I seem to be seeing soda-based freak outs a lot lately. Its long been a favored thing to blame fat people on, but now that the economy is struggling, that fear is mutating into a desire to tax it like cigarettes.
Listen up. Soda isn't like cigarettes. The correlation between smoking and disease is very high. The supposedly slam-dunk correlation between fatness and disease is much, much, MUCH smaller than the smoking link. Mean, the link between smoking and cigarettes is pretty well established. The link between soda and fatness? Well, not so much proven or evidence based, but gosh doesn't it seem like there are tons of fatties these days? I don't think people drank soda back in the time before fatness. That must be to blame. That or any of the other thousand guesses people have. Oh, except dieting. Mustn't point out that people DIET way more than they used to and DIETING actually has been shown to induce weight gain unlike soda.
Like with trans-fat, I'll allow that there might be cause for concern with corn syrup, though it seems mostly conjecture. But if HFCS is the villain of this story, go after it. Don't promise an end to the fatness, because its not going to happen. Right now, as I type, thin people are drinking soda and not turning into big ol' fatties. Honest. Look it up. Like most "end fatness" schemes, this one will fail but another will rise from the ashes. The phoenix of fat hatred always seems to live another day.
