As we get closer to finding out if Mayor Bloomberg's big soda ban will actually happen (and what it will actually be!), Hizzoner is lining up as much support for his side as he can. To that end, before the Board of Health votes on it September 13th, Bloomberg yesterday got leaders of weight loss groups like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, The South Beach Diet and The Best Life to say the plan to ban sugary drinks over 16 ounces was a good idea. Only problem? Not everyone got the message before the press conference.
See, to push the plan, City Hall dragged out Queens mother of three Rachelle Conley, 45, who said she once drank 32 ounces of soda per day, along with two cups of coffee sweetened with 25 packets of sugar each! After joining Weight Watchers in 2009 and cutting sugar out of her diet, Conley (top left) says she lost 91 pounds! Only problem for our billionaire mayor was that at the same time Conley admitted that if the ban had been in place back in her sugar days she "would have just reached for a second drink." Still, she did acknowledge the proposed ban—which a majority of New Yorkers oppose—would have had an impact as "you don't realize how much you're drinking."
Meanwhile, whatever New Yorkers think of the proposed ban—which the mayor really wants you to think of a matter of portion control not choice restriction—weight loss leaders were ecstatic about it: "Our portion sizes are becoming ridiculous, bordering on vulgar," Howard Shapior, found of Picture Perfect Weight Loss said, "the mayor is stepping up and telling it like it is." That Bloomberg, always speaking truth to power. Like that time he told us the problem with homeless shelters was that they were too "pleasurable."
Enjoy your tubs of sugar water while you still can New Yorkers!
