Enough Is Too Much

In this week’s New Yorker, Lizzie Widdicombe writes of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed policy to restrict restaurants from serving sodas in containers larger than 16oz. The outcry against this sensible policy has been so hyperbolic that you’d think he was suggesting a federal mandate to purchase health insurance coverage.

You weren’t just imagining that snark – there’s been an uproar against Bloomberg’s rational (though paternalistic) policies – against smoking, transfats and now sugars – that likens them to Rockefeller era drug laws. It’s insane. It’s like comparing universal health insurance to mandatory broccoli.

Don’t get me wrong. Overall I think Bloomberg is a power hungry plutocrat hell bent on privatizing public services. But he’s got this right. The war on drugs fought an imaginary enemy, based on inflated claims of risk that demonized addicts and needlessly swelled our prison populations.

But how did we get obese? How did we end up manufacturing containers that could even hold up to a gallon of a corn syrup-based concoction meant for immediate consumption? For starters, by looking the other way when giant multinational corporations that specialize in food products – not foods – took over our movie theatres and our children’s schools.

So let’s step back and say, how do we deal with this? This real, legitimate public health policy concern of a populace plagued by morbid obesity, by unheard of rates of type 2 diabetes in children? Do we say, you can’t have more than sixteen ounces of soda? No. We say, you, peddler of soda, please don’t source your cups from these manufacturers who make colossal vessels unless you’d like to pay a fine. A fine to offset our city’s costs associated with children made ill by too much sugar intake.

We know that the corn industry propagated the “super sized” culture we live in – to find more ways to use up their surpluses. Tell me – where is the harm in allowing our public officials to offset that influence with narrowly tailored, easily implemented regulations designed to temper our natural American tendency to finish what’s in front of us, to clean our plates, to drink long after our thirst is quenched?

Bloomberg’s measures are a gentle nudge in the direction of normalizing our consumption. It’s a way of saying, let’s think about what we consume, and how much of it. Let’s just try having an eight ounce soda at dinner and see how that goes. Maybe we won’t need or crave or mindlessly consume giant portions at other meals, or between them, if we can manage moderation at this one. Not a ban, not a prohibition, not an outlawed substance or activity. Just a reasonably regulated indulgence.

Hm. Seems like that might just be the right way to approach a rational drug policy in this country too. Baby steps.