Republicans are right of soda

Sarah Palin knew his audience. In 2013, during a speech at the CPAC, the annual Confab Republican, the former governor of Alaska went to his lectern and removed a cup of soda of the head size. He took a long swig, and another while the audience exploded in applause. Palin left the drink and handed the fist line: “Our great gulp is safe,” he said. At that time, New York City was trying to ban restaurants from selling more than 16 ounce soda, and Republicans from all over the country were angry at Ali Alian Michael Bloomberg. According to the state of the nanny, he tried to remove the heavy water and loaded with Syru. A conservative defense group paid to post an ad to The New York Times of “Nanny Bloomberg” wearing a blue dust -based dress and a pastel handkerchief.

Soda wars have been broken for some time in the partisan line. The New York City Prohibition was reached in court before it could come into force, but even more modest attempts to regulate the soda have concentrated in deeply blue cities like Berkeley and San Francisco. The Liberals also drink soda, of course, although the greatest defenders of the drink are on the right. President Donald Trump loves his coke diet that he has had a button installed in the Oval Office on both terms to call a recharge; On the campaign court, the President, the President, the President, JD Vance, said that Democrats see Diet Mountain Dew, his chosen drink, as “racist”.

Read: JD Vance has a point over the mountain dew

But today, Republicans from all over the country are going down to the soda. Politicians in Texas, Arkansas, West Virginia, Idaho, Nebraska, Michigan, Arizona and South Carolina do not defend the ban on great discomfort. However, they seek to promulgate one of the other Michael Bloomberg pet policies: to prevent people from buying soda through food stamps (formally known as a supplementary nutritional assistance program or SNAP). These and other states follow the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Why do we pay for the sugar drinks that our children poison and give them diabetes?” Asked last week.

Snap’s Soda Prohibition seems something that has no. Soda is a great reason why the adults in the United States consume, on average, two or three times more than the daily intake of sugar. Federal Government’s own research has shown that North -Americans receiving dietary stamps have worse diets than non -participants with similar revenue, and Soda is surely part of this problem. These proposed bans should be even more pleasant because they would not be permanent; They are pilot programs to try the idea. However, the Democrats, most of them, are firmly opposed to Soda’s bans. No Democrat at the service of the State Senats of Idaho or Arizona voted for the respective measure of his state. If America will really do something about soda, tests like this will have to be part of the answer.

Nowhere the Republican party is the most Stark Soda face than in Western Virginia. In July, the state eliminated its soda tax. And now, less than a year later, he is moving forward with a Snap soda ban as part of an effort to reduce the consumption of “ultra -processed shit that is almost not described as food,” said Republican governor Patrick Morrisey at the end of last month. The ban on the use of SNAP funds to buy Soda has become so popular because it combines the focus “Make America Again” in the US diet problems with the conservative desire to reform the welfare state. Several Republicans who sponsor these bills told me that they have no intention or desire to dictate what foods do people go by possess money over. “If you use your own backgrounds, I don’t think it is different than cigarettes and alcohol,” said Idaho’s state representative Jordan Redman. “We know they are not good for us, but if you use your dollars for this, this is your decision.”

So far, none of these states has banned Snap’s Soda. The federal government establishes the rules for food stamps, although the program is operated on by each state. Therefore, a state that seeks to exclude Soda must request an exception to the rules. Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders was the first to express interest in politics after the last Trump election. “It’s time to support American farmers and taxpayers funded by Brossa,” Sanders wrote in Kennedy and Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, in December, before confirmed for their position. Although previous attempts to promulgate this policy, as in New York City, were blocked by USDA regulators, it seems that this time. Rollins, who will have the last opinion to decide whether the states experience this idea, said that it supports the efforts of the states and will probably approve the applications submitted.

But many long-term anti-anti-host proponents are skeptical. Marion Nestle, an emeritus teacher in Nyu and the author of Politics Soda: Grab Big Soda (and win)He has spoken in favor of Snap Soda Bans, but he told me that he finds “very difficult not to look” the current efforts of the Republicans “as a cover for what is the real motivation, which is to cut snap”. Soda is unhealthy, but it is also limiting food stamps: the program has been shown to significantly reduce food insecurity and health care costs. This skepticism is not unjustified. A promotional group that promotes current Soda bans, the Government’s accountability Foundation, has also been promoting several changes in politics that would significantly reduce the number of people eligible for food labels. Joelle Johnson, the Deputy Director of Healthy Food Access at the Center of Public Interest, who defends a stronger nutritional regulation, told me that the group does not support Soda’s bills, because they could lead to less money for Government SNAP and that they are “a veiled attempt to reduce the benefits of SNAP”. Some states go beyond soda and seek to ban different types of food; The dramatic changes in which people can buy “set the argument to say,” Well, if they can only buy a limited variety of products, they don’t need so much money on monthly benefits, “said Johnson.

For some Democrats, the effort for zero in the food options of poor people is also cruel. After all, Coca-Cola and Pepsi did not convert Fortune 500 companies just because people of food stamps like their products. Consider Texas: State soda consumption goes beyond food stamps recipients. More than 60 percent of the jeans drink at least one drink with sugar a day. “There is a real cognitive dissonance when we discuss these invoices on my back and I am sitting with my Senate colleagues and drinks Coca-Cola,” said the Senator of the State of Texas, a Democrat that voted against the state bill.

The situation is a disaster that the two parties cannot even agree with the underlying purpose of SNAP. Proponents of Soda Prohibition emphasizes that the full name of the food labels program is supplementary Nutrition Attendance program and no one assists their nutrition through a bottle of two liters of Pepsi. But public and anti-Camports groups argue that any food is better than any food. Although the argument seems spurous at first, given the name SNAP, the program was only renamed the 2008 name. The original food labels, which officially created the program in the 1960’s, tried to reduce poverty than nutrition.

The tension between these two goals is to link some of the main public health organizations of the country’s health in knots. The American Heart Association originally spoke against the SODA proposal proposal for the concern for the nutritional restrictions “to interfere with the main function of snap”, than a group lobbyist described as “reduction of hunger”. But now the group insists that their position was badly informed. “We look forward to working with the states interested in finding USDA approval to eliminate SNAP’s sugary drinks while preparing for their resignation applications,” a spokesman told me.

The ban on using SNAP dollars for Soda is almost the most equitable way to deal with sugary drink; A tax addressed to everyone would be fairer. But at this moment, given the support of the USDA, red states across the country are reached and establish some new limits on what people can buy with food stamps seem a preliminary conclusion. Instead of opposing these efforts directly, Democrats should see them as an opportunity. There is very little investigation into the effects of a soda ban, so a pilot program would help “ identify consequences or unwanted questions that we want to ask ourselves, ” said Jerold Mande, a former USDA official and the FDA that served in Clinton and Obama administrations. Perhaps then we can reach the bottom of the debate over the decades about whether Soda’s bans are a good idea.