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SF’s Soda Ban, Personal Choice, and Milk

July 12th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments
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Last week, San Francisco issued a citywide ban on sale of soda pop in vending machines. Artificially sweetened drinks can make up no more than 25% of the offering. 100% juices are allowed, but sports drinks are not. In explaining the directive, Mayor Gavin Newsom cited a UCLA study that links obesity to soft drink consumption.

Immediately, the city divided into the pro and con camps. On one hand, we should be free to choose to consume whatever we want. On the other hand, junk food is almost forced upon us every which way we turn.

The question that looms large is where do we draw the line between personal choice and responsibility and government policy for the public welfare. In many cases, the answer depends on your political views and your financial ties.

In a scathing and mocking editorial aptly entitled The Calorie Police, the Cato institute suggested banning milk in vending machines, as milk is more fattening than coke:

a twelve ounce can of Coca-Cola has fewer calories than twelve ounces of whole milk…[140 to 216]

…you’ll be even fatter if you substitute whole milk for Coke, ounce for ounce…

…the extra nutrients in milk don’t do anything to make it less fattening, because they don’t.

The writer continues along a certain line of logic:

… a tall Starbucks Frappuccino — also 12 ounces, and not covered by the ban — has 190 calories, largely from sugar and fat.

I could ask: Does anyone ever order a plain Frappuccino? A tall mocha Frappuccino has 220 calories.

Finally, I could point out that banning vending-machine drinks while leaving Starbucks untouched is a pretty rank example of class privilege at work — my indulgences are sophisticated and upper-class, while yours are vulgar and prole.

And, I imagine I hardly need to make the case that this ban is the thin end of a wedge, and that comprehensive regulation of sugar, fat, and salt is on the way.

While it’s easy to fall into this logic trap of nanny-state and calorie-police, let’s take a step back and see the whole picture shall we?

1. Calories. It’s not about the calories. Nutrition is not just minimizing calories. Comparing milk to Coke and claiming the latter shouldn’t be banned because it’s less fattening than milk is plain demagogy. A person subsisting on 1500 calories a day from Taco Bell will not be better off compared to someone consuming 1700 calories a day from real food.

2. Personal Liberty. All those who believe they are born with free choice, need to take a few classes in marketing psychology to understand how limited their scope of personal freedom really is in today’s America. In fact, our free choice is really the freedom to choose between Pepsi and Coke, not freedom to choose a healthy lifestyle. There are too many psychological cues pushing the average Joe and Jane towards obesity – mostly cheap unhealthy fare available anywhere anytime.

The important and brave step taken by the city of San Francisco is in raising the awareness level of consumers (and other policy makers) to the gravity of the obesity epidemic. The soda ban, more than anything else, is a symbolic gesture acknowledging that drastic measures are needed in these nutritionally dire day and age. Letting industry pressures and out of context libertarian dogma take the place of common sense will not serve the public interest in the long term.

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  • http://www.foliodeux.com elisabeth

    Portion size is more important to me. I wish that vending machines would offer smaller amounts of drinks — even fruit juice. Many of the bottles offered are for multiple servings. I’d like to be able to get 8 oz. of something, even a soda!, instead of 20 oz. or more. Offering reasonable serving sizes would help people to learn what a reasonable serving is and act as an immediate curb on empty calories.

    • http://www.fooducate.com/blog Editorial Staff

      @elisabeth – agreed. In Japan, the cans and bottles are for 8 oz servings.

  • http://www.healthhabits.ca Doug

    Governments love bans, restrictions, bylaws & taxes – they live for that stuff.

    next up are the soda taxes – these taxes will be large enough to make it look like they are doing “something” yet small enough to be passed by skittish politicians worried about angering the sugar/junk food lobby groups

    Unfortunately, research shows that small taxes have little influence on buying decisions…ironically, taxes large enough to influence behavior will never pass over the required political hurdles

  • http://www.psychiclunch.com Psychic Lunch

    I’m very torn on these kinds of issues. I’m very much in favor of the government NOT telling us what to eat or how to live, but on the other hand I totally understand how the average consumer can so very, very easily be led carrot-on-a-line style to buying and eating poor quality food choices.

    For example, right now the government (by which I mean a mixture of federal and state governments) is really cracking down on the sale of unpasteurized (raw) milk, and this irritates me to no end since raw milk, when created properly, is far healthier than commercially-produced milk. So that’s an example of the nanny state interfering with food for a negative health effect.

    I think, if this kind of thing must be passed into law, that it should never breach the city level of government, or on rare occasion, state level. This way, if you personally disagree with a particular ban, you have much more personal power of affecting your lifestyle; you can either get involved with your local government to make an active change for your place of residence, or you can get up and “easily” move somewhere else.

    -Dan

  • http://landanimal.wordpress.com/ Jo

    I agree with the first comment talking about portion size. Everything I read recommends that you cut back on sugary sodas, not eliminate them entirely. I think the law is trying to encourage cutting back, which is the right step. I will admit I am definitely not a libertarian so my opinion isn’t going to swing that way too often, but I do understand people’s outrage. It is important to remember that soda is not banned outright and while it does stamp out personal choice at the vending machine, you are free to pick up soda elsewhere.

  • Cher

    I do not agree with the banning of any foods or drinks. I have lived quite well on about 3 sodas a year for the last 10 and the government didn’t have to limit my choices or tell me not to drink them. It IS about choice and we all have them to make. The government has no business telling anyone what they can and can’t eat. It’s becomes about who makes the profits through government control of industries. Just look at the mega-agriculture industries and the control of raw milk sales! I would be very interested in finding the back story on this one. Who is benefiting from this ban? How about CA juice companies? Why only vending machines? A lot of unanswered questions and I don’t really believe it’s ever about the “health” of the people.

  • Jason

    This is about government control and has nothing to do with “raising the awareness level of consumers”. How exactly does it do this? How does it help consumers grasp the “gravity of the obesity epidemic”. Maybe people will just think San Fran hates soda vending machines?

    When you say “drastic measures”, don’t you mean draconian measures?

    This is nothing more than a minor inconvenience for anyone looking for a soda when they can go in any store and get one or any number of low quality, calorie-dense convenience foods. Seems poorly thought out IMO. Once the government “takes the liberty” of banning foods they deem “unhealthy”, where does it stop?

    If San Fran really cared about “raising the level of awareness”, they would tax the sales of these soft drinks (which I don’t agree with either) and use it to educate people or at least put it to a much more targeted use. But the ban is well beyond misguided. This is about San Fran trying craft their own little utopian state, while throwing liberty to the wind.

  • Nancy

    This isn’t about obesity…it’s about giving up your right to make decisions for yourself and take responsibility for your own actions. The more the government intercedes in decisions of this nature–what you eat–the more people accept that the government can tell them how to live their lives. It may seem like a stretch that it’s a contribution to the erosion of our liberties but, that’s exactly what it is.

    BTW – what makes soda the big culprit for creating obesity in the US? How does SF plan to control the consumption of processed foods, those with sugar or fat content over a reasonable percentage, HFCS…and on and on?

  • Vince

    From my reading of the article, this really isn’t a ban on soft drinks at all. Yes, the city is restricting the sale of soft drinks on city-owned property. But I have a hunch that the vast majority of soft drink sales are made at private venues and not on city property. The law certainly doesn’t stop anybody from grabbing a few six-packs of Coke in a supermarket, carrying them inside city hall, and having a chug-fest in front of the Mayor’s office. And it doesn’t stop any parent from filling his or her child’s lunchbox with Pepsi, Ring-Dings, and Cheetos and sending the kid to school. In short, it really doesn’t restrict one’s freedom at all … unless one thinks that we each have a constitutional right to purchase sodas at the state department of motor vehicles rather than have to suffer the indignity of trotting across the street to purchase them at a privately-owned convenience store on private property.

    I was a soda addict up until fairly recently. But I don’t think I’ve had more than a couple dozen sodas since the beginning of the second GW Bush administration. I’m all for getting people to reduce their consumption of soft drinks. But I think that bans like this are ineffective. Worse, they put people on the defensive against a perceived nanny state. Yes, the city probably has the right to restrict sales of items on city-owned property. (I’d have a *big* problem with it if they told stores on private property to stop selling sodas.) But I wonder if the level of outrage that the directive has generated is really worth it.

  • http://www.212baby.com Karol

    I don’t understand your second point about liberty. There may be marketing cues , as you say, but ultimately the consumer DOES have the free choice to say no to both coke and pepsi (I drink neither, btw). The only thing limiting personal freedom is the government, not marketing departments.

    • http://www.fooducate.com/blog Editorial Staff

      @karol the consumer has a free choice to a certain extent. But if the free choice is to choose between coke or pepsi, because they are available at every street corner, whilst water fountains are in disrepair and disappearing from public locales and shopping malls, then people are nudged to make the unhealthy decisions.

  • http://www.livingitupcornfree.com kc

    I think this ban is nothing more than political maneuvering. As much as I hate to see everyone guzzling down GMO corn water, I can’t get behind the city banning any food or drink (or herb for that matter). Why not just ban all sales of processed foods inside schools? Probably because the stuff they put on the lunch plate is just as bad as the stuff in the vending machines. Adults have every right to drink up, but we have a responsibility to keep children safe. Restricting access to processed foods of any kind during school hours seems reasonable to me (similar in scope to limiting alcohol sales to adults only), but banning only soft drinks in vending machines seems ineffectual and lame.

  • Madison

    Personally, now that Obamacare has passed, I think all of us healthy conscious eaters have to hope the government becomes more of a nanny state. I eat really well, exercise, and take care of myself but have MS and I know for a fact that my necessary medical care has gotten shoved back because of obesity related issues. This is very concerning and goes into overdrive with Obamacare.

  • Ray Butlers

    The Cato Institute, like the Reason Foundation and other “libertarian” institutions make it their business (literally – since business is the source of their funding) to elucidate hysterical ideas like soda bans and smoking restrictions and ignore their own principles. They could indeed be placing the issue of farm, food, and energy subsidies on the political radar, but they do no such thing. They barely lift a finger when it comes to programs that line the pockets of major industries while leaving wage-earning in the cold. More often then not, they defend the abhorrent practices of tobacco marketing, ignore the impact of farm subsidies on the food supply, and all the adherent pressures on consumers’ psyches. Additionally, they work very hard to remove any tools that consumers might use to control the pervasive, aggressive marketing of junk food in our diet all in the name of “freedom”. To libertarians, “freedom” means the freedom to take subsidies from taxpayers and the “freedom” to take advantage of marketing dollars to control the behavior of millions.

    Incidentally, those who are concerned about “government interference” should consider the level of government intrusion into the commidities markets that result in huge doses of sugar in food product after food product.