The ban, which will take effect from March 12 and won’t impact fruit juices, milkshakes, diet sodas or alcoholic drinks, will see violators coughing up fines of $200. Rest assured though, if you really can’t do without a behemoth-sized barrel of liquified sugar, you can still quell your thirst at grocery stores and convenience stores, including 7-Eleven, which will be exempt from the new regulation.
Mayor Bloomberg, proudly bearing the mantle of the city’s nutrition nanny, has a history of championing aggressive measures to ease the burden of the $4 billion dollars in direct medical costs courtesy of the city’s obesity epidemic. He saw this latest proposition seemingly breeze through yesterday by a vote of eight-to-zero, with one abstention. The ban, which in actuality is little more than a cap (the truth of the matter is that no-one is banned from drinking unlimited amounts of soda, they just have to order two or more drinks), continues to face considerable opposition. The group, New Yorkers for Beverage Choice, claiming the measure to be an infringement of personal freedom, has pledged to continue its fight, possibly through legal means. But, this hasn’t eclipsed widespread support from medics, consumer health advocates, and the developer of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Bruce Ratner of Forest City Ratner has said that the stadium, which has partnered with Coca Cola, would abide by the new ruling when it opens at the end of the month.
Around one-third of Americans are obese, and at least two-thirds considered overweight or obese – this includes over half of the New York City’s adults and close to 40% of the city’s public elementary and middle school students. In an opinion piece in the New York Daily News, Thomas Farley, commissioner of New York City’s Health Department, writes that if the new regulation “leads to New Yorkers simply reducing the size of one sugary drink from 20 ounces to 16 ounces every other week, it would help them avoid gaining some 2.3 million pounds a year.” He adds that “{o}besity leads to the deaths of nearly 6,000 New Yorkers a year, more than any health problem except smoking, according to our best estimates,” and surmises that ” if we can reduce obesity rates in New York City by just 10%, it could save hundreds of lives a year. ”
The big question then, is really how much of a difference the soda ban will make – whether it’s hundreds of lives saved, or hundreds of thousands of dollars? Of course, at this point the answer eludes us, but judging by the impact of Bloomberg’s past food and health-related regulations there’s a high probability it will inspire improvement in the city’s health stats.
In 2005, he initiated the ban of trans fats at all restaurants with the city limits. A NYC Health Department study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in July this year revealed that in as little as two years after the regulation was implemented in 2007 it had made considerable headway in ridding New Yorkers’ diets of damaging amounts of trans fats and potentially curbing the incidence of heart disease in the metropolis. An analysis of 6,969 receipts collected from fast food chains including Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut and McDonald’s in 2007, found that the average fast food meal in that year contained 2.9 grams of trans fat. In comparison, a scrutiny of 7,885 receipts from the establishments from 2009 found that the figure had slipped to 0.5 grams – an amount the FDA considers “negligible.” The American Heart Association recommends limiting trans fat, a leading cause of heart disease, to less than 2 grams a day. An even bigger victory for Bloomberg is the fact that some chains including McDonalds have gone so far as to ban trans fat in their nationwide. Contrary to the fears of opponents to the regulation, eateries didn’t simply replace trans fat with a slew of other bad ingredients – the study found only a marginal increase in saturated fat.
In 2008, Bloomberg forced chain restaurants in the city to post calorie counts. A study of Starbucks outlets in NYC showed that customers bought 6% fewer calories after outlets started posting calorie counts. Further afield in Seattle where chains are also now required to display calories (the practice also spread to California), a study of 37 sit-down and quick service burger, pizza, sandwich, and Tex-Mex chains in the area found fast-food entrees contained about 19 less calories only 18 months after the regulation was implemented. This might not seem like much of an improvement, but 19 calories lost per meal over a number of years can amount to a number of pounds lost. Moreover, even if consumers are not necessarily making healthier choices based on what numbers they are seeing, the ruling has certainly made food giants more conscious of the ingredients they are putting into their offerings.
Going forward, McDonald’s has just announced that as of next week it will begin posting calorie information on its menu boards in all 14,000 of its stores in the US. Coupled with this, it is developing healthier items such as egg white breakfast sandwiches, vegetable sides and lower-calorie wraps. The real indicator though of how far-reaching Bloomberg’s pioneering calorie-posting measure has become is the proposed regulation that’s part of President Obama’s health care reform legislation mandating all chain restaurants with more than 20 locations to display the calorie contents of their menu items. If successful, this will take effect at the end of 2012.
To assess the potential of the soda ban, it’s worth alluding to a recent Health Department study which found that opting for a 16-ounce drink rather than a 20-ounce one every day (46% of Bronx residents drink a soda a day) will save a not insubstantial 14,600 calories a year. Incidentally, this amounts to four pounds of body fat. If anything this ban will teach us the benefits of portion control. We have become so accustomed to the rampant satiation of our desire for bigger and better that we don’t really know what constitutes a normal, regular portion any more.
Of course, no one is arguing that sodas are alone responsible for the crippling obesity problem. No, dietary habits, environment, genetics, and a myriad other factors come together to form a complex matrix that impacts our weight. But the facts are clear, sugar-filled beverages are unhealthy. A study by the University of Texas Health Science Center which tracked 1,550 people between the ages of 25 to 64 for eight years revealed a common theme: the more soda participants consumed daily, the greater the likelihood that they became overweight or obese. Other researchers discovered similar trends. The Nurses Health Study which followed the health of close to 90,000 women over two decades showed that women who had one or more servings a day of a sugary drink were twice as likely to develop Type II diabetes than those who stayed away from such beverages.
As has been shown with cigarettes, no amount of telling people not to indulge will do any real, tangible good. Setting limits, and implementing bans are not infringements of personal freedom, but helpful ways of making it easier for people to help themselves by simply saying “No.”
