Are You Drinking Yourself Fat? New Yorkers Urged to Quit “Pouring on the Pounds”

The next time you think of grabbing a soda, sports drink, fruit-flavored beverage, lemonade, punch, Snapple or other sugary drink, just imagine lards of fat spewing out.
If “Yuck!” is your response to this disgusting, fatty image, then the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will have accomplished its mission.
Indeed, thanks to a brilliant, new “Are you pouring on the pounds?” campaign from the city’s health department, many subway riders are being confronted via posters (some 1,500 in all), which alert them to the consequences of their sugary beverage consumption.
I’m thrilled by this bold move to shock New Yorkers — especially overweight and obese ones — to action by spreading the message, “Don’t drink yourself fat.”
As more and more New Yorkers are becoming obese, a hard-hitting, in-your face approach is exactly what’s needed to wake people up to sugar’s dangers.
“Just trying to be positive and encouraging doesn’t always get people’s attention,” New York Associate Commissioner Geoff Cowley told the Daily News. “If you get in people’s faces a bit, that does get people’s attention.”
It’s also smart, I believe, for York health leaders to state what’s so patently obvious to those of us who are sugar experts.