http://www.kcbs.com/…

For years, the idea of taxing soda to beat back obesity has been tossed around in medical circles. But now, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing a tax on beverages high in fructose corn syrup.

Newsom says obesity accounts for tens of millions of dollars in city health care costs. He cites a recent San Francisco Health Department survey that found nearly a quarter of the city’s 5th, 7th and 9th graders were overweight and that high sugar drinks make up a tenth of a kid’s daily calorie count.

Newsom reportedly wants all big box retailers and chain drug stores to pay into his new “Shape up San Francisco” program, which started this past summer with a walking regimen.

This comes as the state of California is considering slapping caffeine-infused sodas, and energy drinks with warning labels, saying consumption can contribute to diabetes.

This isn’t about obesity. They outright admit it’s about money. They don’t want to or can’t continue to mandate required city health care if the costs keep rising. Lets look at the entirety of this situation. The federal government steals your money through income taxation. They use some of that money to subsidize the corn industry and the fructose corn syrup industry in particular. In addition to that there are import quotas and tariffs on sugar. Those force the domestic price of sugar to more than twice the world price and lowers the cost of high-fructose corn syrup. According to Wikipedia Coca-Cola uses sugar internationally but HFCS domestically. Some believe that HFCS has greater health risks than sucrose. So here we have you paying for a possibly dangerous sweetener to be used in food which San Fran would like to then tax you for consuming. They want to tax you at the cash register so they don’t have to tax everyone else for your greater use of the mandatory health system. Of course the soda companies have something to say about this.

“It makes no sense to single out any one single cause of obesity, which is a complex problem,” said Kevin Keane, a senior vice president of the American Beverage Association, the trade group for $105-billion-a-year nonalcoholic beverage industry.

Keane said that if Newsom really wanted to fight the fat, he would take on computer and video game companies, which Keane said lured children inside when they should “be outside burning calories.”

Another person passes the blame. Lets see who has more sway in the California and San Francisco government: the beverage or videogame companies. Will they start placing “no fatties” taxes on Pepsi or Nintendo? Why can’t these people place blame on those who cause the obesity? The fat asses who eat and drink these things in excess and in the case of children their parents. Why not be honest and say that the reason they want to implement this tax is because people don’t want to actually pay for the socialist single payer health system pipedream they claim they want?

The soda proposal will be introduced to the Board of Supervisors early next year, Ballard said, and would affect only large retailers, not mom-and-pop stores. As for levies on other child-friendly delicacies, Ballard added, “The mayor has no intention of imposing a fee on pizza.”

Yet. Not as if the pizza is worth eating in San Fran.

http://www.reuters.com/…

PepsiCo Inc. will spell out that its Aquafina bottled water is made with tap water, a concession to the growing environmental and political opposition to the bottled water industry.

According to Corporate Accountability International, a U.S. watchdog group, the world’s No. 2 beverage company will include the words “Public Water Source” on Aquafina labels.

“If this helps clarify the fact that the water originates from public sources, then it’s a reasonable thing to do,” said Michelle Naughton, a Pepsi-Cola North America spokeswoman.

This is quite funny. Some companies already do this. I suppose it’s a good thing to inform the customer of but if a person doesn’t realize that most of the bottle water is just taken from a local public filtering plant then I’m not concerned with what the label says. The whole bottled water thing is silly. You pay more per unit for water then gasoline yet you get effectively the exact same thing from the tap in 90% of the country. I really recommend Penn and Teller’s Bullshit episode to see how ridiculous it all is.