The New York Times, ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS, April 4, 2010
New York State’s health commissioner would be the first to admit he has soft drinks on the brain.
The commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, was recently driving down Interstate 15 in Utah, his home state, when he came across four billboards in a row that beamed a subliminal message at him, and not the one the advertisers intended.
The first billboard said, “44 Ounce Soda, 99 Cents.” (“This is a carbonated beverage, meant to be consumed in your car,” he said, marveling at the thought of such a large serving.)
The next one said, “Any Size Soda, One Dollar.” (“Who would go in and order the petite size?” he said. “It’s just a signal to consume.”)
The third billboard trumpeted Utah’s first dedicated C-section wing with a slogan that might owe an apology to Garrison Keillor: “Where No C Is Average.” (“Presumably,” Dr. Daines said, “maternal obesity and diabetes are one of the reasons women are getting C-sections.”)
The fourth billboard said, “We Suck Fat. Smart Liposuction.”
“It kind of captures the whole thing,” Dr. Daines said, getting excited as he told the story in an interview in his Manhattan office. “We underprice this commodity that we overconsume — and I mean we, we all do it — we suffer the consequences, and then we try to buy our way back out of it, liposuction or something, bariatric surgery, some kind of pill for obesity.”
Which brings him to Gov. David A. Paterson’s proposed penny-an-ounce tax on sugared sodas.
Dr. Daines fits the part of the sin-tax crusader. Standing 6-foot-1, he is as lanky and folksy-sounding as Jimmy Stewart, a Spanish-speaking former Mormon missionary in Bolivia who practiced medicine in the South Bronx for 20 years.
Over the past few weeks, he has been traveling the state lobbying anyone who would listen about the scourge of obesity and championing the proposed excise tax as a possible cure that has the added benefit of plugging a giant hole in the state budget.
The state budget office estimates such a tax would raise $1 billion a year when fully in effect, and reduce consumption by 15 percent, an estimate based, Dr. Daines says, on industry price elasticity models. Earnings would go to stave off health services cuts, so the tax is supported by the health care workers’ union — 1199 S.E.I.U. — and the Greater New York Hospital Association.
Many have written off the soda tax as a lost cause, with neither the Senate nor the Assembly supporting it. Soda bottlers and many supermarkets and bodegas have mobilized to oppose the tax, saying it would cost jobs. Dr. Daines accuses politicians of caving to the soft-drink lobby, which makes regular campaign contributions.
“It scares the politicians away,” he said.
But he is gambling that the tax proposal might be revived during 11th-hour budget negotiations, when lawmakers are desperate.
Dr. Daines, meanwhile, has gone into polemical overdrive.
He dismisses as counterintuitive arguments by the soft-drink industry that the link between soda consumption and obesity has not been proved. “It’s obviously scientifically plausible that if you reduce consumption of excess calories, you reduce obesity,” he said.
He ridiculed what he called the “personal choice” argument that government should stay out of people’s kitchens, saying it was being promulgated by “AstroTurf false-flag operations” that are really supported by the soda industry.
“We know this elaborately with tobacco,” he said.
His passionate attacks on soda-tax opponents make one almost want to pity Nelson Eusebio, a supermarket owner in Queens who is chairman of New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes, a coalition that is fighting the tax. Mr. Eusebio called Dr. Daines “out of touch with reality.”
“When it comes to obesity, to attack a single industry as wholeheartedly as he has is creating a lot of confusion for the public,” Mr. Eusebio said. “It’s leading the public to think that if they stop drinking soda, they won’t be obese anymore. Soda may be a contributor to obesity, but it’s not the sole contributor.”
Dr. Daines hates the term “fat tax,” often used by supporters and opponents alike, because it sounds accusatory. He prefers the more anodyne “beverage tax.”
But diplomacy has not necessarily been his strong suit. After Staten Island lawmakers supported an antitax rally at the Coca-Cola sales and distribution center near the Goethals Bridge, Dr. Daines fired off a scolding press release that said, “Staten Island has the state’s second-highest obesity rate, as well as the second-highest consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.”
“I am concerned for the health of Staten Islanders,” he added. “Sixty-five percent of Staten Island residents are overweight or obese, and 35 percent of them drink one or more cans of sugar-sweetened beverages like soda every day.”
Dr. Daines urged Staten Islanders to support their local soft-drink workers by drinking Diet Coke (which would not be taxed), adding, “I hope they also drink nutritious low-fat milk.”
Waxing passionate the other day, he managed to make soda purveyors sound almost like drug dealers.
“I raised my kids on Park Avenue,” he said. “You can walk at least from 60th Street to 96th Street on Park Avenue. You won’t see a single soda billboard, you won’t see a single fast-food outlet, and I don’t think you could buy a soda. Basically, a child raised in that corridor has a soda-free day after school.”
But walk 30 blocks north to Harlem, he said, and the picture is different. “This is cheap, it’s heavily advertised, it tastes really good,” he said. “And then we plunge kids into that environment, and we say, if you have a problem, you lack self-control.”
Mr. Eusebio, the tax opponent, recommended that Dr. Daines devote his time to promoting a “holistic diet” and educating young people about the benefits of exercise.
“Educating people helps them more than taxing them,” Mr. Eusebio said. “If taxation was a form of diet, New Yorkers would be the healthiest people on the planet because we are the most overtaxed people on the planet.”
New York Health Official Champions the Soda Tax – NYTimes.com.
]]>AFP September 8, 2009
President Barack Obama hinted he could support a “sin tax” on fizzy drinks to help lower high rates of US obesity, but admitted it would be an uphill battle against corporate and economic interests.
“I actually think it’s an idea that we should be exploring,” Obama said in the forthcoming issue of Men’s Health, regarding potential taxes levied on soft drinks such as colas and other sugar-filled products.
“There’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that’s been done about obesity shows that there is as high a correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity as just about anything else,” he said in excerpts released ahead of the magazine’s mid-September publication.
The president — reported to be one of the fittest US commanders-in-chief in decades — stressed that “obviously there is resistance on Capitol Hill to those kinds of sin taxes.
“Legislators from certain states that produce sugar or corn syrup are sensitive to anything that might reduce demand for those products,” he said.
In addition, “people’s attitude is that they don’t necessarily want Big Brother telling them what to eat or drink, and I understand that,” Obama added.
“It is true, though, that if you wanted to make a big impact on people?s health in this country, reducing things like soda consumption would be helpful.”
His comments come just six weeks after US health experts told a national conference on obesity in Washington that a significant portion of increased caloric intake in recent decades can be directly attributed to soft drinks and other sugared foods and drinks.
The president is currently embroiled in the most compelling domestic priority of his presidency, a reform of the US health care system.
Obama, who said he works out nearly every day in order to clear his head and reduce stress, described himself as “a healthy eater” with low blood pressure.
He keeps a bowl of apples in the Oval Office. “It was our first step toward health reform,” he said.
Two-thirds of American adults are obese or overweight and obesity-related illnesses cost the United States nearly 150 billion dollars a year, health officials were told at the July conference.
AFP: Obama open to ‘sin tax’ on fizzy drinks to stem obesity.
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New York State has shelved the idea of a tax on sugary sodas and juice drinks. But New York City’s public health officials opened a new front in their struggle against high-calorie beverages on Monday, unveiling an ad campaign that depicts globs of human fat gushing from a soda bottle.
“Are you pouring on the pounds?” asks the ad, which urges viewers to consider water, seltzer or low-fat milk instead, and warns: “Don’t drink yourself fat.”
The ad — which cost about $277,000 to develop over three fiscal years, including money for creative work and focus groups — will run in 1,500 subway cars for three months. (The $90,000 cost of the subway advertisement comes through a private donor, the Fund for Public Health in New York.)
Cathy Nonas, a dietitian who directs physical activity andnutrition programs at the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said that officials concluded, after conducting focus group tests, that a graphic, in-your-face approach would work.
“We are hoping that the biggest effect is, first of all, shock, and that the understanding is that when you drink extra calories, they will be stored as fat,” she said.
Kevin Keane, a spokesman for the American Beverage Association, the industry group that represents the makers of sodas and other sweetened beverages, denounced the ad, saying it was “more focused on the sensational rather than the substance” and would “do more harm than good.”
“The ad campaign is over the top and unfortunately is going to undermine meaningful efforts to educate people about how to maintain a healthy weight by balancing calories consumed from all foods and beverages with calories burned through exercise,” he said in a statement.
But Kelly D. Brownell, a professor of psychology, epidemiology and public health at Yale, and director of the university’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, said the ads were impressive.
“I have a feeling that this could have a pretty potent effect — the ads are dramatic,” said Dr. Brownell, who was not involved in developing the campaign.
Even so, Dr. Brownell said, the complexity of what he called “the beverage landscape” has confused consumers.
Experts say, for example, that people who eschew sugary sodas like Coca-Cola or Pepsi in favor of “sports” or “energy” drinks are no better off. The health department urges residents to stay away from those drinks, as well as punch, fruit-flavored drinks and even store-prepared coffees and teas, which often come packed with sugar. (Officials say that if you drink coffee or tea, order it plain and add flavoring.)
New York City Campaigns Against Coke and Other Sugary Drinks – NYTimes.com.
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The Boston Globe, Stephen Smith, August 3, 2009
Just the other day, a man weighing 470 pounds lumbered into Dr. Caroline Apovian’s office at Boston Medical Center. He was young – only 32 years old – but already, his heart had begun to fail him, a legacy of his extreme obesity.
How much sugar?
Maybe, he asked Apovian, I should have weight-loss surgery. She told him that first, he would need to alter what he eats – and drinks, especially the 2 liters of sugary soft drinks he drains every day.
“I gave him a high-protein, low-fat diet,’’ Apovian recalled. “Everything was fine until I said, ‘No soda.’ And he said, ‘You don’t understand. The soda calls to me.’ ’’
Last week, federal disease investigators reported that the cost of treating obesity has doubled in the past decade, and they pointed to sugar-laden beverages – sodas, energy drinks, fruity libations – as a prime culprit.
Three months earlier, one of the nation’s premier nutrition specialists, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, embarked on a personal crusade to persuade consumers to forgo sugary drinks. Research conducted by Willett and other Boston scientists has shown that women who quaffed more than two sweetened beverages a day had an almost 40 percent higher risk of heart disease than those who rarely touched the drinks.
By Willett’s calculations, a 20-ounce soft drink – a pretty standard volume these days – contains the equivalent of 17 teaspoons of sugar. “If you can just imagine spooning down 17 teaspoons of sugar,’’ Willett said, “it makes you want to gag.’’
As the nation’s love affair with cigarettes wanes, health authorities increasingly worry that the gains achieved by reducing tobacco use will be eclipsed by the medical woes blamed on obesity. But obesity has proved to be a dauntingly complex foe, largely resistant to simple interventions.
That is why sugary beverages – once served in modest bottles, now available in 32-ounce, even 64-ounce tumblers – have emerged as a popular target. Unlike other approaches that require dramatic lifestyle changes – say, exercising more or eating much less – switching to less sugary beverages is viewed as a straightforward way to lower weight and, possibly, decrease the most common form of diabetes.
“It is empowering because it is such a concrete change you can make – it should be the cornerstone of public-health strategies to reduce obesity and prevent type 2 diabetes,’’ said Dr. JoAnn Manson, preventive medicine chief at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an author of a 2004 study that showed consuming at least one sugary drink a day made women substantially more prone to develop diabetes and pack on pounds.
As recently as the 1950s, American children consumed far more milk than soft drinks and fruit-flavored beverages. But by the turn of the century, the balance had shifted starkly.
From the mid-1970s to 2000, the number of calories in the average Americans’ daily diet attributed to sugary drinks rose from 70 to 190, one study found. That paralleled a doubling in the percentage of Americans who weigh too much. And by 2000, soft drinks bursting with sugary high-fructose corn syrup were the single-biggest calorie contributor to Americans’ diet, accounting for 7 percent of what we consume, a California scientist has reported.
“Sugar-sweetened beverages,’’ Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote in April in The New England Journal of Medicine, “may be the single-largest driver of the obesity epidemic.’’
Americans may be hearing the message about soft drinks. Consumption peaked in 1998, when soft drinks – both regular and diet – constituted nearly 30 percent of all liquids consumed, according to Beverage Digest. That had slipped to 26 percent by last year, and diet sodas were gaining ground on sugary beverages.
The companies producing sugary drinks dispute that they are responsible for the obesity epidemic. “It’s counterproductive when you have folks out there trying to single out one particular product as a unique contributor to a problem so complex,’’ said Kevin Keane, senior vice president of the American Beverage Association, which represents the makers of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other leading drinks. “You could get rid of soft drinks tomorrow, and you would still have overweight and obese people.’’
He cited research challenging the supposed link between sugary soda and obesity. One of the three studies was paid for by the association itself, while another was conducted by scientists at a food conglomerate. In contrast, research critical of the beverages’ health consequences is frequently underwritten by the National Institutes of Health.
What’s most important, Keane said, is helping consumers adjust their calorie intake. But a Boston researcher said it’s not just the sheer number of calories in sugary sodas that matters – it’s also the type of calories.
“Calories in liquid form appear to be inherently less filling than calories in solid form,’’ said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston. “They somehow slip underneath the appetite-regulating radar system.’’
Researchers suspect evolution has something to do with it. For most of the time humans roamed Earth, we relied on water to slake our thirst. So it was important for survival that the body did not routinely send out a signal that it was getting satiated because of water intake.
But then beverages packed with calories came along, and, suddenly, we were ingesting hundreds of calories bereft of nutritional benefit – and they don’t even make us eat less.
It turns out, though, that those empty calories have, as Harvard’s Willett put it, “a silver lining.’’
“The fact that we don’t register the calories in the same way from beverages that we do from solid foods,’’ Willett said, “means it’s easier to give them up.’’
A novel study conducted by Children’s Hospital supports that point.
Researchers went to a Cambridge high school and recruited 103 adolescents to see if they could change their drinking habits. Half received weekly deliveries of a healthier beverage of their choosing – bottled water and diet sodas, iced teas, lemonade, and punch – while the other half maintained their old drinking habits.
Those who got the healthier beverages reduced their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages by 82 percent over six months. And the one-third who weighed the most at the start lost an average of three or four pounds.
“It told us the heavier you are,’’ Ludwig said, “the greater the benefit of reducing sugar-sweetened beverages, which makes sense.’’
That’s one of the strategies Eli Sugarman used to trim 28 pounds in half a year. Looking back, it was obvious her son needed to shed weight, Allison Paul acknowledges. But the urgency of that task became clearer when testing showed that if the family didn’t do something, Eli was destined to become diabetic.
So, in January, Paul took her son to Children’s Hospital, where doctors told him to cut back on the Mountain Dew, Pepsi, and juice boxes he used to drink each day.
“When you go out with your friends, you go to the movies with them and they have these big drinks and you’re sitting there with your water, it’s tough not to order a big soda,’’ said Eli, who celebrates his 13th birthday Saturday. “I just think about it like this: A soda’s great for half an hour, an hour. Those calories, that sugar, sticks with you a lot longer than that soda will.’’
via How sugary drinks have become the target in the fight against obesity – The Boston Globe.
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