While Mayor Bloomberg has swarms of attorneys preparing to appeal a judge's decision to pour his large sugary drink ban down the drain, his opponents are working hard to make sure nobody else threatens the God-given right of all Americans to gulp gallons of glucose in a go. And we aren't just talking about Sarah Palin tweets. In Mississippi an "anti-Bloomberg" bill just needs the Governor's signature to become law. Sadly, however, the bill does not ban billionaires from Boston from America's least healthy state, just the kind of nannying laws they advocate.
The Mississippi bill is actually pretty simple: it reserves the right to regulate "consumer incentive items and nutrition labeling" to the legislature alone. Which means that no pesky local government can step in and start banning big sodas or requiring restaurants to list their food's fat content without approval from Jackson. Because honestly, the people of Mississippi—which just so happens to have some of the biggest obesity numbers in the country—just don't want to know what's in their food. One in three people don't become obese without a collective effort!
The anti-Bloomberg bill moved swiftly through the state house with bipartisan support, though it did get some flack for giving too much power to the State government. Still, "we don't want local municipalities experimenting with labeling of foods and any organic agenda. We want that authority to rest with the legislature," Democrat Representative Gregory Holloway explained.
Sigh. How oddly fitting would it be if the great legacy of Nanny Bloomberg's attempt to wean his constituents off the teat of Big Soda was a reactionary piece of legislation in the wildly overweight "hospitality state"?
