There Is No Safe Level Of Coca-Cola

As if to confirm the hysteria I mentioned on Wednesday, Mark Bittman of the New York Times has produced a remarkable piece which would be hilarious if it wasn't the parody which it could most definitely pass for.

I recently described him thus when he equated fizzy drinks with firing a Kalashnikov at innocent children.

The New York Times' resident food scaremonger, Mark Bittman, has pushed the boundaries of even his own world-class level of absurd hyperbole while discussing celebrities advertising fizzy drinks.

Well, perhaps I was a bit hasty.

It took me back to when Coke was the real thing, it was “it,” we were teaching the world to sing together, and even Mean Joe Greene was just a cutie. There’s always been Coca-Cola. 

Well, there were always Marlboros, too, and as diseases related to metabolic syndrome surpass those from smoking, Coke is becoming a dinosaur, one that should not be replaced by aspartame-laced drinks (which have problems of their own, including, possibly, depression) but by water.

Judging from the absurd vernacular this weapons grade hector is employing, events in the Bittman household would prove to be a cast-iron reality TV winner, I'd say.

Having long since rejected the non-communicable disease threatening coffee or tea, Mark sips nothing but water - not bottled, obviously, cos of the threat of cancer and the devastating effect it will have on polar bears - while pacing agitatedly as his bins are an hour late to be collected.

"There is an ever-growing landfill ecological disaster happening right in front of my house!", he screams while tearing clumps out of his hair, "they'll be gassing penguins next!".

There is virtual consensus that drinking too much soda is bad for you ...

'Too much' being the operative descriptor, of course, not that it would ever interrupt Bittman's extremist rant.

Soda is a fructose delivery system as tobacco is a nicotine delivery system.

Well, that's the 'unique product' sound bite well and truly arseholed, isn't it ASH? Not to mention all assertions that a "domino theory" is fantasy from we who know a bunch of state-funded wolf-criers when we see them.

The beverage companies see the writing on the wall and will lobby, cajole, beg, plead, propagandize, lie, spend and do anything else they have to do to prevent that regulation, just as the tobacco companies did.

This guy would seem to be suggesting that everything visited on the tobacco industry should equally apply to ... a Coca-Cola? Yes, indeed, this is how ridiculous the public health lobby has now become.

All of a sudden, this image doesn't look so far-fetched, does it?


Incredibly, the alarmist has many supporters in the comments. The term "criminals" is used and one squeals "We need you, Mark!" as if he is a Messiah to the church of conspiracy health theorists everywhere. After all, if you're the type who wishes to spitefully poke your hooter into other people's business and dictate their food and drink consumption without being beaten black and blue, Bittman is truly sent from prodnose heaven.

There are others, though, with a more sane grasp on reality.

"Ok, fine, but what exactly do you want Coke (and Pepsi and every other bottler, and beer and wine distributor, and Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts) to do? Put themselves out of business voluntarily?"

Sadly, this is exactly what every self-righteous curtain-twitcher in the world wants. And Bittman knows that he will never be out of pocket while businesses still stubbornly please the majority of the population by producing products the majority of the population want to buy.

It's a job for life, not about health, and a simple follow-the-money exercise. As usual.

Still, I hope he carries on ranting. If he didn't exist, we'd have to invent him in order to prove what we already know ... that there is no end to the anti-social lunacy of the modern public health cabal.