More power to him
Mayor Bloomberg is attacking our single biggest public health problem, says world’s top anti-sugar crusader
Michael Bloomberg is the best Jewish mother New York City could ever have. I don’t mean this disrespectfully — this is true affection. Despite the fact that I departed my native city 22 years ago (born in Brooklyn) and he’s not even the real “knish” (Boston and Brookline, Mass.), he’s still my mayor. Because he cares about me — and believe it or not, he cares about you too.
Some would portray him as the wicked nanny. “You can’t smoke here” or “Don’t eat your transfats” is as imperious as President Obama’s “Eat your peas,” they say. Others might cast him as the worst kind of Jewish mother — that stereotypically domineering personality with a neurotic over-involvement with his charges.
As someone who wants healthy kids and adults above all else, I say he’s the best kind of Jewish mother. In fact, rather than being too bold, his move to ban sodas larger than 16 ounces in restaurants, movie theaters and other places where you buy them to drink them immediately is, if anything, too timid.
Bloomberg is indeed a rare breed: a politician who embraces public health. It’s so easy to chalk increasing rates of environmentally-related disease up to “personal responsibility,” so you don’t have to pay for it. Cholera, tuberculosis, lead poisoning, vitamin deficiencies, polio vaccines, pollution/asthma — these were all considered “personal responsibility” before the sheer magnitude of morbidity or mortality commanded governmental intervention. Even teen pregnancy and AIDS — linked to the most “personal” of acts — are now accepted to be public health concerns.
Politicians are judged on how well they help their constituents make money. Public health routinely spends money, with the eventual but virtually unrealized goal of saving money.
Truth is, Bloomberg is too rich to be bought off by the food industry, as opposed to members of the executive and legislative branches in Washington. That’s a fact we should cheer, not jeer. Public health measures to reduce consumption of any substance include taxation, restriction or interdiction. The proposed Big Gulp ban makes perfect sense as a restriction — as did his proposal to prevent people from using food stamps to buy soda, denied last year by the U.S. Depa r t ment of Agriculture.
Why pick on soda, when all varieties of junk food are pervasive and pernicious? Because sugar is toxic. It’s not just empty calories. Sugar kills, and does so slowly.
That’s because sugar does three things that other calories don’t. First,
We have a choice: Ignore this crisis or attack it
sugar is metabolized within the liver to fat, damaging the liver (33% of all adults today suffer from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease), causing “insulin resistance,” driving up blood insulin levels and contributing to diabetes, hypertension, obesity, heart disease and stroke.
Second, sugar speeds up the aging process. The same “browning reaction” that occurs when you slather your ribs with barbecue sauce occurs in all your cells when exposed to sugar. This leads to protein inflexibility and cellular damage, reducing lifespan.
And lastly, sugar promotes excessive caloric consumption. By deadening the brain’s “reward system,” sugar has the same effects as other drugs of dependence to promote excessive consumption. Sugar promotes a vicious cycle of consumption and disease. This is why children now have the same chronic metabolic diseases as 60-year-olds. Their bodies are old before their time. Plus, liquid calories do not induce satiety. Give a kid a soda, and he eats more, not less.
What gives Bloomberg the moral imperative to attack this problem? Simple. We really only have two choices. It’s either personal responsibility all the way — if you get sick, you pay or you die. That’s the Russian system. And of course it’s done wonders for curbing their alcoholism, hasn’t it?
Or it ’s public health all the way — and we get behind some sensible societal interventions that can tame this beast.
You can’t have it both ways. If you make yourself sick, and you expect Bloomberg to pay for it, he should have something to say about it. Like any good Jewish mother who took your allowance away for buying pot.
The question is not whether Bloomberg should act like your mother. The question is whether we’re going to learn anything from the punishment. There is no question that reducing sugar consumption will improve individual and public health.
The question is, will banning Big Gulps reduce sugar consumption? The American Heart Association recommends we cut our added sugar consumption from 450 to 150-200 calories/day. A 16 oz. soda is 200. Still too high.
Furthermore, I recall a cartoon from the Dallas Morning News a few years back that showed a kid at the fast food counter. Before Supersizing, he orders a Supersize fries. After Supersizing, he requests 16 orders of fries.
No, banning Big Gulps alone won’t cut sugar consumption nearly enough. But it still makes sense for the unspoken message it sends: that society has a responsibility to care for each an every one of us. A message every Jewish mother implicitly understands.