Food Politics

the first thing i thought of when i heard “sweetened beverages” and “new york city” in the same sentence was coffee drinks! i am glad they put the mocha on the chart. i think many people don’t realize how many calories are in those huge sweetened coffee drinks.

I gave up soda 35 years ago (had a root canal and the dentist blamed the soda and I never wanted another root canal), so I just don’t understand the need of people to always have a “beverage” in their hand. There is also that ridiculous myth that a person needs to drink a gallon of water every day which helped start the water- bottle-everywhere craze.

Almost as bad is that many replace the soda with juice, which often has just as many calories. People think that calories are okay if they’re “good” calories and that’s true to an extent, but quantity matters as well.

Anyway, good for New York for posting calories and now for this.

Sigh. It’s very unfortuante that milk is almost always left off of these “drink less” messages. In this case, NYC is telling people to “drink more” milk instead of soda and juice – unbelievable!

Milk – even skim milk – contains 30g of sugar per 20oz. That’s about half as much as regular soda, but once you add the protein, you have 208 calories in nonfat milk compared to 240 calories in soda pop.

The 1% “low-fat” milk that the ad recommends has more calories than soda pop — 255 instead of 240 — as well as deadly saturated and trans fats. It gets much worse with 2% and whole milk.

It’s bizarre that NYC is saying to “drink fewer” caffe lattes — which is just coffee and milk, at least here in Seattle — and instead to drink pure milk, which has more sugar and more calories.

If NYC is pushing milk because of the fortified vitamins and calcium, why not be consistent and put out ads encouraging people to drink vitamin-enriched “Coke Plus” too? It has all of the nutrients of low-fat milk, with fewer calories, and without the saturated and trans fats.

NYC: I don’t doubt your heart is in the right place, but please listen to science and nutrition instead of “milk does a body good” TV ads.

I had already cut out canned pop from my diet. After reading What To Eat I stopped drinking almost all bottled juices too. Coffee is now no-added sugar. Unless I am doing a 100km bike ride and genuinely need fuel, I avoid pretty much everything that is sold at convenience stores or from a machine.

I did an amusing little demonstration at work showing a coworker how much sugar was in her 600ml Ice Tea. She swore them off right then and there. (Yes, I can be annoying). Not just the sugar, but the much bigger size single-serving containers are another part of the problem. The growth is standard size containers is a great way for the fast food, junk food, and beverage companies boost their profits and ruin our health. Keep up the good work Marion.

Great campaign, but I’m disappointed they didn’t find some way to differentiate between added sugars vs. naturally occuring. Nor did they find some way to add in a nutrient density measure (a simple gold star beside the latte might have sufficed).

A comparison between plain milk and chocolate milk might have been useful too. However so many people are calcium deficient they might not have wanted to do so. And a chocolate milk is a far better choice than other sweetened drinks — the protein helps to mitigate some of the negative effects of the lactose and added sugars on blood sugar and appetite.

Ooh, I love this! I’ll be waiting to hear what the beverage companies come back with.

Relatively few humans can even drink milk without getting sick – especially in an ethnically-diverse city like NYC.

Instead of cursing the darkness, why not shine a light?

How about a campaign to get New Yorkers to drink NYC WATER?
It’s the best beverage for your waistline and your wallet!

No nasty tooth decay like soda, sports drinks and diet soda ( yup, diet soda is very cariogenic). No hazardous plastic bottles that are made from petroleum and aren’t always recycled. No snapple, which will also rot your teeth. No milk, which is questionable for health.

WATER…..NYC has some of the most delicious in the country. Even with the fluoride (which should be removed), tap water in a reusable bottle is the best bet.

While I am sure that for some, soft drinks are like the “fuzzy menace”, I wonder what the relative effect of pizza is on weight? When I moved to NYC, I gained ten pounds and am convinced it was my ritual daily slice for lunch. Somehow, if Bloomberg went to war with the pizza industry in the city, I think it would be way more contentious!

Re: Lizzie

I think your heart is in the right place, but I think you are being a little harsh on lowfat milk. From what I’ve read, the trans fats in the milk and the trans fats from partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils are completely different chemicals. The trans fats in milk don’t seem to be harmful.

I think it’s wrong to lump milk in with fruit juices and sodas. Milk is filling, soda is not. Milk has nutrients, soda does not. Milk is a food, soda is candy.

But it’s also fair to note that drinking too much milk will make you fat in a hurry, and that the “daily milk requirement” is a creation of the USDA.

McDonald’s mocha really isn’t all that bad, but it costs way too much considering that it’s from McDonald’s.