Food is the Real Thing: Mayor Bloomberg is right: taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize soda
…But as the USDA mulls over the idea, the pro-soda forces have pushed back. The American Beverage Association, partly funded by Coke and Pepsi, has branded the initiative as an attack on individual choice. “Once you start going into grocery carts, deciding what people can or cannot buy, where do you stop?” senior vice president Kevin W. Keane said in April, according to a New York Times story. Lobbyists say that a new restriction would put a burden on stores, whose clerks would have to separate soda from other products. Elected officials from the Congressional Black Caucus, an arm of which also receives money from soda lobbyists, say that the proposed arrangement would stigmatize poor people.