CSPI, July 15, 2010
Scientists Question Whether Federal Nutrition Assistance Funds Should Be Used to Buy Obesity-Promoting Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

WASHINGTON—The soft drink industry receives a $4 billion subsidy from taxpayers each year, according to aneditorial published today in the American Journal of Public Health.
According to the paper, that’s about how much carbonated soda is purchased with money from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), the program formerly known as Food Stamps. And that total doesn’t include non-carbonated soft drinks. Considering that the overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is helping fuel an epidemic of obesity that …

McClatchy Newspapers, May 11, 2010
The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity issued a blueprint Tuesday that’s thick with ideas but doesn’t put the hammer down yet on taxpayers or private industry.
A national soda tax? Worth further study, but not this year. New regulatory authority over food marketing to children, or changes to agricultural subsidies to make fresh fruit and vegetables cheaper? Possibilities down the road, but why not first encourage more voluntary steps by the private sector?
The 124-page report from the task force that President Barack Obama created three …

The New York Times,  March 15, Roni Caryn Rabin
New research provides evidence that proposed taxes on soft drinks may make young people healthier.

The study, which collected food intake data from 12,123 young adults for 20 years, found that with every 10 percent increase in the price of a two-liter bottle, people consumed 7 percent fewer calories from soda. They also took in fewer calories over all.

When people faced an even larger increase — $1 for a two-liter bottle of soda, comparable to a proposed tax in Philadelphia — they consumed …

The Boston Globe, February 13, 2010
WHEN SODA companies applaud the latest campaign to fight obesity, you know there is much more to the story.

In launching a new White House initiative against obesity called “Let’s Move,’’ First Lady Michelle Obama this week said, “Our kids didn’t do this to themselves. Our kids don’t decide what’s served to them at school or whether there’s time for gym or recess. Our kids don’t choose to make food products with tons of sugar and sodium in super-sized portions, and then to have those products …

Los Angeles Times, Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger, February 7, 2010
Employing a broad-based lobbying effort, the soft drink industry has smothered a plan to tax sugared beverages — a plan advocates said would have reduced obesity and helped finance healthcare reform.
Only months ago, public health advocates thought the tax would be a natural for congressional Democrats looking for revenue to fund expanded health insurance coverage. The soaring costs of treating ailments related to excess weight — including diabetes and heart disease — added urgency to the issue.
But the White House …

Los Angeles Times, Tami Dennis, February 8, 2010
Sugar-sweetened sodas — with their high-glycemic load eliciting natural suspicion — have been linked with varying degrees of success to an increased risk of pancreatic cancer. So scientists have been trying to clarify the precise nature and size of that risk.
Researchers at the University of Minnesotas School of Public Health noted that most of the studies along these lines have been in people of European descent. So they decided to cull through data from the Singapore Chinese Health Study, assessing whether sugar-sweetened soft drinks and juices had …

Walter Willett for Newsweek, February 5, 2010
Until last year, the residents of Albert Lea, Minn., were no healthier than any other Americans. Then the city became the first American town to sign on to the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project—the brainchild of writer Dan Buettner, whose 2008 book, The Blue Zones, detailed the health habits of the world’s longest-lived people. His goal was to bring the same benefits to middle America—not by forcing people to diet and exercise, but by changing their everyday environments in ways that encourage a healthier lifestyle.
What …

Seems like the reasons to not eat at fast food restaurants just keep on piling up. Weve heard all about the unseemly practices that go into obtaining their meats and innumerable other horrors.
Brian Merchant, Treehugger
But now, lets look at the quality of the soda fountains–another staple of the fast food experience. A recent study has revealed that a full 48% of soda fountains at fast food restaurants contain coliform bacteria–a bacteria that grows in feces. Oh, and 11% contained E. Coli, too.
The study was done by a team of microbiologists …

LONDON Reuters – If Barry Popkin had his way, sugary drinks would be taxed like cigarettes, and the levy would go up and up until societies were weaned off them and stopped piling on weight.
HEALTH
A nutrition expert who has advised the U.S. government and health policy makers around the world, Popkin says the epidemic of obesity and weight gain sweeping the globe could be slowed dramatically if people revised the mantra “you are what you eat” to include “you are what you drink.”
Reviving a taste for water could cut between …

September 14, 2009. Chicago Tribune
In some “healthy” school vending machines across the country, soda is out. But rehydrating, sugar-laden sports drinks are still in.
Often promoted by popular athletes as essential thirst quenchers, sports beverages can be beneficial if they’re consumed during or after an intense workout that lasts an hour or more, said Russell Pate, professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina.
Some research has shown that children will take in more fluids if offered a sports drink rather than water alone.
But sports beverages are little more than …