Gavin Newsom Wants Soda Vending Machines Off San Francisco City Property

Leave it to San Francisco to design an official city policy that includes soy milk.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is running for lieutenant governor, has dictated that vending machines on city property may no longer sell sugary drinks. His directive allows "ample choices' of water, soy milk, rice milk, and other similar dairy or non-dairy milk," according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

While San Francisco isn't the first municipality to make such a move, its policy might be the most restrictive yet. Newsom's executive order, issued in April, bars non-diet sodas, sports drinks, and artificially sweetened water, and only allows 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice with no added sweeteners, which shuts out the vast majority of commercially available juices. Diet sodas are allowed, but can only make up one-quarter of the items in a machine.

The justification for the move is found in studies that link soda consumption to obesity, including a report from UCLA that discovered that adults who admit to drinking at least one soda a day are almost 30 percent more likely to be obese than adults who don't consume as many sugary drinks.

"There's a direct link between what people eat and drink and the obesity and health care crises in this country," Newsom spokesman Tony Winnicker said, reports the Chronicle. "It's entirely appropriate and not at all intrusive for city government to take steps to discourage the sale of sugary sodas on city property."

But is the policy, as soda industry representatives predictably argue, unfairly targeting soft drinks as the number one culprit in our obesity epidemic, when the problem is much more multifaceted than that?

One does wonder whether candy machines are experiencing a similar overhaul, and if not, why not? But in general, I find such "unfair to the industry" arguments to be complete rubbish. I agree with Winnicker, who said that "this is not about the soda police or a crackdown on soda. People absolutely remain free to choose to drink unhealthy sugary sodas anywhere they want."

It seems reasonable enough that a city government, which is tasked with the project of encouraging a thriving and healthy public, should refrain from providing unhealthy items for sale in its public spaces. If people complain too loudly, maybe they'll do away with the vending machines altogether and we can all go back to drinking from the water fountain.

Photo: Ethan Bloch via Flickr