Whether you call it soda, pop, or cola, you'll have to pay more to buy it if Gavin Newsom gets his way: Matier and Ross report that Mayor Newsom is thinking about taxing city vendors of sugary soft drinks to pay for his Shape Up SF kid fitness programs.

The thinking's that the fructose corn syrup that gets added to your Coke [we grew up in the South, so we call 'em Cokes, though we've noticed ourselves switching over to the term "soda" the longer we live here. Will we start saying "hella" next too?] is extremely fattening, and reports show that kids get up to 10% of their daily caloric intake from it. This causes obesity, and obesity costs the city tens of millions of dollars in health-related expenses. Ergo, taxing the people who sell the sody pop in question, presumably with the thought that that'll make the drinks more expensive and kids'll skinny up as a result.

For what it's worth, the state is also thinking about labeling sugary drinks with warnings that they can cause diabetes. It is no fun living in this state anymore! (though we do miss the warnings about raw eggs we used to get when we'd order Caesar salads.)

Map of the distribution of the terms pop, soda, and Coke in the US. Soda is yellow, pop is blue, and Coke is red.