Tue, Nov 24 2009
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Published September 27, 2009 10:29 am - Americans on the whole apparently don't like the idea of being healthy. Taxing sugary drinks won’t make us healthy ROBERT LEBZELTER column for Sept. 27, 2009 Star Beacon Americans on the whole apparently don't like the idea of being healthy. There's a sizable, although I doubt a majority, of people who fight health-care reforms. They deem it socialistic and the end of our freedoms if Americans are guaranteed fair-priced health care that won't allow insurers to reject a claim for trivial reasons. While opponents warn of these fictitious “death squads,” real people die because insurance companies won't pay out. What can be more American than dying because you can't afford medical care? Answer? Nothing is more American, because this is the only industrial country where it happens regularly. OK, that ends my commentary on health insurance. Americans also apparently don't like being healthy because they eat poorly, fall for the fast-food commercials and sugary drinks reign supreme. You may have read in this newspaper about another suggestion by health professionals, printed in the New England Journal of Medicine, that we should tax sweetened beverages a penny an ounce. So if 12-ounce cans of pop in your company vending machine right now are, say, 75 cents, the plan would boost that to 87 cents. Of course, no vending machine would charge that, they would absorb the two cents and charge 85 cents. OK, OK. I was joking. They would add three cents and your cost would be 90 cents per can. That would cause mass grumbling. Before I continue, this will never happen. The soft-drink industry is too powerful. People would scream. If people like to drink soda pop, they will continue to buy and drink it. If it costs more, maybe they will put back the bag of frozen lima beans or apples to make ends meet. In an alternate universe, if this passed, what would be considered sugary drinks? Would it include sweetened ice tea, lemonade, sports drinks, Kool-aid? What about diet drinks that have artificial sweeteners. Would they be exempt? Scrape up 90 cents for the full-powered Coke, but only 75 cents for the Diet Coke? I have my own theory on America's love affair with soda pop and it's based somewhat on personal experience. You want to hear, don't you? As a baby boomer, soda pop was relatively rare in our house. It was cool to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house because they had Teem, a lemon-lime soda, available. But pop at our house was for rare occasions. Milk was the preferred drink (yuck then, yuck now.) Pop was reserved for celebrations and treats. I remember rationing for myself a three-quarter full coffee cup of the elusive,oh-so-tasty fluid. We would ride our bikes when old enough to Anthony's Market where a machine would dispense 16-ounce bottles for 12 cents (that's less than the proposed tax.) But with an allowance of 30 cents per week, you couldn't blow it all on pop. So as we baby boomers got older, we rejected the previous generation’s belief that pop should be rationed and kept for special occasions. As a kid, soda pop in a restaurant cost maybe a dime or 15 cents, but if you wanted a refill, it cost another dime or 15 cents. Today, every restaurant offers bottomless fill-ups, although at $2 or more a crack. We didn’t get what we wanted as youngsters so we’re gonna have it now, baby. If I decide to drink a soda, often for its helpful caffeine, my choice is Vanilla Coke Zero, which tastes like it is full of tasty sugar, but isn't. (You folks at Coke, if you want to send me a monetary reward for saying that, feel free.) A very interesting Web site, www.twofoods.com, compares any two foods for calories, carbs, fat and protein. 
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