Soda...Gallons of It

Soda...Gallons of It

   A disclosure right off the bat...I don't drink soda;  actually, other than the nostalgic gulp of a root beer, I haven't had a soda in quite a number of years, like decades.  This could have been because of my teeth and the stories I kept hearing about all the sugar (an average 12-oz. can of soda has about 10 packets of sugar...while a medium soda at a theater or convenience store has about 17 packets of sugar) giving me cavities (and boy, have I had a lot of cavities, and crowns, and now --which is why there was another pause in these postings-- another two root canals, bringing my total in two weeks to three root canals...what happened?).  True or not, I guess that I could have jumped off the ship and blamed it on the other sugary things, even the juices or the candy or the not brushing my teeth (does any kid enjoy brushing his/her teeth?).  Whatever the reason, after my teens, soda seemed to be out of my life (for the most part).

   The clinching blow, however, was probably my brother telling me of a medical conference he attended, one which showed the declining graph of calcium intake among teens and young adults (this not only included milk, but also cheeses, yogurt and other calcium-rich foods and drinks), mirrored by an opposite rising graph of the intake of sodas among the same group.  The problem was that many sodas contain phosphoric acid (this acid is primarily in darker sodas --except root beer, ironically-- and is something you can see listed on the ingredient label, a label that many soda companies fought for years to avoid having to show the public exactly what they were drinking when they downed a soda); phosphoric acid adds much of the tartness and tang to a soda and, if you've ever used a calcium-cleaning product such as CLR, well, you're aware of how easily it removes those calcium deposits.  So, was (is) there a link?  The issue is still up for debate since phosphoric acid levels are so low in sodas; but the opposing directions of the graphs made me think (osteoporosis runs in my family).  In addition, said my brother, the highest point of calcium intake for a female is when she hits 33 (for men, the age is even lower)...after that age, no matter how much calcium a man or woman takes, it will never be absorbed by the body in as high a level and will progressively decline in efficiency absorption.  At the time (and still), it made sense to me...lower your calcium intake and replace it with a product that takes away your calcium and the result would appear to be what the conference was warning, that future generations would display more bone loss and at earlier ages (as early as in their 40s vs. their 70s).

   Add to all this the increased risk of type-2 diabetes (26% higher) and risk of stroke (20%) from drinking soda (according to Harvard's The Nutrition Source) and well, soda simply lost its allure.  But my tastes are not reflective of the rest of U.S., where the average intake of soda is close to 170 liters per person (that's 85 of those 2-liter bottles in every person's shopping cart).  And none of that includes the consumption of sodas at movie theaters, fast food eateries or gas stops (those dispensers at such places are pure money makers for the facilities, averaging 11 cents of syrup for a $1.99 drink).  For a company such as Coca Cola, such sales equal out to about 2 billion per day.  Which reminded me about the earlier article by Claire Suddath in Bloomberg Businessweek titled, Coke is Ready to Talk About Its Problem: Cultural shifts don’t happen overnight.  They build slowly—a sip of coconut water here, a quinoa purchase there, and suddenly the American diet looks drastically different th an it did 10 years ago.  Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the $75 billion soda industry. For decades, soft-drink companies saw consumption rise.  During the 1970s, the average person doubled the amount of soda they drank; by the 1980s it had overtaken tap water.  In 1998, Americans were downing 56 gallons of the stuff every year—that’s 1.3 oil barrels’ worth of soda for every person in the country...And then we weren’t as thirsty for soda anymore, and there were so many new drink options that we could easily swap it out for something else.  Soft-drink sales stabilized for a few years; in 2005 they started dropping, and they haven’t stopped. Americans are now drinking about 450 cans of soda a year, according to Beverage Digest, roughly the same amount they did in 1986.

 


   Of course, with the declining sales (as shown by the article's graph on the right) came increased sales of vitamin waters and smart drinks and caffeine-filled drinks.  One study, which somewhat showed the changing tastes of generations, asked teenagers to sing a jingle from a Coke products and none could do so (they could, however, almost unanimously sing one from the product, Red Bull).  Ironically, most of the drinks such as Snapple and other juice drinks and enhanced waters, contain as much or more sugar that soda.  So, if sugar wasn't the issue, what was?  Software began arriving in drink-dispensing machines...soda manufacturers wanted to know what was popular now (and since the subsidized high-fructose corn syrup is so cheap, compared to regular sugar, how to keep the profits coming in):  There are 4,200 beverages out there today, thousands more than existed just a few years before.  In 2009, Coca-Cola introduced its touchscreen Freestyle soda fountain machine that offers more than 100 different drink choices; some, such as orange Coke, aren’t even available in cans.  It’s now the standard drink machine at fast-food chains such as Five Guys and Burger King (BKW)—where the largest fountain drink is 40 ounces, or more than three cans of soda.  Coca-Cola says that in the five years since its debut, it has consistently raised drink sales by double digits every year.  Freestyle sends consumers’ choices to Coca-Cola, which it carefully analyzes.   Coca-Cola now knows that 40 percent of the drinks customers buy have an added flavor and that people over 34 drink mostly caffeine-free Coke in the afternoon. 

   But are the diet drinks, with artificial sweeteners, any better?  According to a piece in Time (I've put the link in here but Time doesn't allow digital viewing unless you're a subscriber), apparently not: In a study based on dietary questionnaires of 9,500 people, those who said they drank one can of diet soda a day had a 34% higher risk of metabolic syndrome --a cluster of risk factor that can lead to heart disease and Type 2 diabetes-- than those who didn't drink soda.  The study stopped short of drawing a cause-and-effect link, but the association surprised the authors, who called for more research...a recent study in Nature found that artificial sweeteners changed the colonies of gut bacteria in mice in ways that made the animals vulnerable to insulin resistance and glucose intolerance, which are metabolic disorders that can lead to weight gain and increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes.

    All in all, an individual's taste is just that, an individual's.  Some people love coffee, or whiskey, or cigarettes, or pork belly.  And no matter the amount of studies, things won't likely change until the slow shift of a cultural trend begins to appear.  The same marketing group that convinced the public about pomegranate's benefits for that industry are now working with the pea industry (pea protein is already appearing in numerous products, touting its benefits as better than soy, although admitted failures in extended marketing have included acai and other berries).  But if soda sales continue to decline (soda companies have already bought up most of the vitamin water and tea companies such as Honest Tea), that cultural shift might occur sooner than you think, and perhaps with an entirely new group of marketers.  Maybe, after all is said and done, the new marketing slogan should simply be one that has been with us all along...Your Body, Your Health.