Let people decide for themselves? Alcohol is unhealthy, so it should be banned. Hamburgers are high fat and environmentally impactful, so those should be banned, too. Let's not forget cigarettes....
Yes people should opt to not consume unhealthy stuff, but how much authoritarianism do you really want?
I'm not convinced Rugged Individualism and anything like the modern economy are compatible, in any kind of way in which the outcome of trying to have both is pleasant. It may be a "choose one" kind of situation.
Things like breaking up monopolies, mandating open access to infrastructure, and, yes, countering the effects of companies and advertisers manipulating us and exploiting our weaknesses.
Our societies socialise the costs of peoples’ bad decisions, so it can’t be 100% laissez-faire. That said, I disagree with the Prohibitionist instinct. Adding a tax that pays for the edge-case costs seems to make the most sense.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/do-vegetarians-live-longer...
I realize this is not a very practical worldview.
This gets worse with Monster and others pushing the caffeine limits. (I remember a free Monster giveaway at uni - could not sleep for close to 30h - that stuff is not healthy)
How was the silhouette of the people who drank the most of it?
> Several studies identified a strong, positive association between the use of energy drinks and higher odds of health-damaging behaviours, as well as physical health symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches, hyperactivity and insomnia
One thing I noticed is that people who are for banning soda or alcohol are surprisingly for legalization of soft and hard drugs.
But the state of things in which unlimited free refills of soda is the norm, 64+oz fountain soda servings are common, and 300+ calories of soda are often added on to "combo meals" for effectively just ¢20-¢30 over the cost of the food as a "sweetener" (ha) to get people to choose a combo over a single item, is clearly not great. Something's out-of-whack.
An exaggeration, obviously, but it is really bad. The number of fruits you have to eat to equal a glass of juice is significant.
And here's the thing: Sugar is not a bad thing per se. It's overconsumption of it that's the issue. I'd rather have someone drink fruit juice than soda, but all in moderation.
A search on Google Scholar shows multiple publications exploring the adverse effects on sweeteners on gut microbiome:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=artificial+sweeteners+e...
Also, I think there might actually be some links to type II diabetes, but I'm skeptical of causation on that one. It's not implausible, but fully correcting for people already trying to reduce sugar intake sounds essentially impossible in that case.
I think this should be normalized. In a lot of threads like this, there's some teetotalers that say all vices are bad and you should stop all of them at once.
But vices are fine, in moderation. Having some soda every once in a while is fine. Drinking it by the gallon every day is problematic. But it's been normalized like that by the companies that produce them.
Back in my day (shush kids, grandpa is talking), we got one, maybe two small glasses of soda and some crisps on a sunday. That was it.
Or are you talking about other ingredients?
Even the studies of them being bad for "getting used to sweetness" and thus making people more obese through compensatory over-eating are studies that rely on self-reporting and polling.
When properly controlled, physics works as it always has and you can't magic mass or energy out of thin air.
Diet soda, dunno what to do with that one.