Fizzy legislation

I realize this is an unpopular view, but I'm kind of OK with - make that essentially in favor of - the Bloomberg giant-soda ban. Easy for me to say, because I have trouble finishing a half-size can of the stuff,* and don't really like soda, and on the rare occasions I'm up for it, can absolutely go either way re: diet vs. regular. Oh, and I don't live in the city.

Do I think the ban will reverse all negative health trends associated with How Americans Eat Today? No, but I think the counterarguments are mostly pointless, and that the law has the potential to do some good. If it had the potential to do all the good in the world, I'd say that then we'd also have good reason to complain about it, because no one (Jane Brody?) wants government-mandated kale side dishes.

So:

-We've completely forgotten what sensible portions consist of. If you watch an old TV show ("The Dick Van Dyke Show," say), you might notice that the actors, even the ones playing "fat" characters, are slim, but then you remember that this is often still the case, because everyone on TV must be baseline conventionally attractive. But you'll also notice that the portions characters are shown as eating are tiny. The cereal Richie eats in the morning comes in a tiny box, like from a multi-variety pack, or from a "family" pack that's about the size of what we'd consider a bowl of cereal today. And so on. We need to get back to a different idea of what "a soda" consists of, and the market isn't going to get us there. This law is brilliant in that it insists on showing us what a reasonable amount consists of, but doesn't insist we follow those instructions.

-The main counterargument (other than 'wah, nanny state') this move has gotten is that it's still legal to drink your own weight in soda, as long as you have it in 16-oz-or-less intervals. Clever, yes, those who point this out. But this loophole is integral - the point of the law is not to make it illegal to consume massive quantities of soda. It's to make it illegal for you to end up with a bucket of soda without even thinking about it. For a bucket to be a default. That consuming soda continuously day-in and day-out remains legal means, if nothing else, that the nanny-state argument falls short. If downing soda by the kegful happens to be your pleasure, Big Brother isn't coming for you with handcuffs or so much as a fine.

-'But then they'll come for my [whichever greasy food].' When the issue with soda is that it a) has no nutritional value, and b) doesn't, evidently, let your body know you've 'eaten'. You're in all likelihood in far more danger of eating too much junk because that's what's subsidized than in the government knocking on your door to ask if you really need a second helping of the Haagen Dazs.

-'But people will still eat unhealthy food, and it's not as if a smaller/diet soda cancels it out! You see those foolish people with their double cheeseburger and diet Coke, like that matters!' That the law doesn't address all ways people eat badly is, if anything, a reason to approve of it more. (See above.)

-'But alcohol doesn't have nutritional value, either!' And typically, if you're going to drink more than 16 ounces of the stuff, you're going to have to buy more than one beverage. Plus, red wine, antioxidants, French and Italian people not getting fat, prohibition would cause a different host of problems, and so on.

-There isn't really a fat-acceptance-movement counterargument, because there the issue is health at any size, which in soda terms means that some people avoid 32-ounce Cokes and still weigh 400 pounds.

-The best counter-counterarguments, as far as I can tell, are a) some people - not many, but some - need to gain weight, and if soda isn't the healthiest way to do it, it's a cheap source of easy-for-many-to-down calories, and b) soda isn't a controlled substance, and there's something inherently arbitrary and contrarian-libertarian-response-eliciting about the government deciding precisely how many ounces are and are not OK. I don't find these two all that convincing.

-There's also, whenever soda comes up, the quasi-patronizing class argument - YPIS if you don't personally consume soda's half your own height on a regular basis. Not convinced here either. I suspect that this law is about impacting the behavior of the young-and-thus-still-malleable, and if jumbo-soda consumption is a bit of a class indicator among adults, it's far less of one among preteens and teens. (If mass-produced junk food was consumed by students at a girls' school on the Upper East Side, granted 100 years ago...) And if we're going to go with the now-classic 'but this vice is all They have to look forward to, with their horrible tragic poor-person jobs that aren't investment banking or fashion editing', we need only remember that the law does not prohibit soda consumption, or even filling your bathtub with soda and getting a straw.

PG, anyone else keen on telling me why I'm wrong, have at it.

*Can't usually finish a coffee, either. And yet, I'm confident that I could win a pasta-eating contest. The human body works in mysterious ways.