How Sweet Is It?
Many of my students drink soft drinks of all varieties. From the fairly inexpensive juices which are composed primarily of water and sugar to the various soft drinks made by the two "Giant" soda companies. Some of them will even drink the various sport-"ade" drinks. It is important for my students to recognize just how much sugar they are ingesting when they drink these different soft drinks throughout the course of a day or even a week.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) advises that most people limit themselves to 10 to 12 teaspoons of added sugar per day. A single can of soda has anywhere between 10 and 13 teaspoons of sugar! If they are drinking a 20 fluid ounce bottle of a soft drink, they are drinking almost twice as much soda, which is almost double the sugar!
In 2000, the average person in the United States ate an average of 31 teaspoons of sugar a day. That is more than 15 percent of the suggested caloric intake. Most of that sugar came in the form of sweetened soft drinks. The amount of soda consumed in this country has more than doubled since 1970 to about 56 gallons per person a year. According to the USDA, in 2001, the average person consumed almost 63 pounds of HFCS. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2002 published reports that the milk consumption for teenagers between 1965 and 1996 decreased by 36 percent. During this time, soda consumption increased by more than 200 percent. Dr. George Bray, the principal investigator of the Diabetes Prevention Program at Louisiana State University Medical Center believes that without the calcium kids would normally get from milk, kids got fatter. Bray believes this because calcium can help the body regulate weight. Bray says that he could find no other single combination of environmental or food changes that were as significant to the rise in obesity. 5
Teenagers and children are the soft drink industry's main targets. They are among the largest consumers. In the United States, the soft drink industry has increased production from 22 to 41 gallons of soft drinks per person a year between 1970 and 1997. Soft drink consumption among children has almost doubled in the past 10 years here in the United States. On average, teenage boys now drink three or more cans of soda per day, and 10 percent drink seven or more cans per day. Teenage girls average more than two cans per day and 10 percent drink more than five cans per day. 6
Where do teenagers and children get soft drinks? It is estimated that there are approximately 20,000 vending machines in schools across the country. This is according to the National Automatic Merchandising Association. The USDA collected data on vending machines in schools and have an interesting report. They found that 88 percent of high schools, 61 percent of middle schools, and 14 percent of elementary schools have food or beverage vending machines for students to use. The USDA also found that 34 percent of high schools and 15 percent of middle schools permit students to use the school vending machines at any time. Only 6 percent of elementary schools allowed students to use the vending machines during lunch only.
New Haven has done a unique thing and pulled most of their soft drink vending machines out of their schools. There was an initial uproar because many of the schools made quite a bit of money from the vending machines. This money was used for a variety of school needs: i.e. supplies, field trips, and books. With school budgets getting smaller and smaller, it was a genuine concern as to how some schools were going to supplement this lost income. It is comforting to know that the district I work for didn't buckle and cave-in to the demands and put the health of its students first. There are many other things that need to be done in regards to nutrition in New Haven, but the removal of soft drink vending machines was an excellent first step in the right direction.
The interesting thing about soft drinks is that as the price of HFCS began to drop in the 1980's and people began drinking a lot more soda, the price of soft drinks dropped also. The two big soft drink companies, rather than cut the price of a bottle of soda, came up with a unique idea. They would make their soft drinks larger or to coin a phrase "supersize" them. With HFCS, the main ingredient in a soft drink, now much cheaper, they could get people to pay just a few pennies more for a substantially bigger bottle. The strategy was to drop the price per ounce, but sell more ounces. Thus began the transformation from the traditional 8 ounce soft drink bottle and 12 ounce soft drink can into the larger 20 ounce bottle, which is commonly found everywhere. 7
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