No. Refined sugar is incredibly toxic. It doesn't just rot your teeth, make you obese, and eventually turns you into a Type 2 diabetic, but it also raises the risk of heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer's, and many other conditions.
The direct economic costs - health care costs, lost productivity caused by illness - are immense, and the soda and junk food industries make no contribution towards them.
There are also less direct personal and emotional costs, in the form of family/partner illness and sometimes death.
Some luxuries are similarly toxic, but as a "cheap" luxury sugar abuse affects a much larger demographic.
IMO the ad efforts that support these products are unconscionable, and there's no question the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Whatever marginal risk increase I suffer from my moderate consumption is well worth the guaranteed enjoyment I gain.
A lot of HN users wish to "optimize" these facets of other people's lives through government regulation, but it's no less odious than going up to people in person and knocking their drink to the ground. It's not your choice.
Exactly. I'm more than happy for more labels saying how bad sugary drinks are - like a less extreme version of smoking warnings - but taking a choice away for someone because you think you know better is authoritarian, even if we're only talking about a drink.
It's far more authoritarian to promote industries that spend outrageous sums on manipulating people into harming their own health, with incredibly expensive social and personal consequences.
It's absolutely and completely false to frame this as a government vs individual issue. It's actually corporate propaganda vs the individual.
No one who supports individual freedom has any business encouraging corporate propaganda, because it's the psychological equivalent of sugar - absolutely toxic to genuine free choice.
Big Tobacco has already discovered this strategy doesn't work in the long term. Big Pharma is catching up slowly. (Ask the Sacklers.)
Big Sugar is still lagging behind, but it's only a matter of time.
I'm not really disagreeing with you. Like I said if we had more warning labels and less corporate branding I'd be perfectly fine with that. I'm yet to be convinced that Coca-Cola is as bad as cigarettes and needs to be totally banned/heavily taxed though.
You know the one of the things the worse off in society enjoy doing? - drinking a soda. They need to know the health risks, yes, but taking that away/adding a sin tax makes their quality of life measurably worse even if their health would be slightly better off in the long run. You're either taking away some of the little enjoyment they have or more of their money and I don't think that's fair.
> You know the one of the things the worse off in society enjoy doing? - drinking a soda.
Wait, what? This exact same argument could be made for cigarettes or hard narcotics. This argument is a non-starter. Especially since advertising is targeted at this demographic to convince them that a sugar addiction makes them less miserable.
You're talking about banning advertising, I'm talking about banning products. It would be ass-backwards to ban soda itself and claim you're enabling free choice.
