yeah! and their freedoms too!"

This is NOT OK by me. No one should be dictating how much you can eat or drink. My fiance said "People dont want to take responsibility for themselves, so they allow things like this... but they also allow to be dictated for the price of convenience or low responsibility."

This brought me back to mormonism. A lot of them dont want to think for themselves, so they let a man "called of God" do it for them. When you allow people to make your decisions or think for you, you allow them to dictate you. THIS HAS TO STOP IMMEDIATELY. We pay too much so we can have convenience and low responsibility not just in mormonism, but society as well. Even though I grew up mormon, my parents taught me to never let someone do my thinking for me. It's too dangerous and it's leading to things like dictating how much of something you can put in your mouth. Im so sick and tired of people being completely ok with allowing someone to think for them. I cant even believe I fell I have to write this! It should be common sense, right??

I fully agree. It's no one's business but your own what you eat or drink. Is 16 oz of soda healthy? Doesn't matter if it is or not, it's no one's business but your own. I do believe in educating though. Instead of popping pills we should be teaching others what is and isn't good for their bodies...but forcing them to take control or change their habits? In my opinion, that should never happen. The only thing a health educator can do is present the information and hope for some results. If they get results then great, if they don't, they don't. Everyone should be able to decide for themselves. This is why I have such a HUGE issue with the mormon idea of "free will." That is what lead me out of the church when I was a teenager. It just didn't make sense. If I had free will then I could choose to follow satan, act out my life and be okay. But no, "free will" to mormons means that you only follow "god" and his plan. There is nothing free about that! To each his/her own. Only when you give up control are you truly in command.

I worked in fast food from 1986 to 1994, and saw up close how the industry tricked people into thinking they wanted to drink a quart of pop in one sitting. When I started working, the sizes were 12, 16 and 20 oz. Even the 20 oz, which was called "large" back then and is now known as "medium," was not usually bought by one person to drink alone; it was often bought by a parent who would get little courtesy cups for the kids and they would all share. They didn't offer free refills and nobody asked for them either.

Fountain pop costs next to nothing to the restaurant. It's the LABOR that is their main expense in your drink. Maybe the cups, lids, and straws to some extent as well. So if they can get you to buy a 32 oz drink for maybe 25 or 50 cents more than a 16 oz drink, you are thinking that your cost per ounce is really going down, and that it's a good deal for you. But for them, those two drinks cost *exactly the same* so that little bit of price increase is PURE PROFIT for them. And a 32 oz fountain drink gets gross before you can finish it anyway. The ice starts to melt and water down the pop. You're better off getting a 16 oz drink and refilling it if you are still thirsty.

So I don't think that limiting drinks to reasonable serving sizes takes away anyone's freedom. It just reduces the industry's manipulation of their customers, and probably their profits, too. I think you can still get free refills. You can always order another drink. You can still go to the store and buy a 12 pack of coke and chug it all down if you want.

Now that my rant is over, I do want to say that I agree with you that we shouldn't let others think for us, and that just blindly following someone else is not a good idea. I just don't agree that the restriction on serving sizes of pop was a good example of that.

"No one should be dictating how much you can eat or drink"

I would assume that you're totally against the FDA then? If someone wants to eat or drink horrible chemicals, let them.

There is a fine line with regulating food/beverages. The problem is, how can we fight the obesity epidemic without changing anything?

Ha! The FDA doesn't do their job properly at all. Why should we listen to them?

I'm a college student and I'm currently writing a paper about the possible dangers of humans that drink cow's milk. Is Cow's milk FDA approved? Well yes. Does that mean it's good for you? I think that can be challenged. Should we be cautious about what we put in our bodies? ABSOLUTELY...but dictating what is good and what's not for someone's body chemistry just doesn't make good sense to me. Health education makes sense. Give everyone as much info as possible and then let them decide. If you truly believe that your local grocery store has your best interest in mind with the produce, meats, dairy and food that they offer then please shop there. A lot of people grow their own food though. A lot of people are anti pesticide. Will you get 100% organic from your grocer? Maybe, maybe not, but it should be up to you to decide what's best for your own body chemistry and that of your children (at least until they are old enough to decide for themselves.)

I'm not going to school to be a health educator btw but I am working towards a degree in the medical field. Don't believe anything I just wrote. Do your own research and follow your own beliefs :)

The biggest problem with this viewpoint, which is also a major issue I have with hardcore libertarians, is that most people don't have the time and/or are not smart enough to be totally educated on every issue.

Most libertarian arguments are fine, if you assume all people are college-educated, and have jobs that allow them to spend lots of time researching every decision they make. But most people are not able to educate themselves on every single decision they make.

Amen. I went full organic vegan a few weeks ago and it's one of the best decisions Ive ever made. I do not like the FDA.

Problem is, a 16 oz soda is really just 4 oz of soda poured over 12 ounces of ice.

Yeah, well you can always ask for no ice or light ice. But before they started offering those value meals with the burger, fries, and drink all for one price, people didn't even bother with the fountain drinks unless they were eating in. If they were in the drive through or ordering at the fronter to go, they used to skip the drinks altogether, probably getting their drinks from some convenience store or something. People also used to order small fries or two people would split a large. Those value meals were designed specifically to sell more fries and drinks, because they were the higher-profit items, especially when you could get people to buy the bigger sizes.

It just blows my mind to look back and see how they have changed our perception of what an average meal is.

Ha! Just saw a typo in my post. "fronter" = "front counter"

My fingers can't keep up with my brain.

I guess I missed something, living here in NYC and all,

is someone actually telling you you can only buy one drink?

just shovel your fat ass back up to the counter for a second hit.

Jess, get over yourself.

+1

I think there is a very big difference between someone telling you that you can't drink more than 16 oz and someone telling you that their largest cup is 16 oz.

My understanding is that you can buy as many of those 16 oz drinks as your heart desires.

Ask anyone if drinking a 16 oz. soda is as healthy as a 12 oz glass of water or 6 oz. V8. We all know the answers.

People might have other reasons for buying the big size or they might decide to do it in spite of it being less than healthy. That's their own private choice and I don't think government should curtail that freedom.

Nor do they need to spend my money educating the public on what they already know. Sometimes the word "education" is used when "indoctrination" or "coercion" would be more accurate.

The people marketing those giant drinks are masters of manipulation. Nobody wanted to drink a quart of pop until someone realized that they could make a ton of money selling it that way. They really pushed hard those first few years to get people to buy them.

It was never really much of a free choice. They used their understanding of psychology to manipulate us into buying drinks that are twice the size of an adult human bladder.

Silly to say we're prisoners to marketing.

Cheryl: "Silly to say we're prisoners of marketing."

So silly of you to say THAT..Do a little googling on marketing and persuasive business tactics. We are fooled constantly by those whose sole purpose is to SELL and make money. This also relates to Mormonism. Look at how many people are manipulated and duped into beliefs they wouldn't otherwise buy into? The leaders of Mormonism are businessmen and lawyers who learn the same tricks of the trade as those who sell us products.

How naive of you to assume you know more about marketing than any and all strangers on the internet.

You're as arrogant as most bishops and SPs when you assume you're smarter than everyone else and they must rise to your high opinion of yourself.

I don't buy soft drinks including small ones nor does a large proportion of the population.

If you do drink them constantly and you can't help yourself, you need to seek help and not dictate to everyone else without your problem.

So now people will buy two 16 oz. drinks for more money ?

If they feel like they haven't had enough after the first one, then yes, they will. But I think most people will decide it's not worth the money and the extra effort to go up and order another one. They were drinking the really large ones because they were a better deal, as far as price per ounce. And then once they bought the big drink, they drank all or most of it just because it was there, not necessarily because they really wanted all of it.

"This is NOT OK by me. No one should be dictating how much you can eat or drink."

Devil's Advocate here:
What about seatbelt laws and helmet laws?? Same deal to me...
All pushed by insurance companies because they are paying out a lot more for stuff related to:
accidents were people didn't wear their seat belt, helmet, and also paying out a lot more related to obesity, diabetes, etc due to over-indulgence of soda.

In my house, soda is a treat. I treat myself (adding alcohol makes it an even better treat) and is a treat for my kids.

Remember the guvment is taking over OUR healthcare and they want to control expenses. (more pork to dish out later).

In some states..food is not taxed at all at the grocery sores. Soda should be taxed as you don't NEED it to survive

I agree with you on taxing soda. It has no real nutritional value whatsoever. The only problem I see with that is where to draw the line between non-taxable groceries and taxable ones.

Just tax the living hell out of 'em.. I know smoking is horrendous for one's health, but honestly the biggest thing keeping me from starting up again (aside from my electronic cigarette ;-) ) is the fact that a pack of smokes costs more than double what it did when I started smoking back in ancient times, even the late 90's.

I'm not a big fan of trying to force "healthy" behavior through legislation either.

However, it would tickle me pink if it becomes widely known and finally accepted that the HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) used in soda is most definitely not the same as sucrose or table sugar. The corn industry's ads with motto (paraphrasing) "sugar is sugar", no difference, it's all good - is intentionally misleading if not outright fraudulent. Such ads are propaganda to protect profits and ignore the implications of how fructose is metabolized exclusively by the liver. If consumed to excess, large amounts of HFCS is looking more and more like one of the main culprits (instead of saturated fat) in obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes.

Anyway, perhaps apatheist's idea above is the best one - now that it's becoming known how detrimental to one's health excessive consumption of HFCS is, tax the crap out of all products that contain it. Cigarettes have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Soda is in the same category: nutritionally worthless and in fact actively harmful if - like a pack or two a day smoking habit - people are guzzling it as their main source of hydration.

You do know that hfcs has the same amount of fructose as sucrose, right? There's a lot of misinformation out there.

Personally, I think that we need to remove government subsidies of the corn(hfcs) industry, and then the prices of sugary drinks/junk food would raise to the point where people would probably stop eating as much.

That is a good idea!

According to CNN last week, by 2030 1/2 of Americans will be overweight.

I realize this is insulting, but I'm frustrated so I'm going to be rude:

The ignorance here is astounding.

Has anyone studied social-ecological health models? Without changing societal structure we can't hope to combat obesity at the population level.

Meaning: until we start making access to sugary and fatty foods difficult, the obesity tide cannot be stemmed. All NYC did was to make it slightly less convenient for people to chug down excess frivolous calories.

Freedoms lost, my ass.

Source: I'm a fucking obesity interventionist who has studied this issue throughout my career.

People don't always do what is ideal. Why? Because that's the nature of being human.

None of us have a right to try to force others to do what we think is good for them.

If they're fat, lazy, wear ugly shoes, have tattoos we don't like, waste money, whatever, we can't change them. We can only change ourselves. You have a major character flaw of thinking you have a right to change people to suit your ideals. You won't like it that I say this and you likely won't improve.

See what I mean? We can't change other people unless they want to change. We can only change ourselves.

Yeah, I have a huge character flaw because I think it shouldn't be easy as it currently is to get access to fatty and sugary foods.

Wow, forgive me for my ridiculous ideals.

And by the way Cheryl, you're just proving my point. You CAN'T change other people but you CAN change the environment to make it more difficult for them to do unhealthy things for themselves.

Source: studying hundreds of health interventions where the results led to *gasp* healthier behavior. By the way, I guess you are against cigarette warnings and taxes because they make it more difficult for people to smoke.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2012 07:16AM by rqt.