Bloomie's Hands

While I was at the Y this afternoon trying to watch The People's Court during my workouts on the treadmill and elliptical machine, I was inundated with the same commercial about kids (minority kids, in particular) being targeted by big soda pop and how soda pop will give you diabetes. The ad was paid for by former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg and sponsored by the American Heart Association. I left New York almost four years ago when Bloomie was all riled up there about people drinking too much soda and now he's haunting me in Illinois. The guy is determined to stick his hands (and put his money) into any fight against big soda. Now I know drinking soda pop is not good for you. Take it from someone who used to get up in the morning and have a Coke with breakfast (before kidney stones came into my life), drinking a lot of pop can cause a lot of damage to your body. But so can eating a lot of crappy food, smoking, drinking, and a whole host of other things. What annoys me with the Bloomberg ads is that they only started appearing when Cook County started up this soda pop tax that they claim will help curb childhood obesity when everyone knows it's just a money grab to try and drum up some cash to pay their bills. No one cared about kids drinking pop last year or the year before that. Where were the ads in Illinois then? Oh, right. There weren't any! Given the huge host of problems faced by minority kids in Cook County (and Chicago specifically), I doubt drinking too much pop would be anywhere near the top of the list. Many kids are just fighting to stay alive here and trying to go to school and come home without getting shot.