
Bill to put health warnings on soda and sugary drinks advances in California - pseudolus
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-warning-label-sugary-drinks-advances-20190523-story.html
======
danschumann
They should have a line on the bottle, "the sugar in this bottle goes up to
here", because seeing the sugar isolated makes me say, "I'd never eat that
much sugar by itself"

~~~
mobilemidget
Do you want such line on fruit juices too? And where does this all end? We all
know there is sugar in soda (and fruitjuices)?

~~~
ebg13
Yes? Fruit juice is basically candy. It's 100% bad for you, but dressed up
like it's good for you,.

~~~
applecrazy
What about smoothies? Most homemade smoothies retain the fiber by blending the
fruit whole. Are those just as good as eating the fruits themselves?

Genuine question, trying to cut out non-fruit based sugars.

~~~
truefalsebanana
Smoothies in general are Not Great (TM).

When you eat food, it takes your body time to digest it all, so you get a slow
and steady blood sugar flow. However, when you eat smoothies, all of that food
is already nearly ready to be absorbed, so your blood sugar spikes and it's a
tremendous burden on your liver to handle all of that food value all at once.
Needless to say, smoothies are really not for diabetics or athletes! This is
the number one issue with smoothies. A slow and steady blood sugar / nutrition
delivery is better for everything.

Outside of that is the sugar issue. Sugar and sweeteners are in everything and
people naturally gravitate towards recipes with sugar in it, whether they
realize it or not; maybe you aren't using fruit juice, but now you're
sweetening with a ton of bananas, or now carrots, etc. We're just helplessly
addicted to it.

A third, less known issue is that fruit now adays has been so domesticated
that it really has very little nutritional value (esp compared with its wild
cousins). It's right up there with milk on "why are we telling people to eat
this" type of FDA questions. If you google "healthy smoothie", all you will
see are yummy fruit-based smoothies which really are hardly healthy.

If you are after fiber, there are much better things to eat. So in general,
fruit smoothies are just not healthy at all no matter what. The really gross-
tasting cross-fit type smoothies full of wheatgrass, kale, and other
vegetables are much better for you, but who's going to subject themselves to
that kind of punishment; might as well eat a salad, at least there's some fat
from the dressing. Regarding fiber specifically, flaxseed and chiaseed can be
mixed into just about anything with very little taste effect. Beans and
lentils are high in fiber.

Honestly, even a no-sugar fiber drink mix would probably be better for your
body as a whole than a smoothie.

~~~
rsync
I concur with everything you've said.

I will say that I drink a smoothie as a (post workout) meal 1-2x per week and
the ingredient that really alters that composition is almond butter (and quite
a bit of it - 1/3 cup or more).

Nut butters, yogurt and oats should be primary ingredients and fruits should
be sparingly added just for a bit of flavor (I throw in 8-10 blueberries which
is plenty).

~~~
ebg13
> _Nut butters, yogurt and oats should be primary ingredients_

Non-starchy non-sugary vegetables should be primary ingredients if you're not
looking for a calorie bomb, though it sounds like you are. Let's say you're
feeling generous and your almond butter edges up to half a cup. That's over
700 calories before any of your other ingredients.

~~~
Retric
This is where heath advice breaks down. A heathy snack for a 6’4” serious
power lifter looks very different from what the average American should be
eating.

~~~
ebg13
Agreed. People who don't lift like a dockside gantry should never base their
intake on the diets of people who do. And people who do should refrain from
advising others in general spaces based on what they consume, because almost
everyone does not.

------
maxxxxx
Do these warnings actually do anything? In CA almost anything has a cancer
warning. I don’t even look at them anymore.

To me these warnings are a way to say “we are doing something “ but I doubt
they really have an effect.

Considering how messed up American eating habits are I have no idea how they
could be changed.

~~~
davidgh
I agree that blanket warning messages tend to help very little.

However, I do find that actual _data_ does influence my behavior. I’ve been
particularly surprised at how much calorie information published on restaurant
menus impacts my decisions.

So, rather than a general warning that will be so widely published that it’ll
be ignored, give me more data. If you can make the data visual, even better.

For example, you’ll note on food labels that the sugar is represented in
grams, but there’s no associated percentage like there is for the other items
on the label. When you show me that this bottle of Coke contains double what I
should consume _for an entire day_ I think that will help me and will also
incentivize manufactures to think more about the sugar content they add.

~~~
dmitryminkovsky
Yeah if they just replaced grams with teaspoons as was proposed originally in
the 70s, the data would be a lot more accessible.

~~~
jniedrauer
This would be incredibly annoying when you actually want to record it. We
should be using _more_ metric measurements, not less.

~~~
dmitryminkovsky
This is true, and I’m all for metric, but this isn’t a question of imperial vs
metric. It’s about taking this intentionally obscured data and making it
accessible and understandable for people. The food industry lobbied to have it
presented in this technical way for a reason.

~~~
maxxxxx
I guess best would be if every can of soda had a picture of the amount of
sugar in it. That may illustrate things nicely and understandably. Most people
don't really connect numbers and measurements to reality.

------
gboudrias
As long as it also applies to juice. It's usually the same amount of "bad
sugar" but since it says "orange" on the bottle, people think it's healthy...

~~~
Someone1234
Or even some "coffee" drinks.

Black coffee? Pretty healthy, just water and caffeine. 0 calories. 0g sugar.
0g sodium.

A Starbucks "White Chocolate Mocha"? 530 calories, 320mg of sodium, 69g of
sugar per 20 oz "Venti" serving. That's twice as many calories as a 20 oz
Coke, with twice as much sodium, and higher sugar levels.

Nobody is defending soda here. Just pointing out, this good idea needs to be
applied consistently or people will switch from "unhealthy" soda to "healthy"
coffee drinks or "healthy" fruit juices both of which can have scary-high
sugar too.

I like the "color code" system they have in Europe[0]. You buy a soda and it
has a red warning on the sugar/salt levels.

[0]
[https://www.nutrition.org.uk/images/cache/537bf3c6516df64581...](https://www.nutrition.org.uk/images/cache/537bf3c6516df645818e2ae91c333456_w800.png)

~~~
bluntfang
1 cup of black coffee has <5 cals according to the internet, not 0. it's
basically 0 but i think it's important to be precise when it comes to diet.

~~~
Someone1234
Most sources list it as 0 or 1 calories. Additionally considering that
caffeine may increase your RMR ("Resting Metabolic Rate") by 3% or more[0][1],
if you want to be "precise" it may be more accurate to say that black coffee
contains negative calories.

So how precise do you need it to be? 0, 1, <5, or -1, -5 calories? Or is this
just pedantic nitpicking?

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7486839](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7486839)

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2912010](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2912010)

~~~
bluntfang
>it may be more accurate to say that black coffee contains negative calories.

Calorie has a pretty specific definition. What makes you feel like the
scientific definition doesn't work for you?

------
mc32
I’m not sure I agree with this. I’d prefer regulating advertising of sweetened
products in general. Health warnings cancer risk notices or labels have so
overwhelmed the senses, you take it as a fact of life. But advertising is the
big piece of bait that gets us to consume these things.

On a tangential note, these cancer risk warnings should not be binary. They
should have a risk value or class. Asbestos class 1, smoking/air pollution 1,
new carpet outgassing 3, drinking beer 4, etc. so people have an idea if a
risk is tolerable or not. Otherwise it’s just a kind of waiver/risk
indemnification for the one putting up the warning.

------
petercooper
_Monning amended the bill to exempt flavored milk drinks_

Why? (By the by, he started his career as a lawyer for a major farmworkers
union. Draw your own conclusions.)

~~~
maccard
So something like a McDonalds Milkshake, which has 60g of sugar is exempt?

That's kind of insane.

------
ravenstine
As much as I believe that sugar is poison and that obesity and diabetes are
some of our biggest health problems in this country, a failed education system
has contributed largely to the situation.

The "health advice" I received in school was clearly geared towards the
promotion of high carbohydrate foods and sugars while villainizing
macronutrients like dietary fat and cholesterol. Every school I attended sold
processed snack foods and sugary drinks. My elementary school sold cinnamon
rolls floating in a bath of glaze, and they were cheap. Periods of outdoor
activity were no more than half an hour, and we were discouraged from running
because it was "dangerous". We were never taught how to interpret the
Nutrition Facts on food labels, or about net carbs, the insulin response, etc.
As I mentioned in a recent thread about skipping breakfast, we actually had
industry shills come in and promote breakfast as the "most important meal of
the day" while encouraging us to eat plenty of fruits and "slow carbs". Nobody
ever told me that, once you gain fat, the fat swells and shrinks but doesn't
go away and results in saggy skin if you lose a lot of weight. In fact,
consequences to anything were rarely taught, except when it came to passing
tests. This was Californian education in a wealthy town.

Education isn't a panacea, but in it's current form, it's a joke. Labels will
cause some people to take sugar more seriously, yet we could be doing so much
more by admitting that we've _failed_ children for generations. Year after
year, it's excuses from politicians, school boards, and parents. Health
warnings on food is just _duct tape_.

I've been out of the public education system for 12 years, so maybe things
have vastly improved since then? Someone please tell me so. When I bring this
up either on HN or offline, my argument is ridiculed for being reductive, and
yet nobody denies that the education system badly needs improvement or that
education plays a role in the development of young minds.

I want people to be warned about the dangers of sugar intake, but if we're not
going to give people the tools to help themselves in the first place, then
these warnings serve to infantilize the public for the sake of cost savings.

~~~
hfourm
This is a good point. However, labelling might be a good alternative to the
sugary drink taxes that many places are currently voting in favor of.

------
helloguillecl
Chile applied a similar policy in 2016. Clear warnings are displayed in high
fructose / high fat processed food.

According to at least a study, consumption of soft drinks high in sugar
decreased by 25% in about 2 years.

The sellers tried to avoid having the warnings so they decreased their sugar
levels in their foods as well, or had them replaced them by sweeteners
instead.

~~~
conanbatt
Don't you find any moral issue in the state using its power to modify
behavior?

Is the citizen subdued to the state, or does the state work for the citizen?

~~~
imsofuture
Same question for you, except private corporations. Inundation with
advertising is exactly private corporations using their power to modify
behavior.

The only difference I see is that the government has your best interest in
mind (ostensibly, of course, don't mistake me for thinking it _really_ does).
Advertisers do not.

~~~
homonculus1
I'm free to choose whether or not I do business with a corporation selling
sugary drinks which I already know to be bad for me, whose power to modify my
behavior rests on its ability to convince they can improve my enjoyment of
life.

I'm much less free to choose whether I comply with the government, whose power
to modify behavior is ultimately derived from the threat of men with guns
coming to lock me in a concrete cell.

Advertising is memetic pollution but I'll still take it any day, every time
over government compulsion; the equivocation of the two is ludicrous.

------
eqdw
"The beverage known to the state of California to cause cancer and
reproductive harm and also obesity"

Great, another thing everyone will ignore. Literally nobody pays attention to
these warning labels. And further, the more things get labelled, the less
trust and confidence people put in existing labels.

Every single Starbucks in California has a sign somewhere warning you that
their coffee causes cancer. Does this make people drink less coffee? Or does
it just make people ignore experts when they say things cause cancer?

------
skilled
The World will be a much better place once more people recognize how important
it is to eat healthy. Not because it has some miraculous effects on the
environment, either.

A wholesome and mindful diet _will_ change you as a human being. I'm perplexed
as to how a country as big as the USA is living in the "stone age of food".

I've had great success this year to cut out refined sugar entirely. I have
stopped adding it to my coffee, too. And let me tell you, the withdrawal
symptoms are not nice.

------
dwighttk
When I visited California I chuckled every time I went into a restaurant with

 _blah blah blah_ "known by the state of California to cause cancer" _blah
blah blah_

signs above the door...

------
whatamidoingyo
This is actually a good thing, and should be international. A lot of the
drinks available in stores are absolutely terrible for you - some people
consume such drinks on a daily basis, even multiple times.

~~~
Someone1234
And unlike food they don't make you feel full or sated. Instead in many cases
they actually make you thirstier.

Their addictiveness and dangerousness is under-estimated. It isn't quite
smoking tiers bad, but if it was ranked it would likely be the next one down
below smoking/vaping in terms of having a negative larger social impact (with
drug use being above smoking of course).

~~~
kminehart
I'm unfamiliar with the topic. I know that sodas are loaded with sugar, but
what about these energy drinks with 0 sugar? Wouldn't the only really bad
thing about them is that they corrode your teeth like soda does?

~~~
joncrane
Studies lately are showing that artificial sweeteners are just as bad if not
worse for you than sugar.

Apparently aside from the nasty chemicals, they still trigger an insulin
response which makes your blood glucose crash and makes you crave sweet, fatty
foods.

~~~
i_cannot_hack
I find that exceedingly hard to believe. Sources, please. And I don't want a
single study concluding sweeteners might affect gut biome in rats or might
provoke some insulin secretion. I want serious, reputable studies claiming
sweeteners are _worse_ than sugar, a substance arguably killing more people
per year than tobacco.

To provide some real data to the discussion, a study analysing 36000 deaths
and 3 million person-years (published by the American Heart Association) found
a 21% increase in all cause mortality among those consuming 2 or more sugar
sweetened beverages per day. Consuming 2 or more artificially sweetened
beverages, on the other hand, was associated with only a 4% increase. And
moderate consumtion of artificially sweetened beverages (< 2 per day) was
actually, unlike sugar, associated with decreased mortality. [1]

The way sweeteners are discussed in relation to sugar is often fear-mongering
and disconnected from reality. It's like equating a sewing needle to a gun
because the needle might also theoretically be dangerous in some
circumstances.

[1]
[https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA....](https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.118.037401)

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
Dentist here - I’m generally for people to do whatever they want - I see every
day firsthand what sugar does to people. Both in terms of diabetes, their
general health, and especially their teeth. I take it that everything in
excess is a poison. The threshold from when sugar becomes a poison is very
very low. We eat, as Americans, way too much of the stuff.

~~~
primroot
A few years ago I was talking to friend who lives in Peru. He was finishing
his studies in something similar to a Computer Science degree. Despite being a
well educated person he did not understand that refined sugar was basically
nutritionally superfluous, that it was this pure chemical substance that one
regularly obtains (in some sufficiently equivalent form) from all sorts of
food. It is hard for people to wrap their head around the fact that a whole
powerful industry can exist to produce something so harmful and superfluous
(and at the very same time destroy the environment).

------
DanBC
Warnings sound nice, like we're doing something, but they do not work.

The only thing that works is increased prices or laws to restrict public use.

We know this from years of alcohol and tobacco policy.

If we want to change people's behaviours we need to tax soda and fruit juices.

~~~
enriquto
> Warnings sound nice, like we're doing something, but they do not work.

Oh yes the warnings do indeed work its part. My kids are terrified of the
warnings that appear on my wife's cigarettes, and they bully her mercilessly
whenever she smokes, to the point that it is reducing her usage a good deal.

Of course, warnings alone are not enough. But they are necessary. I hope in a
few years all sugary beverages will have scary warnings with pictures of
caries; just as tobacco has today.

~~~
conanbatt
> My kids are terrified of the warnings that appear on my wife's cigarettes,
> and they bully her mercilessly whenever she smokes, to the point that it is
> reducing her usage a good deal.

The mark of a successful policy, turning kids against their mother.

~~~
enriquto
> The mark of a successful policy, turning kids against their mother.

It's actually the opposite. The kids are very much _for_ the well-being of
their mother, and they are honestly worried that she may get ill.

~~~
conanbatt
> The Junior Spies is an organization of children who monitor adults for
> disloyalty to the Party, and frequently succeed in catching them—Mrs.
> Parsons herself seems afraid of her zealous children. The children are very
> agitated because their mother won’t let them go to a public hanging of some
> of the Party’s political enemies in the park that evening

------
detritus
Better this than the bloody ‘Sugar Tax’ levied on drinks with a certain
minimum percentage of sugar in them we have here in the UK - all it's done is
lead to price increases and swapping out of sugar for artificial sweeteners.

Debates about the negative impact of synthetic sweeteners aside, they taste
bloody awful, so now most of my favourite childhood treats are dead to me.

------
tigershark
I’m kind of conflicted. This may help to drink less sugar, but it may
desensitise everyone for much more dangerous stuff, like alcohol and
cigarettes when they are put on the same level

~~~
hombre_fatal
I don't think it's given that dietary failure is less dangerous than alcohol
and cigarettes.

~~~
rofo1
You should take the average human being into consideration.

"heh, they put this ridiculous warning of everything, bunch of p..." will be
said very, very often, and then disregarded altogether.

It's a good starting point, at least, but we need more. But I can't figure out
a way that will make people do better decisions for their health _AND_ leave
it entirely up to them. Both of those conditions can't hold in the same time,
as far as I can see.

------
loceng
I think what would be better for everyone is highlighting say nutritional
density of foods + perhaps how much processing occurred, and perhaps in
percentages: steak, as an example and perhaps not correct, would be "100%"
nutrient dense with "0%" processed.

------
specialist
The correct answer is to remove the subsidies. Stop subsidizing HFCS. Properly
price water.

Until then, localities should tax and thwart soda and juice as though they are
killing us, just like tobacco and alcohol.

------
hedora
Non-spy-walled story on the same topic:

[https://apnews.com/1d52964035a64ff2b7e6583f36408d23](https://apnews.com/1d52964035a64ff2b7e6583f36408d23)

------
christkv
I went into a Burger King in Spain the other day and noticed that all sodas
are diet with the exception being Coke that was also offered with sugar. I
ended up drinking water instead.

------
durnygbur
Soda/cold drinks industry of today is the tobacco industry of 60s and 70s. How
can an individual consume daily and voluntarily hundreds of grams of sugars
and sweeteners?

~~~
Someone1234
> How can an individual consume daily and voluntarily hundreds of grams of
> sugars and sweeteners?

How can an individual smoke 20 cigarettes a day and voluntarily consume known
carcinogens?

\- It is addictive

\- It feels good/gives you a buzz

You compared it to the tobacco industry in the 60s/70s, which I agree with,
but then your thought process immediately disconnected the two when you asked
why people over-consume: the same exact reasons.

~~~
bluntfang
add manipulative/psychological marketing techniques to your list as well.

------
jriot
People who rely on the government to tell them what is healthy and what is not
healthy are idiots. A drink made in an Atlanta Lab is obviously not healthy.

------
hedora
I see the bill doesn’t cover artificial sweeteners.

If manufacturers start sneaking sweeteners in to avoid the label, this will
probably do more harm than good.

~~~
i_cannot_hack
A study analysing 36000 deaths and 3 million person-years (published by the
American Heart Association) found a 21% increase in all cause mortality among
those consuming 2 or more sugar sweetened beverages per day. Consuming 2 or
more artificially sweetened beverages, on the other hand, was associated with
only a 4% increase. And moderate consumtion of artificially sweetened
beverages (< 2 per day) was actually, unlike sugar, associated with decreased
mortality. [1]

[1]
[https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA....](https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.118.037401)

------
PorterDuff
Maybe they need to be like Australian cigarettes. You could have a picture of
someone who doesn't need the extra calories.

------
sisu2019
I am super anti sugar. I don't eat it except in fruit and I don't give it to
my child.

I still don't want the government messing with nutrition. It's track record
with that is just awful and there is no reason to think it's going to get
better.

Politicians please do it as Hippocrates said: "First do no harm"

Before you ban, label or tax sugar you have to get your house in order: Stop
distorting the food market with subsidies and stop giving people wrong
information (Food pyramid etc).

~~~
nanny
They haven't used the food pyramid in nearly ten years:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate)

Harvard has an even better one:
[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-
eating-...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-
plate/)

Also, the food pyramids and plates are from the USDA, the federal government.
Not a state government like sugar warnings are coming from. So you're talking
to two different organizations when you say "before you label sugar, fix the
food pyramid".

~~~
primroot
I should cite from that Harvard link:

"Generations of Americans are accustomed to the food pyramid design, and it’s
not going away. In fact, the Healthy Eating Pyramid and the Healthy Eating
Plate complement each other."

------
francisofascii
"The label on container would say: “STATE OF CALIFORNIA SAFETY WARNING:
Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) may contribute to obesity, type 2
diabetes, and tooth decay.”" Drop the STATE OF CALIFORNIA. Gets to the point.
Easier for other states to adopt.

------
greendestiny_re
From the article:

>“[Sugars] represent the single leading source of increased bad calories that
are being promoted in our communities and pushed on communities of color,”
Monning said during the floor debate, citing a “national epidemic” of
diabetes.

>Senate Bill 347, which goes to the Assembly next, would require labels on
drinks with added caloric sweeteners that contain 75 calories or more per 12
fluid ounces.

>The label on container would say: “STATE OF CALIFORNIA SAFETY WARNING:
Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) may contribute to obesity, type 2
diabetes, and tooth decay.”

I find the article surprisingly void of substance, just like the refined
sugars it was supposed to report on.

Health warnings will achieve absolutely nothing, seeing how the problem lies
in understanding how refined sugars impact the body and shape the sense of
hunger to power the modern processed food market. In short, people who
understand are powerless; people who have the power to do something are
clueless; people who understand and have the power are in charge of food
companies, making money hand over fist, at the expense of health of the entire
nation.

Dr. Robert Lustig explains the danger of distilled and concentrated sugars,
fructose in particular, in his "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" lecture [0]. The
lecture is packed with chemical formulas but is extremely informative.

Fructose is a poison that disintegrates the liver. In nature, fructose is
found in combination with other sugars and nutrients that lessen the impact;
in processed foods, fructose is shoveled in to mask manufacturing defects and
make the food more "marketable" i.e. addictive.

"Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" by Michael Moss [1] goes into
greater detail how scientists tweak foods such as cereal to make it as
addictive as possible, using whatever chemicals aren't outright banned. The
very last chapter of that book features Michael's interview with a IIRC Nestle
CEO who says, paraphrased, "We envision the future where there's no other food
than the goop we produce, and stomachs of people can't handle anything else
because that's what they've been eating since childhood."

FDA helped out the processed food industry by making the definition of sugar
[2] the following:

“Sugars shall be defined as the sum of all free mono- and disaccharides (such
as glucose, fructose, lactose, and sucrose)"

Notice the trick? By involving fructose with all the other regular sugars, FDA
absolved the processed food companies of the need to put sugar intake limits
on packaging, which is why sugar is the only category lacking RDV.

"Reward-based stress eating" study [3] states that "treatment with Naloxone,
an unspecific opioid antagonist, powerfully suppressed intake of highly
palatable food". Sugary food is literally addictive, and yet it's peddled to
children exactly to turn them into addicts that gorge until they die.

Slapping a warning label on products does absolutely nothing except appease
the average consumer, who sees Something Is Being Done (tm). Unless fructose
is controlled like alcohol (Dr. Lustig compares the damage of ethanol and
fructose), the diabetes epidemic will become the norm. Fructose is already in
nearly every processed product due to HFCS, high fructose corn syrup, gotten
from government-subsidized corn.

Trying to reduce the amount of fructose in processed items makes them
unpalatable; trying to remove it altogether makes the food taste like
cardboard to the average consumer. Attempts to make mainstream processed food
healthy will undoubtedly bankrupt large swaths of companies and crash the US
economy.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar-
fat](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar-fat)

[2] Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 subsection 101.9(c)(6)(ii)

[3]
[https://www.medicinasistemica.it/doc/biblioteca/Stress,%20ea...](https://www.medicinasistemica.it/doc/biblioteca/Stress,%20eating%20and%20the%20reward%20system.pdf)

------
kevin_thibedeau
They should do the same for coffee.

~~~
choward
Why? Coffee has no sugar.

~~~
OrgNet
Ever tried a "default" Dunkin coffee?

------
briandear
Bicycles should have warning labels that disclose the risk of head injuries.

Chairs should have warning labels that overuse could lead to obesity.

Computer OSes should have a mandatory splash screen that overuse could result
in obsesity.

Hair dryers should continue to have warnings to not be used in the shower due
to electrocution risk.

And, why are sugared milk drinks excerpt? Why are Frappuccinos exempt? Why are
candy bars exempt? How about fruit juice? Basically, let’s just make a generic
warning label encompassing Prop 65 as well and put it on everything. Since
everything used to extreme can be unhealthy.

Bathtubs should have warning labels as well: there is a significant drowning
risk.

In California, you can’t go anywhere without encountering a Prop 65 warning,
now food is next? Eventually these messages become meaningless. There is not a
single person drinking a Coke that will change behavior because of a warning
label just like not a single person avoids a parking garage because of a Prop
65 label.

