Tea and coffee with sugar to be outlawed in Cambridge restaurants

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

http://www2.cambridgema.gov/cityClerk/PolicyOrder.cfm?item_id=35515

It's a simple proposal: Restaurants cannot serve ANY sugar sweetened drink in the city of Cambridge.  Thus if you want tea or coffee with sugar, (iced or hot) forget it.  It'll be fine to serve a huge glass of migraine-inducing liquid with that horrid aspartame-aftertaste, like Diet Pepsi, but it would be illegal for Starbucks to put a splash of a flavored sugar syrup in a hot beverage.  And forget about ever buying hot chocolate in a restaurant ever again in Cambridge (unless it's poisoned with aspartame).  

(edit:  I thought this was relevant to Davis Square because many people who spend time in Davis Square occasionally travel to the next town over.)

Comments

[futurenurselady.livejournal.com]

There are plenty of sweeteners that aren't sugar and aren't aspartame.

Synthetic: Sucralose, Saccharine, and Xylitol all come to mind. Of those, only Saccharine has been found to be toxic.

Natural: Stevia, Agave nectar, honey, molasses, brown rice syrup are all options that are not cane sugar or corn syrup. Some of those are cheaper than raw cane sugar (read: sugar that has not been bleached).

I am sure that businesses can and will find a way around a ruling like that.

FTR, if you have not been to a doctor about getting migraines from aspartame, you ought to.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

There are plenty of sweeteners that aren't sugar and aren't aspartame.
Synthetic: Sucralose, Saccharine, and Xylitol all come to mind. Of those, only Saccharine has been found to be toxic.

When people are trying to avoid nuts or dairy or gluten, it doesn't matter that the food it not toxic to the world at large. If a particular person reacts badly to a particular food (or ingredient), that person should avoid it.

FTR, if you have not been to a doctor about getting migraines from aspartame, you ought to.

I've been to doctors about migraines, which are triggered by aspartame, sucralose, and xylitol. (I can sometimes tolerate small amounts of stevia and agave, in good weather, if I have not been exposed to environmental triggers during the previous week.) Not unreasonably, doctors advise me to avoid artificial sweeteners. This seems to be standard practice.

I do not appreciate cities making my health care more difficult.

[futurenurselady.livejournal.com]

And I can't have cane sugar.

Businesses that don't have sugar-free options have been making my health care difficult for many years.

My solution is to make things for myself at home, or bring things I can have with me.

Why not bring a regular sugar packet with you to add to your coffee or tea if this law goes into effect? That way, the business isn't violating anything.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't object if the city council required restaurants to have more options. (It might be too intrusive, or too expensive for restaurant owners. But it would also do good things, that might make it worthwhile.) This proposal bothers me because it would require restaurants to have FEWER options. I'm generally in favor of choices, and suspicious of government restrictions on choices--especially choices that affect my physical health.

Yes, it would be possible for me to work around this ban, if Cambridge is so wrong-headed and malicious as to pass it. But the easiest way, the safest way, for me to deal with it would be for me to spend less time in Cambridge.

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

There are lots of people who get migraines from aspartame. And probably a lot more who do, but don't know it.