Black Pastors Sue Big Soda

The extravagantly lucrative tradition established by “reverends” Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton is carried forward by another generation of looters:

William Lamar, the senior pastor at D.C.’s historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, is tired of presiding over funerals for parishioners who died of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.

So on Thursday, he and another prominent African-American pastor filed suit against Coca-Cola and the American Beverage Association, claiming soda manufacturers knowingly deceived customers about the health risks of sugar-sweetened beverages — at enormous cost to their communities. …

Lamar and Delman Coates, pastor at Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in suburban Clinton, Maryland, claim soda marketing has made it harder to protect the health of their largely black, D.C.-based parishioners.

In its denunciation of what it calls “Big Soda,” the Denver Compost piece extracted here proclaims that there is “overwhelming evidence that the harms of drinking soda disproportionately affect [black and Hispanic] communities.”

Obesity, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and lower-extremity amputations are all far higher among people of color than among whites. These communities also drink more soda and are exposed to more soda advertising.

Health problems associated with soda are mainly related to obesity, which is only an issue for those who drink far too much of it. If the posturing pastors really wanted to get at the root cause of obesity among their parishioners, they would sue the welfare state.

As New York University professor Marion Nestle details in her book “Soda Politics,” [soda] companies have been major funders of minority advocacy groups, including the NAACP, since the 1950s…

Feeding the crocodile does not guarantee that it will eat you last.

Soda pop is now racist. If you like it, drink it while you can. Punitive taxes and lawsuit looting sprees will make it prohibitively expensive.

On a tip from Bodhisattva.