Sweet

Yesterday colleagues and I took the kids to Lake Compounce, an amusement park sponsored by Pepsi where you can get free, unlimited soda all day with your admission.  Before letting them jump into the wave pool and scream on the roller coasters, I gathered my group and essentially begged them to please stay hydrated by limiting the soda intake and drinking water.  As I laid out my plea, the kids jokingly rolled their eyes at me and started finishing my sentences in chorus.  They have spent the year listening to my occasional tirades on the diabetes inducing "drinks" they sometimes insist on buying and bringing to school, namely those 99 cent Arizona "juices" and "iced teas."  (The quotes are truly necessary because few edible liquids on earth could be father from juice than the crap inside of those brown bottles and tall tin cans.) In some city neighborhoods, you can find even more horrifying substances bottled for kids to consume, called quarter juices. The labels lists no ingredients but water, food coloring, high-fructose corn syrup, and the occasional chemical.  GROSS.  Oh, and they only cost 25 cents, hence the nickname quarter juice.  Thankfully my kids don't drink those nasty things, but they're out there nonetheless, fostering sugar addiction in really young children.

This past week, our Mayor announced that he wants to ban all sugary drinks over 16 ounces within the city limits.  Arms are up.  (I love the way The Young Turks debate the issue here.) A few years ago, New York tried to put a tax on soda and other sugary drinks to create revenue and hopefully discourage the purchasing of such horrifying substances.  No dice, the legislation failed, but it revealed some scary, scary things about people in this country.  There was one commercial that was no doubt sponsored by coke or pepsi or some other drug-dealer posing as food-supplier.  It had a mom who was complaining about how "juice would be taxed too, not just soda."  There was another ad that declared "the pennies add up when you're trying to feed a family." It's clear: we Americans have no idea what we are putting into our bodies.  We don't bother to read labels, we accept advertisements as gospel, and we eat and drink thoughtlessly, with utter disregard to what our bodies need to function and thrive.  Anyone thinking big bottles of soda and other high-sugar drinks should be part of "feeding a family" need a serious and immediate wake-up call.  As a society, we are obsessively seeking convenience.  Our priorities are warped and illogical.  We choose a fancy car and a designer bag over a nice neighborhood and a complete meal.  For most of us, these stupid decisions to focus on material goods over quality of life are not made consciously, but they are made nonetheless and they affect the health of our bodies, minds, children, and economy.  Many people don't consider why things like soda and junk food are so cheap.  It boils down to a simple cliche: you get what you pay for.  If you are more concerned with the cost than the quality of food, you ought to expect to look and feel like crap for most of the hours of most of your days.  Unfortunately, we are so diluted by the pill-popping, convenience paradigm that we don't even realize how truly sick our society is.

When tobacco advertising was phased out we saw a similar uproar that was (unsurprisingly) spurred by and stirred by the tobacco companies themselves.  So is anyone shocked that people are reacting badly to Bloomberg's so-called soda ban?  Any critically thinking human can infer that these responses are fully pressed by the drug-dealers (food producers/providers).  If you're consciously making the straight-up dumb choice to drink soda all day, go forth and be sugared up.  However, as adults we have more to consider than just ourselves and our current state.  We are supposed to be caring for the future as well.  Do we want our children to be part of a productive, competitive, and healthy workforce or do we want them to be riddled with sickness for the rest of their lives?

If you are an adult I really don't care how you abuse your body - smoke, drink in excess, use drugs, eat crap, poison yourself in any way you see fit.  You are sapping our economy, wasting our oxygen, and contributing to raising healthcare costs, but I can let all that go.  What I cannot and will not get down with is exposing kids to any of this abusive behavior.  Our government protects kids from tobacco by disallowing the ads that clearly targeted them; we have a drinking and a smoking age to discourage young people from making stupid choices and discourage companies from turning kids into hosts for their parasitic profits.  Few such regulations exist for protecting our kids from food companies whose moral compass points to the same false North as that of Phillip Morris.

Throughout the day yesterday between asking me to hold their money, glasses, and towels, many of my kiddos ran up to me with big smiles on their faces and clear liquid in their cups. In a tone and inflection clearly designed to gently mock me, they giggled and shouted "look what I have," and "it's water, Ms. Haskell!"  Children should be exposed to information about what they're putting in their bodies and encouraged to make good decisions about eating and drinking.  Since they often are not exposed to such knowledge, someone has to take on the responsibility of keeping them from going into a diabetic coma before they turn eighteen. If that someone turns out to be Bloomberg or "bigger government," then fine, because I could really use the help.