Right after I put up the previous post about Coca-Cola’s new “pomegranate-blueberry” juice drink I saw the full-page, full-color ad in today’s New York Times, this one for Simply Apple, advertised as 100% pure-pressed apple juice (“never sweetened & never concentrated”). I don’t really know how much such ads cost but I know they cost enough so only really big companies can afford them (I’m guessing 80,000 more or less). But this ad provides no information about who owns the product other than some tiny print which says that Simply Apple is a trademark of the the Simply Orange Juice company. So I looked up Simply Orange; if its site gives a clue as to who owns it, I missed it. A Google search, however, produced entries from the ever-amazing Wikipedia as well as the company’s proud advertising company. These explain that Simply Orange is simply Minute Maid, and, therefore, simply Coca-Cola. I wonder why Simply Apple isn’t advertising its parentage?
Coca-Cola’s Christmas gift was a full-page, full-color ad in the December 25 New York Times announcing Minute Maid’s new “enhanced juice.” The label says “Omega-3/DHA HELP NOURISH YOUR BRAIN.” “POMEGRANATE, BLUEBERRY: FLAVORED BLEND OF 5 JUICES.” Curious to see what was in it, I checked the online label information. Surprise! The first two ingredients are Apple and Grape juices from concentrate. Pomegranate comes in at #3. #4 is mixed fruit and vegetable juices, #5 is blueberry juice, #6 is raspberry juice–all from concentrate. Then come #7 gum acacia and #8 DHA algal oil. Others ingredients follow, but never mind. Of course this drink will nourish your brain. It contains an ounce of sugars per 8-ounce serving (and the bottle contains 7 servings)!
While we are on the subject of health claims, can those be the reasons why Coca-Cola is off to China to look for medicinals that can be added to its drinks? The entire point of putting “healthy” ingredients into foods is to be able to make health claims for them. These “functional foods,” as I keep saying, are not really about health. They are about marketing.
An editor at the New York Times invited me to write an op-ed on the proposed landmarking of the East River Pepsi-Cola sign, but then said:
We’re not going to use this. People really love that Pepsi sign so much that they don’t want to hear arguments against it.
So I offered it to the Daily News. I’ve written for it before. Its editors are highly professional and a pleasure to work with. And it goes to an audience to which I do not usually have access. See what you think.
Looks pretty. Tastes sweet. Has ugly side effects.
I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I read that the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission had deemed the Pepsi-Cola sign in Long Island City, Queens, so worthy of permanent preservation that it was considering it for landmark status.
Granted, the neon monument has been part of the East River landscape for the past 80 years. And yes, there is precedent for landmarking a sign rather than a building. Pine Bluff, Ark., chose to landmark a McDonald’s sign, and Cambridge, Mass., preserved a Shell Oil sign.
But the fact is that the Pepsi-Cola sign is a highly visible expression of soda industry marketing. The sign advertises a sugar-sweetened beverage — precisely what the city Health Department has, with good reason, been working hard to discourage New Yorkers from consuming in large quantities.
For the past few years, subway poster campaigns have featured the astonishing amounts of sugar contained in carbonated sodas — close to a teaspoon per ounce. They have also illustrated how this excessive sugar turns to fat in the body, how sugary beverages raise the risk for type 2 diabetes, and how much walking it takes to work off the calories in a single 20-ounce drink — a trek from Union Square to Brooklyn.
And let’s not forget former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ultimately unsuccessful though valiant attempt to set a cap of 16 ounces on sugary beverages sold in places under city jurisdiction.
That particular tactic was hugely controversial. But nobody can seriously dispute that sugary drinks contribute to obesity and its consequences.
Pepsi may be the underdog — Americans drink more Coke — but it is a very large runnerup in the sugary drink category. Its revenues in 2015 amounted to $63 billion worldwide.
Pepsi is Big Soda incarnate. It works hard to maintain that position, spending more than $200 million a year advertising Pepsi-Cola alone. It is also Big Food. Altogether it spends about $2 billion a year on worldwide marketing for all of its products, including Frito-Lay snack foods and other brands.
To generate sales, Pepsi relentlessly targets its marketing to teenagers and young adults and, as part of that approach, generously pays sports and music figures to endorse its products.
We’ve all seen the Super Bowl ads. We know about the reported $50 million deal with Beyoncé. And like Coca-Cola, although not quite to the same extent, PepsiCo funds health organizations such as the American heart and cancer associations, and contributes to health programs at universities such as Yale. All of this can buy loyalty from health professionals, and also silence from them about the role of soft drinks in health.
Soda advertising is so much a part of the American landscape that most of us don’t even notice it anymore. It is just there. And that’s how the company intends it. As an industry executive once told me, effective advertising is supposed to slip below the radar of critical thinking.
I’m guessing that’s what’s happening with the Pepsi-Cola sign. Its significance as advertising for a sugary drink — one best consumed infrequently and in small amounts — has become unnoticeable. To the landmarks folks, therefore, this is just a quaint piece of history — not an active, pulsating sign promoting something dangerous to human health.
But landmarking the Pepsi sign, which is visible to millions of New Yorkers and tourists every single day, would engage New Yorkers as formal partners in marketing sugary drinks.
I can’t help but remember the Camel cigarette sign in Times Square, for years blowing smoke rings. Would today’s Landmarks Preservation Commission want that billboard preserved for eternity? Or would it blush at the thought of promoting and sustaining an icon of corporate marketing, and of an unhealthful product at that?
According to Time online, advertising for the sports drink Red Bull Cola made officials in Germany so suspicious that they did a little testing. Ach du himmel! Traces of cocaine. No wonder guys like it so much.
Here is the ingredient list: Water, Sugar, Carbon Dioxide, Caramel Color, Natural Flavors from Plant Extracts (Galangal, Vanilla, Mustard Seed, Lime, Kola Nut, Cacao, Licorice, Cinnamon, Lemon, Ginger, Cocoa Leaf, Orange, Corn Mint, Pine, Cardamom, Mace, Clove), Lemon Juice Concentrate, Caffeine from Coffee Beans. With these, you get 130 calories, virtually all from sugar, and some unstated amount of caffeine – along with some other no longer quite so secret ingredients, apparently.
Bridget Benelam, a BNF spokesperson, explained: For many of us when we get home after a busy day, foods like baked beans, wholemeal toast, fish fingers or ready-made pasta sauces are an affordable way to get a balanced meal on the table quickly. These may be classed as ultra-processed but can still be part of a healthy diet.
At present, the British Nutrition Foundation believes that due to the lack of agreed definition, the need for better understanding of mechanisms involved and concern about its usefulness as a tool to identify healthier products, the concept of UPF does not warrant inclusion within policy (e.g. national dietary guidelines).
Our funding comes from: membership subscriptions; donations and project grants from food producers and manufacturers, retailers and food service companies; contracts with government departments; conferences, publications and training; overseas projects; funding from grant providing bodies, trusts and other charities. Our corporate members and committee membership are listed on our website and in our annual reports.
Sustaining members agree to provide a donation to the British Nutrition Foundation for at least three years to support our wider charitable work focussing on consumer education, and engagement with the media, government, schools and health professionals.
It dealt with the NOVA classification system (the one I used in yesterday’s post to define ultra-processed foods). The committee does not like it much.
Assessment beyond the initial screen identified that the literature is currently dominated by NOVA, raising the risk that any limitations or biases present within the NOVA classification system may be replicated throughout the research literature.
While NOVA also met criterion 2 on a clear, usable definition and criterion 4 on the availability of data on inter-assessor agreement, assessment beyond the initial screen dentified less certainty on the clarity, reliability and feasibility of the system.
The SACN’s conclusions:
The SRs identified have consistently reported that increased consumption of (ultra-) processed foods was associated with increased risks of adverse health outcomes. However, there are uncertainties around the quality of evidence available. Studies are almost exclusively observational and confounding factors or key variables such as energy intake, body mass index, smoking and socioeconomic status may not be adequately accounted for.
…In particular, the classification of some foods is discordant with nutritional and other food-based classifications. Consumption of (ultra-) processed foods may be an indicator of other unhealthy dietary patterns and lifestyle behaviours. Diets high in (ultra-) processed foods are often energy dense, high in saturated fat, salt or free sugars, high in processed meat, and/or low in fruit and vegetables and fibre.
…The observed associations between higher consumption of (ultra-) processed foods and adverse health outcomes are concerning – however, the limitations in the NOVA classification system, the potential for confounding, and the possibility that the observed adverse associations with (ultra-) processed foods are covered by existing UK dietary recommendations mean that the evidence to date needs to be treated with caution.
While we’re pleased that SACN has prioritised this review, and has acknowledged that ultra-processed foods are of “concern”, we’re disturbed that the committee’s conclusions may have been skewed by industry ties, conflicted financial interests, and a narrow framing of the science.
…But the committee is also guilty of losing the wood for the trees, failing even to raise concern about how ultra-processed foods have overtaken their own nutritional advice….Most people in the UK are failing to eat such a [healthy] diet, precisely because these foods have been displaced by ultra-processed products. The average child’s diet is more than 60% ultra-processed, and rates of obesity and ill health are rising sharply in turn. …SACN is oddly silent on case for re-balancing the diet and addressing the corporate capture of children’s food.
These omissions should prompt us to look more closely at the composition of the committee. SACN has sixteen members. One is a paid consultant working for Cargill, Tate & Lyle, and CBC Israel (a manufacturer and marketer of fizzy drinks such as Coca-Cola and Sprite); two are in receipt of funding from the meat and dairy industry; one is a shareholder in Sainsbury’s; and five are members of the American Society of Nutrition, which is funded by Mars, Nestlé, and Mondelez. Among SACN’s members is the Chair of International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) Europe, a body that receives funding from some of the world’s largest food companies, such as Barilla, Cargill, Danone, General Mills, Mondelez, and PepsiCo; and two individuals with financial relationships with the British Nutrition Foundation, an organisation funded by British Sugar, Cargill, Coca Cola, Danone, Greggs, Kellogg, KP Snacks, Mars, McDonald’s, Mondelez, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Tate & Lyle, and Tesco. Two SACN members have been funded by Danone, one of the largest ultra-processed food companies in the world; one sits on the council of the Nestlé Foundation; and another is a former employee of Unilever, with current shares in the company worth “more than £5000”.
These declared interests do not imply corruption or bias on the part of SACN members, but they illustrate how pervasive are industry ties at the interface of science and policy.
Digital technologies are becoming integrated to varying degrees into everyday life across the 53 countries of the WHO European Region. The increase in digital technologies can increase the convenience of food and prepared meals. A recent unrepresentative survey of 10 European countries found that every fifth meal was consumed outside of the home, with 80% from commercial outlets. The influence of digitalization on dietary behaviour, however, is not well understood, raising questions about its influence on the health and nutrition of adults and children.
Some of the largest food and beverage corporations—including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Pepsi—have, in effect, transformed themselves into Big Data businesses, acquiring specialist firms, establishing large in-house operations, and hiring teams of data scientists and technology experts to direct these systems. With these enhanced capabilities, they can more effectively engage in ad targeting—whether on the leading platforms or through their own mobile apps.
A growing body of academic research has documented the increasing presence of unhealthy food promotion in digital media, as well as clear patterns of youth engagement with major brands, and influences on health behaviors.
Tech platforms especially popular with young people—including Facebook’s Instagram, Amazon’s Twitch, ByteDance’s TikTok, and Google’s YouTube – are working with giant food and beverage companies, such as Coca Cola, KFC, Pepsi and McDonald’s, to promote sugar-sweetened soda, energy drinks, candy, fast food, and other unhealthy products across social media, gaming, and streaming video. The report offers fresh new analysis and insight into the most recent industry practices.
Comment: All this calls for regulation, of course. Any chance of that coming our way?
I’m moderating an online webinar on the new Slow Food book, Ark of Taste, with authors David S. Shields and Giselle Kennedy Lord. For information and registration click here. It’s at 4:00 p.m. EST.
