New York is probably not the first place you think of when it comes to healthy living.  It might be the first place you think of when it comes to pizza, bagels with a shmear, restaurants that are open twenty-four hours a day, street vendors selling hot dogs, and deli sandwiches bigger than your head, but that pretty much proves my point.  California generally holds the reputation as the place where the “granola loving health freaks” live, but as is the case with most stereotypes California and New York are actually pretty similar when it comes to the percentage of the population that is considered obese.  In 2008 approximately 23.1% of the population of California residents fell under the obese classification, while 23.5% of New Yorkers were in the same category.  For those of you that are curious, Colorado actually came in as the leanest state with “only” 18% of their population falling into an obese weight range.

In spite of their reputation as being lovers of unhealthy foods (or, perhaps, because of it) the lawmakers in New York have taken it upon themselves to wage a war against obesity, and their primary targets seem to be soda and restaurant food.  In 2008 the Governor of New York proposed a 15% sales tax on sugary drinks, and a few months later the New York City health commissioner made the case for the same kind of tax to be imposed on a federal level.  New York also ordered all chain restaurants to begin posting calorie counts on their menus and banned the use of trans fats in food production.

Now it appears that New York has decided to kick it up a notch.  Perhaps taking a cue from the creators of some truly horrific public safety ads from the United Kingdom, New York health officials have come out with an advertisement that depicts a bottle of soda pouring out a stream of “thick, yellow human fat, marbled with blood vessels.”  Asking the viewers of the ad if they are “pouring on the pounds,” the director of Physical Activity and Nutrition Programs in New York, Cathy Nonas, hopes the ads can “make a statement and grab people’s attention.”

Yeah, you could say my attention is grabbed.  As much as I love horribly fatty foods that aren’t good for you, even I have to admit that a tall, cool glass of adipose tissue just isn’t all that tantalizing.

At this point, however, whether or not these ads will actually be effective remains to be seen.  There already appears to be some push back from residents in New York who are upset over having to face the calorie counts of their favorite restaurant items.  Having to face the reality that things like blueberry muffins have 510 calories, one New Yorker claims that her “childhood favorites” had been ruined.  (I could go off on a rant here about the fact that our obesity problem as a nation is reflected in statements like the one above and how our “childhood favorites” are making us fat, but I’ll leave that for another time.)  Unfortunately, some researchers theorize that instead of using this information to make healthy choices some individuals end up binge eating later when they are in a situation where they aren’t faced with the cold hard facts about what they are putting in their mouths.

Effective or not, the ads at the very least continue to draw attention to the sheer number of calories that individuals consume when drinking sugary sodas.  With organizations like the New England Journal of Medicine continuing to hammer on the benefits of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages and public safety ads that try to draw our attention to how bad those drinks are for us the beverage industry is starting to feel the pressure.  One indicator of that is an ad campaign pointing out what a hardship taxes on soda and juice would be on families dealing with these hard economic times, but a more positive one is that Coca Cola has announced plans to make calorie information more visible on their soda cans.  Critics say this move is only being made in an effort to ward off talk of additional taxes on their products, but Coca Cola insists that it is being done in response to consumer demand.

There is a saying that says that “as California goes, so goes the country,” but I’m starting to suspect that in the war against obesity the front line may actually end up being New York, and as a result I’m paying close attention to what goes on there.  In the end I hope we see more of the kind of moves that help us make informed decisions (calorie counts on menus, prominent nutrition information) and less in the way of taxes and bans.  Whatever ends up happening on a national scale, though, it is starting to look like it’s going to happen in the Big Apple first.