Earlier this week at the Aspen Institute’s Global Spa and Wellness Summit, Governor John Hickenlooper endorsed Mayor Bloomberg’s “war on soda." It is days like this we really wish former Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi was still living in Colorado. After all, he wrote a book on the "Food Fascists" of the Nanny State.
From Hickenlooper's comments per Health Policy Solutions:
While conceding that he’s reluctant to mandate healthier behavior, Hickenlooper said he sees few other options to fight the costly obesity epidemic.
“You run the risk if you’re in elected office of saying we need to all do this and pull together and take care of ourselves. That’s allegedly one step away from the nanny state,” Hickenlooper said.
“And yet, I’m not sure what else is going to happen. Right? I don’t see any other way.
“Every atom of my being resists this notion of some of the things that Mayor Bloomberg was trying to push in New York around these large helpings of super sweetened soft drinks. And yet, if we don’t begin looking at certain things like that, the costs are going to be enormous,” the Colorado governor said.
Per Hickenlooper's penchant for never taking a clear stance on anything that polls below 60%, the Governor wouldn't say exactly what actions he would take back home, but he doesn't see any other option other than setting laws that dictate the size of sodas that can be sold.
He doesn't want to do it, in fact he resists the idea with "every atom in [his] being," but there is just no other way.
In New York that way is a law that bans any soda more than 16 oz in the city's restaurants, delis, food trucks, movie theaters and sports arenas. Regular soda and sports drinks would be affected, but diet sodas (and all of the controversial aspartame associated with diet soda) would not be included in the ban. That's because Diet Coke is healthier for you than Gatorade, at least according to Bloomberg's worldview.
Hickenlooper’s embrace of food dictates is a bit strange, considering he announced his Gubernatorial campaign's "Job Creation Roadmap" at the home of the Rocky Mountain Soda Company.
We wonder what the owners of Rocky Mountain Soda would have to say about Hickenlooper's sudden embrace of a position wholly opposed by their industry.