Editorial: Soda pop won’t stop, even if banned

Soda pop gets a bad reputation, admittedly for good reasons. ’N Sync went so far as to call it… Soda pop gets a bad reputation, admittedly for good reasons. ’N Sync went so far as to call it “dirty” pop, and apparently, baby, you can’t stop liking that dirty pop. Oh wait, wrong pop.

But let’s make like Justin Timberlake and set ’N Sync aside, because New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg might be taking it a little too far in trying to ban New York’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) users from buying pop and other sugary drinks with their food stamps, according to The New York Times.

Currently, the only items that cannot be purchased with food stamps are alcohol and tobacco products.

To be fair, like these products, pop provides virtually no nutritional benefit. But the same is true of a lot of foods at supermarkets.

We feel this new ban on sugary beverages unfairly targets food-stamp recipients as making unhealthy choices, even though everyone could benefit from drinking fewer Pepsis.

The New York Times reports that “health advocates make it clear that they would like to improve everybody’s diet, not just that of food-stamp recipients, through measures like a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.”

If pop is really on the same level as alcohol and tobacco products, then taxing seems like the next logical move for decreasing its consumption, not banning it from SNAP purchases.

But even taxing might not help decrease the use of such an inexpensive product.

Forcing people to be healthy actually turns out to be pretty hard.

And despite the correlation between increased pop consumption and increased obesity rates, pop is not solely responsible for weight gain.

So how many things do we have to tax or ban from food-stamp programs before Americans are healthy?

It’s also important to note that the purpose of the food-stamp program was to “enlarge the choices of poor and hungry people, rather than to limit them to the most nutritious items,” The New York Times says.

Mayor Bloomberg’s effort to ban pop is a mild example of the government attempting to control human behavior.

When it comes down to it, we’re pretty sure most people know that regular pop drinking is not conducive to good health, yet they continue to drink it anyway. Consumers should have the option to do that, and they should definitely have the option to drink pop in moderation.

After all, the occasional Dr Pepper won’t kill you.