The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/upshot/soda-industry-struggles-as-consumer-tastes-change.html?_r=0

by coloneltcb • 11 years ago

174 235 11 years ago

nytimes.com

tzs2• 11 years ago

Submission from 18 minutes earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10324311

Submission from 19 hours earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10321396

gnoway• 11 years ago

And the 19 hours one by the same user. coloneltcb really wants you to read this article!

rch• 11 years ago

mods are sending emails asking users to resubmit some articles

dang2• 11 years ago

A small number of reposts is ok if a story hasn't had significant attention yet [1]. After that, we bury reposts as dupes.

This is the main device for migitating the randomness that otherwise dominates which stories make it off /newest [2]. Basically, it's ok to roll the dice a few times.

If we see a good-by-HN's-standard story that fell through the cracks, we've been emailing the submitters and inviting them to repost it. We invited coloneltcb to repost this one. This is the latest in a series of experiments that I've written about at [3] and [4] if anyone's interested.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828818

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134

4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140

tzs2• 11 years ago

I was aware of that. That's why I didn't flag the duplicates.

My purpose in providing back links on each duplicate to the earlier posts was to try to avoid fragmenting the comments. When there are two submissions 18 minutes apart, there is a decent chance comments will be split between them.

If we see a good-by-HN's-standard story that fell through the cracks, we've been emailing the submitters and inviting them to repost it. We invited coloneltcb to repost this one

That seems pretty inelegant for a site named "Hacker News". Why can't you diddle the database to give the original another shot? The "invite a resubmission" approach makes the submitter have to figure out a different URL, and increases the risk of comment fragmentation.

kevin_thibedeau• 11 years ago

I would like to see a decline of "Big water". It astonishes me that bottled water is consistently sold for more than sugar water and not one bottler breaks from the pack and sells it for less. That can only happen with industry wide collusion to fix prices and yet no one in the government does anything about it.

chrisseaton• 11 years ago

I think my local supermarket sells bottled water for as little as 19p (29c) for 2 litres, as as much as about £2 ($3) so I think you are mistaken.

twic• 11 years ago

That stuff is probably more or less tap water:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tesco-and-as...

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Actual spring water is uniformly 45p for two litres:

http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=258016736

http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/sparkling-wate...

http://groceries.asda.com/product/sparkling-water/asda-eden-...

https://groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/product/Morrisons-Pe...

That said, i imagine kevin_thibedeau was referring to the situation in the US. Perhaps bottled water is more expensive there. Or perhaps sugar water is cheaper.

ihsw• 11 years ago

Bottled water prices are usually regionally-defined and bulk prices vary from excellent to horrendous.

I'm fairly certain the parent was referring to the 24-unit packs of water, where each bottle is ~500ml.

bluedino2• 11 years ago

Premium brand water might be $2/bottle (let's forget luxury brands that might be $4+) but you can get store brands in 24/48 packs for $2.99/$3.99 at large retailers.

Even some brands like Dasani or Deja Blue are 1/$2 at gas stations

wmil• 11 years ago

All of the major bottled water brands are owned by companies that also make sugar beverages, so there's no reason for them to sell it for less.

Also there's probably not a big price difference on their end. Bottled water is usually purified then remineralized to get a consistent product.

douche• 11 years ago

What I love is that the gallon jug costs the same, or less, than the 12 oz bottle. The cost is all in the packaging.

foobarian• 11 years ago

Read "Evian" backwards and you have all you need to know about the bottled water industry.

andhess• 11 years ago

I don't really mind if "big water" is a thing, but I'd like to see better packaging for it. It's amazing how many people regularly drink bottled water instead of tap water.

r00fus• 11 years ago

We purchase from a locally purified water distributor and use large reusable containers.

Makes a big difference. When we got our plumbing replaced I might get a whole house filter as well.

ghaff• 11 years ago

Well, you don't always have a water bottle and a place to fill it up from. That said, I agree that general societal pressure to reduce the number of pint/quart-size throwaway bottles is desirable in the same vein as reducing the use of throwaway plastic grocery bags. At the same time, given the choice between people buying bottles of water and bottles of soda, the former counts as progress in general and I'm not sure we want to discourage it.

mjrpes• 11 years ago

The article states that the industry is fearful of water as as substitute because brand preference is not as strong and there are plenty of cheap competitors.

Theodores• 11 years ago

If you work in retail then you are interested in profit, not making a good deal for your customers. If the proper branded product gives you a nice 37% margin (with that being 37% of a proper price), what is the incentive for selling something with a lower margin at a lower price?

The proper branded products have some distribution arrangements that mean you cannot sell their stuff at a low price, i.e. lower than everyone else. This is not 'price fixing' in a way the government can outlaw. Salesman from brand simply phones retailer's buyer and has a few words, implicit being the threat not to re-supply them. Large buyers will have negotiated a better price so long as they sell at the agreed price, clearly this privilege goes if they break their part of the deal, so next time they will have to buy at the official trade price, which is higher than what they need to make a profit.

Ma and Pa stores don't have the bargaining position - they buy from a 'cash 'n' carry' that might be supplied by another distributor (and an importer) all levels taking a percentage. They can stock 'off brand' products, but, even in a Ma and Pa store every square foot has to pay for itself, so why sell a low value, low margin, low $$$ turnover product?

Supermarkets sell own brand alongside branded products to present choice so you can buy big bottles of water at a price you would think does not make it worth them to stock. But check out the lunch purchases aisle, we are back to branded products at normal retail prices.

There is no conspiracy just capitalism and 'free market' practices. Having said that, water does have competition from a) the tap and b) the natural world. If you really wanted cheap water you could always run a tap (in the first world) or even collect your own rain water, filtering accordingly.

HappyTypist2• 11 years ago

Oh yes, this can certainly be effectively outlawed. Create a barebones agency that manages a eBay like site for wholesalers. If Coca cola ever declines to sell to someone or offers preferential prices, then that's price collusion.

lemevi• 11 years ago

Just take some time next time you're in a supermarket and walk down the cereal aisle, it's just incredible. It's all sugar and carbohydrates in colorful cartoony boxes meant to appeal to children. Just a cup of cereal has many calories and people and children eat huge bowls of this stuff.

So I think an anti-cereal campaign might also help. I often wonder what would happen to national obesity rates if cereal aisles in supermarkets just disappeared overnight.

frenchy• 11 years ago

There some much healthier options in there if you know where to look, but unfortunately its not easy to identify them, and even things like granola which are colloquially thought to be healthy are often jam packed with sugar.

jobu• 11 years ago

Exactly. They put extra sugar/sweeteners in absolutely everything these days. You have to look at the ingredients and calories on anything you buy.

Even super healthy-eeming things like granola or dried fruit usually have sugar added. Yogurt is still promoted as a healthy snack, but most of them have as much added sugar as a candy bar.

endemic• 11 years ago

I saw something called "Uncle Sam Original Wheat Berry Flakes" last weekend, and it is surprisingly healthy (http://www.unclesamcereal.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Unc...). Only 4 ingredients, too.

bluecalm• 11 years ago

Maybe the solution is to require sorting on the shelves by sugar content. This way not only healthier options will be easier to find but you would need to take a few additional steps to get your high sugar option.

Those additional steps to get to the end of the shelf may even turn into a walk of shame kind of thing with enough cultural pressure.

sampo2• 11 years ago

even things like granola which are colloquially thought to be healthy are often jam packed with sugar.

Also instant oats with added flavor (brown sugar and maple, cinnamon, banana bread, what have you) can contain a lot of added sugar, compared to plain oats version.

tim333• 11 years ago

Or if they just stopped advertising it. In the UK the government tried to ban food advertising to children but there was massive lobbying from Kellogg's and they dropped it.

tdkl3• 11 years ago

Regarding Kellogg's , they also started the whole "Breakfast is healthy and most important meal in the morning" BS. Since I've started intermittent fasting 16/8 (from 20.00 to 12.00) I've been loosing fat easily.

codingdave• 11 years ago

If you are going there, you may as well evaluate the entire store. Most processed foods are not healthy, and most grocery stores are stocked with processed foods. It is not like the frozen dinner/pizza aisle has many good choices either. The produce sections are good, though.

smacktoward• 11 years ago

The design of grocery stores has actually evolved in such a way as to make it pretty easy for you to shop healthy, though not on purpose. (At least, it did in the US, I don't know if other countries follow the same pattern.)

The standard supermarket layout consists a "perimeter" running around the sides and back of the store, with a "center store" made up of aisles in the middle. Center store is where the shelf-stable, processed and frozen foods go, while fresh/perishable foods -- produce, dairy, meats, seafood, bakery, etc. -- are placed along the perimeter. (More on this here: http://limn.it/all-lost-in-the-supermarket/)

So if you stick to shopping the perimeter and only duck into center store when you absolutely need to, it's not hard to come away with a cart that's mostly fresh foods. It's when your shopping consists mostly of running up and down the aisles of the center store that you get in trouble.

lfjmfkekdk8• 11 years ago

I have a large bowl of cereal every morning. Yes, I eat those kids' sugary cereals. My BMI is below 20.

brandonmenc2• 11 years ago

I was a cereal addict as a kid. Killed a couple boxes of the stuff a week. And I was super skinny, probably because we played outside to the point of exhaustion every single day.

dingbat• 11 years ago

damage to the pancreas and related hormonal systems is cumulative, often not apparent until its too late. people can be pre-diabetic and not obese. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-01-26/more-than-...

lawn• 11 years ago

Be careful of assigning too much importance on BMI or weight in general. Eating a lot of sugar increases the risk for diabetes even if you're skinny.

jfoutz• 11 years ago

As weird as it is, things are improving in the U.S.

I met an ad exec who ran the Joe Camel campaign. People will do what works. The free market will end up with really effective but unwanted solutions. Marketing to kids is one of those places where simple regulation makes a lot of sense.

dingaling• 11 years ago

Even Kelloggs Corn Flakes are packed with sugar. Why?

Scoundreller• 11 years ago

People are more likely to re-purchase a product if they like how it tastes. Sweeter = tastier.

Some will make comparisons based on labels and change, but most will re-purchase and not consider alternatives.

Avshalom• 11 years ago

Because they're made out of corn.

kedean• 11 years ago

I'm not convinced that cereal as a product is bad. Sure things like Lucky Charms are clearly terrible for kids, but Cheerios or Honey Bunches of Oats? They are the best combination of cheap, easy, and quick that someone can get for breakfast. My biggest worry with an anti-cereal movement would be that people would just start skipping breakfast (even more than they do), leading them to consume MORE calories at lunch and dinner to make up for it.

Yxven• 11 years ago

Lucky Charms has 110 calories per 3/4ths a cup. Honey Nut Cheerios has 110 calories per 3/4ths a cup.

They both have 22g of carbs of which Lucky Charms has 10g of sugar while Cheerios has 9. Don't confuse branding with health. If your cereal doesn't taste like cardboard, it's probably bad for you.

Strom• 11 years ago

These colorful sugar-cereals have completely overtaken the cereal market in Estonia. In fact, my neighbourhood supermarkets no longer sell any major brand whole grain cereal at all. They used to, but the number of options kept decreasing, until it reached zero a few years ago. Now I either have to buy generic components and mix the cereal myself, or eat something else.

free2rhyme214• 11 years ago

If man made it, don't eat it.

adventured6• 11 years ago

Would that include cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale, broccoli and cauliflower? Those are all man made.

http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/6/5974989/kale-cauliflower-...

cwilson• 11 years ago

It's crazy how easy it is to eat a healthier diet by simply avoiding the cereal/chips/soda isles. Sugar (especially corn syrup), and processed carbs literally make up these two massive aisle's in every store. Combine that with a moderate amount of activity throughout the week and you'll be in pretty decent shape.

Case in point: I live in a walking city (NYC), avoid the junk described above, yet I eat/drink out often and at 31 years old I'm in above average shape without any serious exercise (other than walking up lots of stairs, and around the city, daily). Of course I could do more, but the point is cutting out some simple items from your diet can go a very long way.

littletimmy4• 11 years ago

What we really need is a limit on advertising. Corporations manufacturing packaged sugar like coke, cereal etc. should not be able to manipulate young children to get them addicted to their crap. Sell this stuff in plain white boxes, ban advertising to young children, and in general, limit the free speech of soulless legal fictions when they target children.

yincrash2• 11 years ago

where do you draw the line? should all food be sold in white boxes with plain lettering?

the-dude• 11 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Name_(brand)

littletimmy4• 11 years ago

We'll have to draw, as in most things, an arbitrary line by consensus. Spinach is on one side, sugar on another, Milk is on spinach's side, tobacco on sugar's, and so on.

This is stuff that we should decide as a society to keep ourselves safe from corporate psychopaths.

duckmysick• 11 years ago

Why not? In fact, why not go even further and enforce that all websites have only a black serif (or monospace) font on a white background? No more screaming colors, moving parts, confusing adverts - just plain content.

lfjmfkekdk8• 11 years ago

That will certainly not pass the first amendment test.

kachnuv_ocasek3• 11 years ago

Two clicks from the 'First amendment' Wikipedia article led me to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite... So yeah, it might pass.

ScottWhigham4• 11 years ago

I'm not sure what the 'first amendment test' is when it comes to corporate advertising but our government already limits how alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and marijuana can be advertised. We also limit what and how things can be advertised to children. So I'm not really sure your sentence is correct.

littletimmy4• 11 years ago

The first amendment shouldn't really apply to corporations. We already limit the advertising of tobacco, for example. Sugar is as harmful.

andyfleming2• 11 years ago

Regulating advertising then gives control to whatever organization makes those decsisions. Are their interests always going to be in alignment with our own?

bufordsharkley• 11 years ago

From working in a non-commercial radio station for years-- I think applying non-commercial criteria is pretty easy:

1) No mentioning of prices 2) No calls to action 3) No aggrandizement of product. Underwriting can be a neutrally-worded description of product.

I've really come to believe that all media that could be described as public (the outdoors, network television, radio, perhaps much more...) should abide by these rules, insofar as commercial advertising pollutes it horribly.

andyfleming2• 11 years ago

What we really need is education. Children and adults alike should better understand nutrition and what they are putting in their bodies. It's no secret that soda and so many other drinks are packed with sugar, but no one seems to care or understand.

orangecat• 11 years ago

It's no secret that soda and so many other drinks are packed with sugar, but no one seems to care or understand.

Or they do understand, and are willing to make the tradeoff. I'm about to order a pizza. It will be unhealthy, and also delicious.

PopeOfNope4• 11 years ago

What we really need is fewer people speculating about what other people need. Follow in the footsteps of your forefathers[0] and mind your own damned business.

[0] http://rivergrandrapids.com/the-first-official-us-coin-said-...

simoncion3• 11 years ago

It's no secret that soda and so many other drinks are packed with sugar, but no one seems to care or understand.

I both care and understand.

The fact that soda is an easily-consumable, relatively cheap, energy-dense, decent-tasting liquid foodstuff is why I purchase it.

PKop2• 11 years ago

Young children don't do the grocery shopping. Parents need to take responsibility and not buy unhealthy food for their kids. I'd say children up to a certain age are drinking this stuff simply because their parents bought it for them (How else?).

Plus, "when they target children" would simply become harder to define as companies would modify their ads, but the problem would remain if parents aren't taking an active role in educating their children themselves as to what is unhealthy, and making purchasing decisions that are healthy, instead of depending on the government (or corporate advertising) to do it for them.

kachnuv_ocasek3• 11 years ago

Kids can buy whatever they want if they have money. And surely, they'll buy the shiny thing thing they saw on TV or the internet when they encounter it in the shop and see it's cheap.

sambull• 11 years ago

I sure did, and when I was 11 years old we had soda machines at our public school. Sold soda at the lunch counter, and had free soda give away days where the distributor would hand out free new/trial products.

wpietri7• 11 years ago

This isn't a binary choice. Parents and advertisers can both take responsibility for what they are doing. Power and responsibility go together. And there's no denying food advertising is powerful; if it weren't, we wouldn't be enduring many billions of dollars worth every year.

klenwell• 11 years ago

When Mr. Nutter was fighting the soda tax battle, he kept a bottle of Mountain Dew and a container with 17 teaspoons of sugar — the amount in the bottle — on the table in the center of his office. It was a good “conversation piece,” he said, about the surprising number of calories in a typical soda.

I think this is key. Better information and transparency is having an effect. I'm glad to hear we're approaching a point where the RDA for sugar will be listed on products just like fat, sodium, and potassium. I expect this will have a major impact on consumer behavior and industry behavior, much like calorie listings on fast food menus. It still requires government regulations, but instead of challenging First Amendment principles, it embraces them.

Most consumers aren't idiots. But they're aren't scientists or academic researchers for the most part either. Bring them relevant, accurate information and they are capable of making rational choices. This article is encouraging evidence.

caseysoftware3• 11 years ago

That's why we haven't had anyone start smoking in decades..

Soda sales are down but obesity is still up, so the calories are coming from somewhere. If you believe the other common stories, we're drinking the calories.

I'd wager they come from the rise of coffee-based beverages - which would not be considered soda - but I don't have data to back that up.

_delirium4• 11 years ago

For now I think Starbucks et al are benefiting from being culturally identified as more upper/middle-class. Obesity stereotypes seem to have fixated mostly on a "people of Walmart" type image of the fat, slobbish lower classes. So even though a 12-oz Starbucks caramel latte is far worse than a 12-oz Coke, it gets a pass.

wpietri7• 11 years ago

And I expect juice drinks are part of it as well. Same high levels of sugar and low levels of fiber. The calories aren't as empty, but they're still much easier to consume than whole fruit.

austenallred• 11 years ago

I'd be curious to see how much of the decline of "soda" is a result of the move to "energy drinks"

gaius3• 11 years ago

Soda sales are down but obesity is still up

Because it's not just about calories in but calories out too. People spending all day sitting in front of screens replacing all other forms of both work and play...

redbeard0x0a• 11 years ago

All the extra weight is coming from the abundance of sugars that are added to food. Especially the low-fat or fat-free foods. So we aren't just drinking the sugar, we are eating it too.

duaneb• 11 years ago

Well, some people will always want to smoke and eat poorly, and that is their choice. But cigarettes were never really insidious in the same way something like "sugar" is; I think sugar will have to be seen as a vice rather than what it is, one of the cheapest sources of calories you can get kids to eat. And that's going to have to take some deep change in the market.

And sports drinks, energy drinks, and flavored waters are certainly part of it.

Personally, I'm a big fan of soda stream. :)

tomjen33• 11 years ago

The calories don't have to be replaced with anything - total intake can be down even if obesity is still rising, obesity will just be rising less than it otherwise would.

Also the obesity rate in children is down, which is encouraging: http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2015/15_0185.htm

mapt2• 11 years ago

If a beverage has a certain number of calories from sugar per volume, it doesn't really matter whether it's cola-flavored, orange-flavored, vanilla-flavored, tea-flavored, natural-flavored, artificially-flavored, carbonated, uncarbonated, caffeinated, or uncaffeinated. They're all functionally soft drinks, from a dietary perspective, but the graph that charts the decline in carbonated soda does not show the other members in this group.

I actually harbor a hypothesis that I have not seen explored which would explain this even if we take it on face value. Contrary to traditional sources of sugar and starch, sweet beverages cause an absorption of sugar unimpeded by the normal vagaries of digestion - there's no chewing, nothing to slow a person down, no cell walls to slowly break down in the stomach, no fiber to absorb and slowly squeeze out the calories.

In the 90's, I used to drink two or three liters of birch beer for something to do while waiting for the pizza. You can keep pouring orange soda into a human body without complaint, long after they would have vomitted up a sugar-equivalent cherry pie. And often our behavior shifts to adopting soda whenever we look for a drink, as the default, several times a day.

We know that blood sugar spikes cause insulin spikes, and we know that ghrelin, insulin, & related hormones act together to modulate the hunger & satiety responses.

My hypothesis is that rapid sugar intake via drinks, when combined with our natural impulse to slake our thirst, acts to dysregulate our hunger and satiety responses in the longer term. Through whatever processes, it detaches hunger from ad libitum consumption levels, sufficient that an extra few hundred calories per day is the 'natural' level that affected people, on average, feel they should be eating. 100 extra calories a day over burn rate is about 10lbs/year of gained weight.

C) Obesity is a lagging indicator here. People faced with an ad libitum diet find it very, very easy to maintain their weight. There seems to be a nearly universal misconception that baseline gluttony is associated with high weight levels, but that's bullshit. A person weighing 300lbs has roughly the same neurochemical hunger/stress response as a person weighing 150lbs, when you shortchange them each by 500 calories a day relative to their metabolic burn rate: It's just that metabolic burn rate goes way up as one gains weight. Maintaining weight is the default state. The mystery is why people are on average slowly gaining weight, rather than why fat people are not losing weight.

bsder2• 11 years ago

Soda sales are down but obesity is still up, so the calories are coming from somewhere.

A recent study showed that people in earlier years ate the same number of calories but were still thinner.

It's more complex than calories.

I suspect they're going to find that nicotine (lack thereof in current society) is the culprit.

That's not to say we should go back, but it's not just "calories".

adventured6• 11 years ago

Coffee based beverages don't explain childhood and teen obesity. Those two categories don't drink nearly as much coffee as adults.

Besides that, some categories of obesity have plunged:

"U.S. Childhood Obesity Rates Fall 40% in Decade"

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023048347045794053...

Adult obesity rates have leveled off for the last several years. I don't believe it's a coincidence things are moving in a better direction at exactly the same time Americans started drinking less soda (such that both Coke and Pepsi have been seeing declining sales in the US market for the last few years). What Americans aren't doing less of, is consuming fewer coffee products - they're drinking vastly more than they were ten years ago. If that were fueling obesity we'd be seeing a continued increase in obesity among adults.

Further, the obesity rates skyrocketed starting from the early 1980s. They trace almost perfectly inline with soda, fast food, and high fructose corn syrup. They don't follow any line with the vast array of coffee products, which only took off in the mid to late 1990s.

chris_wot4• 11 years ago

Are obesity rates increasing? I'd like to see your source. Same with smoking rates.

greggman2• 11 years ago

I'm confused about your comment on smoking? Are you saying because of labelling people aren't smoking?

I ask because for example Singapore has extremely harsh labeling and yet they've seen an increase recently.

Sorry if I mis-understood your point.

https://www.moh.gov.sg/content/moh_web/home/pressRoom/Parlia...

Warning!! THESE LABELS ARE GROSS!!! https://www.google.es/search?q=singapore+cigarettes+labels&t...

baby4• 11 years ago

That's why we haven't had anyone start smoking in decades..

Different reality in France

hippich• 11 years ago

I hope people will also lay down sugar amount of apple, bagel, etc food next to these coke/dew/etc bottles of soda drinks. =)

Thing is - most of products in US has label stating clearly amount of calories and major contributors. It is SUPER easy to find approximate amount to which you need to stick. But people still over do it two/three/more times.

As much as I hate it, I think only high food costs will work. Problem is - how to keep it high enough to prevent abuse, but at the same time, keep lower income people access to enough nutrients.

adventured6• 11 years ago

Replace 90% of the sugar consumed in America with erythritol or similar, and ban high fructose corn syrup as unsafe for human consumption. Obesity would begin to plunge overnight. It would remove vast amounts of calories from the typical American diet.

ufmace• 11 years ago

Not a nutrition expert, but I'm given to understand that the form of the sugar matters as much as the amount. The sugar in an actual apple is apparently bound up in fibers or something, so basically it takes time for your body to process it and get it into the bloodstream. When you turn that apple into apple juice, even if it's entirely natural, you've freed the sugar to be absorbed by your body much faster.

That speed of absorption makes the difference - your body doesn't know what to do with so much sugar at once, so it processes it into fat and other things. Let it out more slowly, and it can actually use most of it for energy.

pkaye• 11 years ago

I never understood how soda doesn't feel like it has 17 teaspoons of sugar in it because I've made lemonade with 2-3 teaspoons of sugar and it feels just as sweet.

maxerickson2• 11 years ago

That's probably a 20 floz container, which gets you halfway or so.

mrob• 11 years ago

Was your lemonade carbonated? Carbonation can reduce perceived sweetness: http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085%2813%2900798...

Lower serving temperature will also reduced perceived sweetness and soda is often served with ice: http://aless.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/wordpress/web/wp-content/uplo...

(0.5M is 171g/l, approximately double what you'd find in soda)

at-fates-hands2• 11 years ago

The sad thing is you can do this for pretty much anything but water.

15.2 oz Minute Maid orange juice: 45g of sugar: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/subway-minute-maid...

12 oz Welchs grape juice? 63g of sugar: http://i2.wp.com/afterthekidsleave.files.wordpress.com/2014/...

Something healthier like Vitamin Water - right?

Vitamin Water - 8oz 13g: http://www.betteroffwell.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/vita...

it also contains that pesky thing called "crystalline fructose" which apparently is a mild form of arsenic: http://www.fearlessfatloss.com/food/what-is-crystalline-fruc...

Pick anything other than water, and you're going to be consuming sugar, HFCS or some derivative of fructose which is horrible for your body. The simple solution is to drink these in moderation and balance it with lots of water.

ddlatham• 11 years ago

How about tea, coffee, wine, even sparkling or mineral (not just plain) water.

maxerickson2• 11 years ago

It is not a mild form of arsenic. It is allowable for the crystalline fructose to contain 1 part per million of arsenic (by mass).

hisham_hm2• 11 years ago

How about real fruit juice? Much healthier.

Minute Maid is owned by Coca-Cola, anyways.

matthewmacleod• 11 years ago

it also contains that pesky thing called "crystalline fructose" which apparently is a mild form of arsenic

This is literally one of the most scientifically illiterate things I've ever read. Please at least try to understand basic nutrition or even chemistry before sharing your opinion on these issues.

agumonkey3• 11 years ago

Also, juice are high sugar beverages too. Don't let the fruit / nature packaging fool you.

jimmar• 11 years ago

It's interesting to me that diet soda consumption has dropped from its peak. I would have guessed that sugary soda would have been replaced by diet soda, but it appears that water has replaced sugary soda more frequently. Mind mildly blown.

tomjen33• 11 years ago

Yeah this wasn't exactly what I expected either - I only drink diet soda, but it seems many more people are worried about Aspartame than I assumed.

rhino3693• 11 years ago

A lot of people just can't get over the terrible taste of artificial sugar. If someone ever creates an artificial sugar indistinguishable from sugar or corn syrup, it'll be a multibillion dollar invention.

I'd give my right arm for zero calories coke, I'd rather have a perrier than diet coke.

icelancer• 11 years ago

I agree. Though Coke Zero is significantly better than Diet Coke.

the_economist• 11 years ago

The rise of coffee may have played a large part in this.

digitalengineer• 11 years ago

The Food that makes billions (bbc) is about the rise of water and more. Very good! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w8cll

bluedino2• 11 years ago

What are restaurants doing to combat the loss of their highest-margin items? Another bonus of drinking water instead of a soft drink is a cheaper bill at lunch.

jmcphers• 11 years ago

They're just increasing the prices of everything else. In earlier decades, restaurants used to sell their food at a near-loss because everyone had a couple of high-margin alcoholic drinks with their meal. When that started to go by the wayside, the restaurants had to increase the menu prices of the actual food. I expect we'll see the same thing happen if people stop buying beverages entirely, especially at fast-food restaurants where the soft drink is almost always the highest-margin element of the meal, making up for loss leaders like the "dollar menu".

neverartful• 11 years ago

Like many of the posters here, I realize that much of the food and drink sold is unhealthy. On the other hand, I don't think that nanny state regulations are the answer. Plenty of unhealthy things abound (when overused): chips, candy, pizza, fast food, cookies, ice cream, video games, television, etc. Maybe some of the same marketing tactics used to sell the unhealthy things can also be used to counter them with healthier alternatives.

wpietri7• 11 years ago

That's a pleasant thought, but it seems unlikely. Food advertising gets circa 1000x as much money as healthy eating [1].

I think the simple step here would just be to ban advertising of unhealthy food the same way we've banned advertising of tobacco products. Citizens would still be free to produce and consume junk food, but corporations would no longer be allowed to indulge in industrial-scale manipulation of consumers' habits.

That won't happen either, of course, because there's an enormous amount of lobbying money from those industries (and from the advertising/PR/marketing industries). But I can dream.

[1] http://consumersunion.org/news/food-industry-advertising-ove...

kw712• 11 years ago

Under a socialized healthcare regime, every sick person is a problem for the whole society in that we have to pay for it. So, being careless with your health is a crime against the people. If you are in the USA, consider that you have been funding healthcare for some of the worst offenders for decades by paying taxes which fund hospitals. Now with the healthcare reforms in mind, which have itemized your contribution to social healthcare separately from your taxes, take a walk around Walmart and consider all the preventable health issues you see in the crowd. Do you really want to pay for that? I feel like you and I should have the freedom not to, and our collective freedom not to is more important than any individual's freedom to eat and drink his way to costly, lifelong illness.

hugh42• 11 years ago

Which is precisely why some of us are opposed to socialised healthcare. Once you have it, every little decision you make becomes everyone else's business.

nitrogen• 11 years ago

It's easy to advocate for collectivism when you think you are in the majority. I am a proponent of universal healthcare, but your comment has me reconsidering. Throwing individuals or subgroups under the bus so disdainfully is just as damaging to our social fabric as eating unhealthily, if not moreso.

We need to unify and enlighten ourselves, not look for more excuses to feel morally superior. So whatever solution we can find to obesity, it has to be one that uplifts, not one that alienates.

masterleep• 11 years ago

What a terrifying mentality.

RevRal• 11 years ago

Perhaps there can be screenings at some frequency to determine one's health. If a person consistently shows a lack of inclination to take care of themselves and follow advice, that behavior is logged and they automatically get de-prioritized when waiting lists are involved. I would assume that generally healthy people are just more of a positive investment, but if someone makes the motions of good health but encounters some life-changing event then they can be said to have shown an inclination to take care of themselves.

hugh42• 11 years ago

It's amazing how many people seem to think drugs should be legalised but sugar should be banned.

stouset• 11 years ago

For starters, I don't think there's any conceivable risk of boxes on supermarket shelves being stuffed to the brim with cocaine.

If you want to look at the number of cumulative life-years lost to drugs vs. sugar in the past several decades, my intuition is that it's not even remotely a close contest.

jpmattia• 11 years ago

For starters, I don't think there's any conceivable risk of boxes on supermarket shelves being stuffed to the brim with cocaine.

Then again, it might be worth remembering the origin of the brand name Coke.

rhino3693• 11 years ago

You don't think there is a risk that if drugs were totally legal, food produces wouldn't start adding addictive drugs? These companies are already trying to engineer the most addictive dorrito possible.

People love stuff like red bull and coffee because of their stimulant properties.

I bet there is a huge market for Frosted (with Coke) Flakes.

TheCoelacanth• 11 years ago

I haven't seen anyone suggest that sugar should be banned the way drugs are, just limited in how much can be contained in a product marketed as food. Similarly, I don't think that many people who support drug legalization would support allowing drugs to be added to products that are marketed as food rather than marketed as drugs.

yazaddaruvala• 11 years ago

Anyone that wants legalized drugs, wants regulated and taxed drugs. A minority advocate anarchy, but most just want access to these drugs, if they personally deem them appropriate.

Drug advocates still want all nutritional info and negative effects plastered all over the boxes so that they can personally make educated decisions about their lives. For example, look at the Canadian cigarette boxes: http://www.smoke-free.ca/filtertips-5/images/Marlbo4.jpg (I don't know how people still smoke them... /mindblown)

Meanwhile people that do not like sugar, aren't trying to ban sugar (some minority of them may want sugar banned). The majority, just want consumers to be informed and make educated decisions. I'd like to personally add (and I think this opinion is shared): I would like it if we limit the abilities of marketers to hide the negative aspects of these substances. For example, a company shouldn't be allowed to advertise cereal to minors through colorful pictures and cartoons.

Can you imagine if cereal boxes needed 40% of their surface to be covered with pictures of diabetics with amputations/ulcers? Or instead of a toy inside, you get an insulin monitor? How about pictures of cavities and decaying teeth?

I think in that world, very few children would want to eat that product, and even fewer parents would continue to buy them.

cheez• 11 years ago

You realize what happens when "Big Soda" declines, right? "Big Water" is next, and with that, privatization. GIVE THEM FAT KIDS.

hisham_hm2• 11 years ago

"Soda companies" are already moving to controlling water supply in many countries. In Brazil, it's already hard to find in some stores water which is not owned by either Coca-Cola or Nestlé.

fennecfoxen• 11 years ago

Does the "water supply" of most citizens of most countries come from a grocery store? Or does it still come from things like municipal plumbing or rural wells?

seizethecheese2• 11 years ago

In Latin America tap water is not drinkable so most people get their drinking water bottled.

Eric_WVGG• 11 years ago

pro-tip for anyone trying to kick a soda (or alcohol) habit: get yourself a seltzer maker, and an assortment of bitters (Fee Bros Cranberry, Walnut, and standard Angostura are a good place to start).

This is just my personal experience, but I found that most of the unhealthy drinking I was doing was out of habit and boredom. I’m just as happy with a seltzer + a few dashes of bitters as I was with a beer or a coke.

minikites• 11 years ago

Fee Brothers is great and that is also my "soft" drink of choice.

bradlys• 11 years ago

Even if you don't get something like that, just having a glass of water nearby is a great way to reduce consumption. I drink a lot of diet soda and it's mainly out of compulsion to constantly drink liquids. If I keep a nice cold cup of water near where I am, the soda consumption drops super fast. Once I start drinking water during that day, that's usually what sticks.

For me, it's almost all about the habit of constantly drinking. That said, even though I know how to kick the habit, I still tend to drink a lot of diet soda because it's a nice pick-me-up.

baby4• 11 years ago

I completely replaced these things with the flavored sparkling water

makecheck• 11 years ago

Soda isn't inherently evil. Education on how to track calories and understand the density of some foods is more important. Of course, since sodas don't have really any nutrition, it is hard to drink a lot of them.

You can't single out soda while you still have people eating "healthy" salads that are twice as big as they should be, covered with dressing and cheese and olives and fatty meats.

You can't single out soda while you let people drink "coffee" (which by itself is fine) that includes 1000 calories worth of additives like cream and sweeteners.

And oil is extremely calorie-dense; simply cutting in half the number of fries that you eat would go a long way.

With a proper diet and exercise you can certainly have a couple of sodas a week. There is also a better way to drink soda: don't use a straw. Just try to get through a 32 oz. soda when you sip it a bit at a time; you'll find that you don't really drink it that fast, that it tastes better, and that a small amount is still satisfying. After awhile it'll seem much more natural to order a small soda.

tripzilch• 11 years ago

It’s clear that soda’s calories contribute to weight gain and obesity, but whether its impact is greater than that of other unhealthy foods has not been conclusively demonstrated. Nevertheless, the change is already underway.

I think that if you consume a lot of sugary stuff, like drinking soda all day, you're going to get used to the taste of sugar. If you cut soda, consume a lot less sugar, you may find you have less desire for other really sweet products like ice cream, cake, candies, etc., because they are just so sweet and at the very least won't feel like eating a whole bunch of it any more.

The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

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