To anyone getting in a lather about the soft-drink tax, there are more important things to consider and do rather than driving to the next county for your fix. And if you can’t stand the thought of not having a soda, yes – you’re addicted.

No-one is forcing you to buy sugary drinks for you and your family. Nobody owes you pop at whatever price you feel you should pay.

Pop provides zero nutritional value – spending any money on it is a waste. Mostly what you get in your drink isn’t even that real, grainy, white or tan sugar, but high fructose corn syrup.

If you have a trainer or martial arts teacher, she or he will tell you to lay off soda. Your doctors want you to stop ingesting HFCS. Your dentist wants you to never ever touch the stuff – which adheres itself to our teeth, there to wear off our enamel in record time.

Are you planning to drive extra miles to get pop and maybe gas and groceries? Really? You mean you’re going to add extra dollars to the coffers of the gas companies and more smog to the City? What sense does that make? Let’s say you’ve gotten used to eating swordfish every week and just learned about its tendency to harbor mercury. You like it, but for the sake of your health you’re going to give it up or cut way back. You can do likewise with soda.

Calling Toni Preckwinkle “Taxwinkle” (maybe she will wear this name as a badge of courage!) or worse does nothing to further any discussion or educate the people you know. No matter how much the marketing juggernauts want us to decry this as a loss of choice, this is the corn growers ans HFCS producers in a lather over something they want to make us believe they’re right about – this is not at all about a choice being taken away from poor consumers. This is about us keeping some of our money and them losing some of their revenue, because no matter what they claim, they could care less about our kids’ bodies or oral health.

Drink iced tea and you’ll get healthier as you add less and then less sugar; soon you, too, will be down to zero added sweetener. If you must have something sweet, use honey, which really is all-natural, and because it’s so much sweeter, you’ll use less. Best of all is to eat the whole fruit, which will give us fiber and micronutrients, and drink plain water. The time to do just as we like and eat what we please never should have gone this far, but it’s time to help HFCS and soda die, a painful death if it must, just so long as it goes away!