NY: no soda with food stamps?

Latest salvo in sugared drinks battle

In the latest attempt to stop the rise in obesity, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Governor David Paterson have asked the US government to ban the purchase of full-sugar fizzy drinks and sweetened fruit drinks with food stamps. ‘There’s nothing wrong with an occasional one. But the kids are drinking an enormous amount of full-sugar beverages and they would switch to diet beverages’, and ‘Our children’s lives are more important than anything else’, Mayor Bloomberg commented.

Food stamps are federal vouchers that are used by 42 million low-income Americans to buy food, including 1.7 million people in New York City and 2.9 million across the state. The stamps already cannot be used to buy products classified as harmful, including alcohol and tobacco.

The US Department of Agriculture, in charge of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that administers the food stamps, said in a statement it would ‘review and consider’ the proposal.

Source: Reuters, 7 October 2010.

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