PHAWKER: An extra 25 cents on the cost of a Diabetes-inducing beverage that would fund school buses and all-day kindergarten is unacceptable? How could any reasonable person, who’s name is not Coke or Pepsi, oppose this?
TEAMSTERS LOCAL 404: Curbing obesity and improving health may be how some legislators describe the soda tax, but the truth is, it’s all about the money. Soda taxes were proposed last year in Pennsylvania and New York and, thanks to Teamster input, swiftly turned down by legislators. Hundreds of Teamster members work in the soft drink distribution business and the threat of a tax which could gave impacted their jobs created tension that bled across state lines. The job-killing threat could become real to working families again, however. MORE
PHAWKER: That a 12 cent tax on a can of soda would somehow kill jobs seems about as likely as allowing gay people to get married would lead to an epidemic of homosexuality and beastiality. Oh wait, this just in…
NEW YORK TIMES: The American Journal of Public Health released a study this afternoon finding that when the price of soda goes up, consumption goes down. MORE
PHAWKER: OK, so maybe raising the price of a soda would lead to an epidemic of homosexuality and beastiality reduce consumption. Fine with us. Jobs that facilitate the spread of morbid obesity and diabetes are NOT ‘good jobs.’ In fact they are a menace to society.
RELATED: For over a hundred years, soda companies been selling products with ingredients that we now know are linked to diabetes, obesity, gout and kidney stones. Those are some of the effects of the High Fructose Corn Syrup and phosphoric acid found in conventional sodas. And yet, despite the fact that these soda products are demonstrably harmful to human health, the soda industry has been working hard for many decades to convince parents to feed their infants and children more soda. MORE
RELATED: In a study published in the journal Epidemiology, the team compared the dietary habits of 465 people with chronic kidney disease and 467 healthy people. After controlling for various factors, the team found that drinking two or more colas a day — whether artificially sweetened or regular — was linked to a twofold risk of chronic kidney disease. But drinking two or more noncola carbonated drinks a day, they found, did not increase the risk. The authors of the study say more research is needed, but their findings support the long-held notion that something about cola — the phosphoric acid, for example, or the ability of cola to pull calcium from bones — seems to increase the risk of kidney stones, renal failure and other conditions affecting the kidneys. MORE
RELATED: “The relationship between soft drink consumption and body weight is so strong that researchers calculate that for each additional soda consumed, the risk of obesity increases 1.6 times.” MORE
RELATED: One extra soft drink a day gave a child a 60 percent greater chance of becoming obese. One could even link specific amounts of soda to specific amounts of weight gain. Each daily drink added .18 points to a child’s body mass index (BMI). This, the researchers noted, was regardless of what else they ate or how much they exercised. “Consumption of sugar [high fructose
corn syrup]-sweetened drinks,” they concluded, “is associated with obesity in children.” MORE
RELATED: Twenty-one percent of the sugar in the American diet comes from soft drinks! That’s more than just an unhealthy consumption of empty calories. It is a dangerous overload of caffeine and potentially hazardous, nutrient-depleting additives. Soft drinks contain large amounts of phosphorus, which can throw off the body’s calcium/phosphorus ratio (twice as much calcium as phosphorus), decreasing calcium as well as reducing your body’s ability to use it. For anyone over age 40, soft drinks can be especially hazardous because the kidneys are less able to excrete excess phosphorus, causing depletion of vital calcium. Heavy soft drink consumption can interfere with your body’s metabolization of iron and diminish nerve impulse transmission. Cola drinks can interact adversely with antacids, possibly causing constipation, calcium loss, hypertension, nausea, vomiting, headaches, and
kidney damage. Soft drinks can decrease the antibacterial action of penicillin and ampicillin. MORE