OPINION: Soda ban: The battle is far from over
A Manhattan judge took the fizz out of New York City’s attempt to ban large sugary beverages at restaurants, handing the soft drink and fast food industries a major victory and sending a pointed message to the mayor and the city’s board of health about regulatory overreach.
But the rejection of New York’s big soda ban is unlikely to quell the calls for food and beverage companies to address the negative health effects of their offerings. From the successful campaign against trans fats to San Francisco’s ban on toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals to First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity, makers of junk foods face a widening public-relations battle.
After New York proposed its groundbreaking ban last year, the mayor of Cambridge, Mass., weighed in on the desirability of doing the same in her city. New York’s ban – which would have fined restaurants serving sugary beverages in cups bigger than 16 ounces – would have been a highly visible symbol of progress for that movement.
“This ban sends a signal to large soda manufacturers and fast food chains that ‘anything does not go,’ ” wrote Nancy Neiman Auerbach, a professor who studies food politics at Scripps College in Los Angeles, in an e-mail before the court’s verdict. “That is, there are and should be limits to the externalizing of costs that get borne by the public in order to reduce costs and increase profitability of large producers.”