You shouldn’t eat sugary food — it could spoil your dinner.
Such is a dandy dictate for a two-year-old.
Or someone tantalized and ten.
Or 20.
Or 74.
Such appears to be the view of government in California, where — up north — a city’s made sweet history.
Once home to the free speech movement, Berkeley wants to regulate not only what can come out of your mouth, but what might go in it.
In a blatant attack on the dental industry, the teethy town’s employing wisdom that’ll see mouths everywhere impacted: There’ll be no more snacks sold in checkout lines.
As reported by AFP, this week, the city council passed a unanimous bill.
Per the legislation, no product with over 5 grams of added sugar — or 250 mg of sodium — will be permitted to surround you as you wait to buy your…items with over 5 grams of added sugar and over 250 mg of sodium.
Also restricted from your immediate surroundings once you’re preparing to pay: drinks high in sugar and artificial sweeteners.
Council member Kate Harrison believes the law keeping your buttery fingers off that Butterfinger is…wait for it…essential:
“The healthy checkout ordinance is essential for community health, especially in the time of COVID-19.”
And, somehow, it’s good for business:
“What is good for Berkeley customers is also good for our businesses.”
The ordinance notes that you’re…well…pathetic:
“[The checkout line is where] shoppers are more likely to make impulse purchases and where parents struggle with their children over demands to buy treats.”
Affected by the ban, which goes into effect next March: 25 large supermarkets, in a span of space comprised of about 120,000 preschoolers people.
AFP notes that Berkeley, “just across the bay from San Francisco, has a track record of pioneering health initiatives.”
In 2014, it imposed a tax on soft drinks that was adopted by several other major US cities.
According to a study last year, Berkeley residents reduced their consumption of soft drinks by half by 2017.
Also reduced: awesomeness.
On the other hand, the war on dextrose, lactose, maltose, trehalose, turbinado, sucrose, and galactose — as opposed to high taxes, poverty, homelessness, oppression, suppression, robbery, and murder — might be a good move for the state as a whole.
After all, once you come down from that would-be sugar high, the crash may impede your ability to escape the angry, violent mob blocking the street and bashing in your windows and annihilating your soon-to-be-banned gas guzzler.
Those goons — who are likely high on sugar — probably got their fix from a back-alley dealer.
Or just anywhere else in the store except the very front.
Either way, kudos to California for saving everyone from that greatest of enemies — free will.
-ALEX
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