(No!) More Sugar??? Is Mayor Bloomberg Kidding????

Tomorrow the silly soda ban begins in New York City:  restaurants will not be allowed to sell sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces.  Customers will be allowed to refill their drinks, or have their drinks refilled.  (Yes, since normally a 32-ounce drink is cheaper than 16-ounce ones, then customers who like their soda are going to pay more.)   Deliveries will be affected, since restaurants will not be allowed to sell large sized bottles of soda.  (Domino's is really really torqued off by this thing.)

But the real idiocy will happen at your local barista.   If you want a coffee larger than 16 ounces, be aware that if you like it very sweet, that server at Dunkin' Donuts will only be able to put a certain number of sugar packets in that coffee of yours.  Of course, you can put as much sugar as you want, but the restaurant can't do it, or face fines up to $2,000 bucks.

Simple question:

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

This is just plain silly.  There's a whole set of guidelines as to what kind of drink is allowed a certain amount of sugar.  Lattes are not held to this standard because they have lots of milk, which is still nutritious (until we start letting aspartame in the milk and still call it milk).  Zero-calorie sweeteners of course are exempt, so you can have your barista put in all the sweet and low and splenda and the aforementioned aspartame you want.   But why is the city making it so complicated for people?

There is a lawsuit against this ban, and who knows if the next mayor of the city will keep the ban, if it does survive the lawsuit.  I tend to be supportive of the idea that government is actually a generally decent thing: I think it's good to have the food industry regulated to keep disease from my food; I like that drugs have to be federally approved before being sold on the marketplace; I like having roads; I think having authorities make sure the water is clean is pretty nice.  (Worth noting: the Clean Air and Water Act was signed into law by Richard Nixon.)   But this seems like a really ridiculous intrusion into consumer preferences.  It treats the consumer like a child.  Worse, my tax dollars are being spent to have people figure out how much sugar is supposed to be in this or that coffee, and health inspectors are going to have to spend extra time trying to make sure the Starbucks barista hasn't overdone it on the sugar instead of checking for botulism or rodents in the Dunkin' Donuts.

Let's face it; soda is really bad for you.  Too much sugar is bad for you.  If you want to tax the hell out of such products, and use those funds to help fund health care in the city, that's fine with me.  (That's where a lot of the taxes on tobacco products go.)  But simply to take the choices off the menu is petty and wasteful for everyone.