by Janna snapped this image on the “R Train” to Queens the other day. New York City is big on “Banning the Sugar” bandwagon — and that’s a good thing — because sugar is killing us.
Here’s the television blurp and text from — nyc.gov/health/drinkingfat — the website mentioned on the poster:
Disgusted? Most people don’t realize how easy it is to gain weight from drinking sugary sodas, juice drinks, sport drinks and sweetened tea and coffee drinks. Just one 20-ounce bottle of soda can pack 250 calories and more than 16 teaspoons of sugar. Is the lemon-flavored iced tea any better? Not by much – with 210 calories and 14½ teaspoons of sugar. Sugar-sweetened beverages add hundreds of calories to your diet each day. Don’t drink yourself fat. Try water. It’s good.
Will these health scare message work in the minds of your average, middling-minded Manhattanite? I doubt it. Just as I doubt paying $11.25 for a pack of cigarettes will help anyone quit that filthy habit.
People only quit a bad behavior when they feel the direct pain of that addiction in lost health that can never be recovered. We stop only when it’s too late.
I do, however, appreciate these ongoing scare tactics and punishing taxations from the City of New York — because those cudgels help keep the medically transposed, and the preset health-risk terrified, in check and in line.
I know people who walk past those signs showing people missing fingers with cigarette warnings and laugh at them.
It’s unfortunate how people will continue to abuse themselves like that.
Ouch! That’s crazy, Gordon, but it is the core of human nature and species survival: Ignore the peril and press onward.