[Content Note: Fat hatred; food policing.]
I have written a lot about former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's (thwarted) attempts to "curb obesity" with soda bans, as well as various proposals to tax certain foods and/or drinks to "curb obesity" or subsidize fat people's healthcare (based on the fallacy that fat people's healthcare is "a drain on the system").
These proposals are, for multiple reasons, garbage. They've always been garbage, they always will be garbage, and a study out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's La Follette School of Public Affairs has found them to be garbage.
Partly, as addressed in the linked article, that's because the disproportionate focus on soda ignores other high-sugar beverages, which are used as replacements. And partly, as also addressed in the article, that's because soda isn't the end-all be-all to Why People Are Fat.
But, as always, it's a deeply complex issue. As long as we live in a country with intense, persistent, and pervasive food insecurity, and soda is one of the cheapest ways to get 100+ calories, people are going to be drinking soda. And that goes for a lot of the other "bad foods" (there are no bad foods when you're starving) that Deeply Concerned Folks demonize, too.
Would that everyone who spends time worrying about the existence of fat people instead invested that energy into making sure everyone had consistent access to the best foods for their bodies.
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