Tyranny Begets Tyranny

"The young woman was reacting to a New York City regulation, to take effect on March 12, limiting to 16 ounces the size of sugar-sweetened soft drinks available for purchase at restaurants, street carts, movie theaters and sporting events. The Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the new home of the Nets, has already imposed this limit. Convenience stores, vending machines and some newsstands are exempted from the regulation.  Several new studies underscore the public health potential of the restriction. If it succeeds in curbing the consumption of sweet liquid calories, it is likely to be copied elsewhere, because the nation's love affair with super-size sugary soft drinks is costing cities and states billions of dollars annually in medical care."   

Uh, how about having the government stop advocating low fat, high carb diets?  Notice the author's disclaimer paragraph which allows her to skirt the larger question of the health impact of carbs generally: 

"Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Laboratory at Cornell University, explained that beverages aren't as filling as solid food because they lack texture and "mouth feel," and we "tend to consume them so fast they don't register."  

I have mixed feelings - wrong to limit human choice, wrong to mis-educate based on bad science, wrong to give the sugar beverage industry a pass while pounding the meat and whole fat dairy folks. It's government gone wrong. 

And yet, there's virtually no doubt that doses of sugary drinks above 12 ounces a day become problematic very rapidly. And sports drinks are just as much to blame as coca cola and its competitors.  It's also wrong to limit smokers, but I sure like being able to dine without the smokefest around.  The truth is, the whole "public health" and "environmental protection" concepts are another means to justify tyranny and get people used to the idea that wise and well informed superiors know more about how to take care of us than we do of ourselves, and more about our self interest than we do.  

And nit-wits like Jane Brody are more than willing to strap on their lemming suits and march on.