It’s no secret that soda is unhealthy, despite whatever Coca-Cola’s recently disbanded team of sketchy scientists may have said.

And while the liberal enclave of Berkeley, Calif. recently began taxing the sugary beverage in an attempt to discourage consumption, plenty of other cities have tried to introduce a similar tax and failed miserably.

Should stricter measures be implemented to wean Americans off the corn-syrupy teat of big soda? Food writer Mark Bittman thinks so. In a recent interview with Lucky Peach, the plant-based diet advocate who recently left the New York Times to join a vegan meal delivery startup suggested there ought to be a minimum drinking age for soda:

I suggest we start discussing carding kids when they go to the counter to buy a Coke. In other words, you have to be sixteen to buy a Coke, because we don’t think that you’re able to make a decision about how much soda you can drink until you’re sixteen. Really it should be twenty, but I’m compromising because it’s such a far-fetched idea.