The city’s soda restriction would help the poor more than anyone else — because “they don’t have the ability to take care of themselves” as well as the wealthy do, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.
The mayor’s comment came just hours before a judge blocked his controversial proposal to restrict sugary-drink sales to 16 ounces in restaurants and other food establishments starting today.
Unaware that one of his legacy projects was about to go flat, the mayor defended the drink downsizing by citing new Health Department data that showed nine of 10 neighborhoods with the highest obesity rates also had the highest consumption rates of sugar-filled beverages.
“If you go back to the ‘20s, you see pictures of the old robber barons with their big stomachs out to here,” said Bloomberg.
“That was a sign of success. Today those people are doing pilates and running in marathons and triathlons and If you look at where obesity is in the country, it tends to be in people at the lower end of the economic ladder,” Bloomberg said. who don’t have the ability to take care of themselves as well. “If anybody will get helped by this, it’s them, because they’ve got to focus on working harder and moving themselves up the ladder, and being overweight doesn’t help you do that.”
The Health Department’s study, released yesterday, showed the BedStuy/Crown Heights area was tops in pops — with 46.9 percent of residents gulping at least one sugary soda a day. The obesity rate for the area was 33.3 percent, second only to the 34.1 percent in Fordham and Bronx Park.
At the other end of the scale was the Upper West Side, with an obesity rate of 11.9 percent. , second lowest after Chelsea/Greenwich Village, where a mere 9.8 percent of the population were overly fatOnly 13.8 percent of residents there sip a soda a day.