An absurd and offensive example of government overreach. In addition, an action that will have zero effect on obesity. A true leader would have proposed a severe limit on the types of foods permitted to be purchased with food stamps. An outstanding leader would stop trying to create a nanny state. More made-up government regulations equals more bloated government with more government employees justifying their existence by standing on the necks of free enterprise and true job producing businesses.

Ok. So the mayor does not propose banning super size diet sodas, just the regular "sugary" ones. Well that certainly makes sense to go ahead and "allow" everyone to load up on Aspartame which, everyone knows, is so much better for you and is key in preventing obesity! NOT!!!
Stay out of our private lives Mr. Mayor and do the job you were elected to do and that does not include policing what people eat and drink.

The problem here is that the government isn't going far enough. We need them to ration our entire day's meal, as well as requiring us to do manual labor for a few hours each day! Just think how sweet that would be... sure, a little like a prison, but we'd all be fit, right?

Obviously a large number of Americans cannot control their intake, and those that can pay higher insurance premiums because of the diseases associated with obesity. Take control or let a small governmental nudge help you from destroying your health.

Just put a bullet in our foreheads and let's call it a day. What happened to the word "freedom"? If people want to eat foods that are bad for them, let them, they are going to anyways.

Unfortunately some overweight people are so very unhappy that the bullet to the head is sadly possible. Perhaps a bullet to the heart may be a better description of their doom.

Women want the right to have complete control of their bodies when aborting a fetus. But they don't have enough control of their own bodies to drink a 64 ounce soda???

I'll have a 12 ounce soda with a shot of stem cells please.

Freedom’s not absolute. What rights in the Constitution are absolute? There is no right to absolute freedom. There are limitations. You might want to say the same thing about a whole variety of other things that are on the Internet — “let everybody have it, let everybody do it.” No. There are certain things that actually do cost people a lot of money, cost them their lives, cost them their fortunes that we shouldn’t have and make available, to make it that easy to do.

Since over one third of Americans are now obese with that number growing, those who cannot control their weight seem to need a "nanny state" since they are obviously not able, responsible, or educated enough adults to take control themselves and their health which affects us all in ever growing, out of control health insurance premiums from weight related diseases including diabetes and heart.

I think the Mayor picked the wrong liquid to restrict. If the Mayor of New York wants to do something that will help the health of New Yorkers he might impose a total ban of alcohol. I'm sure many wives and children of all the abusive alcoholics would be thankful to receive fewer beatings at the hands of their drunken husbands. Think about how many fewer auto accidents there would be and how many fewer missed workdays there would be. But no, he is worried about soda pop. What an idiot.

I think that instead of banning a product they should try to promote healthier choices. I don't understand why in the U.S. natural juices are so darn expensive while soda is dirt cheap--it was the other way around where I am from.

FYI: Contrary to what food companies promote, packaged natural juice drinks including OJ are almost just as bad as soda as far as concentrated sugar calories go.

The mayor is obviously not at all concerned about the environmental impact of such an intrusive regulation. The customer who wants a 32 oz soda will simply buy two 16 oz sodas. For every cup and straw that wastes, the cost goes up for the seller and the buyer, and that many more cups/bottle/containers must be shipped and disposed of in our already overflowing landfills. Folks that want to drink that much soda will still do so and the rest of the population will suffer the results.

I doubt the buyers of banned 32 oz sodas will decide to buy/carry around two 16 oz sodas with less convenience and higher price. If they are that thirsty, they could save
their money and health by buying a refillable bottle with water and ice from either home or restaurant.

If I can't buy a 32 ounce soda, I'm going to buy two 16 ounce sodas. That's twice the trash (two lids, two straws, two cups). Did the mayor consider this?

If the government can ban something as harmless as marijuana, then certainly they can then something that is actually harmful like GINORMOUS sugared drinks. Thanks for standing up for what's right, Mayor Bloomberg!

Thats allright,keep suppressing peoples rights and there will be a revolution sooner than later.

Here's a bit of wisdom a well known author extolled in the 1950s;
The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-denfense, and as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protecter to the role of man's deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the weilding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.

Ayn Rand circa 1957

Michael Bloomberg is an idiot. Hitler told people what, when and how much they could eat. Way to go Bloomberg. You're up there with Hitler in taking away the rights of people.

What is wrong with Mayor Bloomberg?!?!?! Does he not have other more pressing issues to address than obesity and the size of sodas being sold?!?!?! What's next ... a rationing of donuts, cookies, candy, etc. ... the list could go on and on!!!! I'm not even sure what country this is anymore!!! It's certainly not the America I knew as a child growing up!!!

This is a terrible idea. Where does it stop? Too much sun is bad for you. Next the government will want to ban swimsuits or restrict what clothing we can wear. Why don't we all just line up for our daily ration of MREs. NO SOUP FOR YOU!

I'm not endorsing the ban of biggies, but I can see the benefit in trying to move habits in the direction of smaller portions, for health reasons. Other nations I've lived in had smaller sized servings, and I don't remember feeling thirsty all the time, or angry about it.

Ms. Whitney, do you also recall in other nations that the majority of overweight people were American tourisrs? It is a harsh reality.

Not to worry folks...............New York will soon start a "soda happy hour" which will probably be valid for 23 hours a day and spread to the rest of the country. Buy one 16 oz soda and get another for free! The American Entrepreneur will find a way around this!

America continues to develop into a country where many do not accept responsibility for their actions. It is easier to blame someone else than to accept the consequences of our actions. I don't want the government telling me how much soda I can buy at one time, and I rarely drink any type of soda. I understand the concern about obesity and the costs associated therewith, but "outlawing" large soft drinks is an example of extreme government overreach.

For the people who want to impute the evils of big government in restrictions like this, I suggest they trace the government evil to its actual source.Maybe if the United States didn't have such huge agricultural subsidies for the corn producing industry, which feeds the high fructose corn syrup industry, these kinds of sodas could not be produced so profitably. Much of the obesity epidemic is directly traceable to government artificially propping up what is a largely an unprofitable enterprise--growing corn.

How in the world did the desire for such huge quantities of soda happen? Is marketing so effective that it so easily induces the masses to overindulge? Consuming one 64 oz portion of soda a day equals 325 pounds of sugar intake in one year. What happened to moderation?
When I was younger, an occasional soda was considered a treat. At that time, most sodas were bottled in 6 or 6 1/2 oz portions. After drinking our 6 oz treat, we would have never considered following it up with 9 or 10 more!
I would hope that if the medical and dental problems associated with excessive sugar intake could be imbedded in our youth at an early age, we could begin to see a more healthy society.

Should people eat/drink healthy? Absolutely. Should the government force them to do so? Absolutely not. As a mom, I take responsibility for myself and for my family and for what we eat. I am also the person who makes sure we get enough exercise by encouraging my kids to go for a bike ride a family walk, etc. As a family we believe in eating all foods in moderation. Is eating chocolate cake or drinking soda every day good for you? No. Is enjoying it occasionally detrimental to your health? No. Obviously the healthier you eat the healthier you will be, but what ever happened to that old fashioned idea of personal responsibility?

I understand that we as a society pay more in health insurance for those who choose to eat poorly and not take responsibility for their health. However, I cannot get past the idea that government is overstepping its bounds.

How is this any different than seatbelt and helmut laws or are those against soda ban also against these safety laws?

This is similar to seatbelt and helmet laws...but just because those laws make sense, doesn't meant I haven't personally questioned whether they should exist. Helmet laws do not even exist everywhere (Chicago comes to mind).

Concerning the proposed idea that fat people pay more for health care ... Found this in the NY Times:
The question of personal responsibility, ends up being more complicated than it may seem.
Parents are working longer, and takeout meals have become a default dinner. Gym classes have been cut. The real price of soda has fallen 33 percent over the last three decades. The real price of fruit and vegetables has risen more than 40 percent.
The solutions to these problems are beyond the control of any individual. They involve a different sort of responsibility: civic — even political — responsibility. They depend on the kind of collective action that helped cut smoking rates nearly in half. Anyone who smoked in an elementary-school hallway today would be thrown out of the building. But [until recently with new regulations] if you served an obesity-inducing, federally financed meal to a kindergartner, you would fit right in.
[Taxing fat people idea] may have its problems. The obvious one is its severity. The more important one is probably its narrowness: not even one of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals can do much to reduce obesity. The government, however, can. And that is the great virtue of [the] idea.
Acknowledging that any effort to attack obesity will inevitably involve making value judgments and even limiting people’s choices. Most of the time, the government has no business doing such things. But there is really no other way to cure an epidemic.

Yes there is, there are a THOUSAND different ways. What are the reasons for the 33 & 40%? Start there. Start with aspertame, a fat-hoarding poison that can be found EVERYWHERE they try to limit sugar. There are tons of options that would work better than getting the government involved, which is always "more complicated than it seems".

My suggestion was not that fat people pay more, my suggestion was that everyone pay for his OWN healthcare, it's the only way to promote responsibility, accountability, and incentive. You & I paying for it provides NONE of that.

I wonder how many people that are in favor of smoking bans are against a soda ban. As a smoker, I knew this sort of thing would eventually come up and I tell the anti-smokers that gov't will go after something they like . . . then they'll know how much freedom the really have.

What if, instead of government dictates on what you CAN'T do, we tried positive reinforcement, like you get big discounts for staying fit. Lower sales tax on raw fruits and veggies? When you make something be considered "off limits" it just makes people rebel and do the very thing you don't want them to do. Make the emphasis be on the good instead of the bad.

People!
It's the "SIZE" of Government that All Americans must get rid of.
Not the size of soda.

There is a difference in Banning the Size of a product vs. Banning The Product.

Gee! I wonder if a man/woman sexual relations could be next in Limiting the SIZE OF P_ _ _ _.