One of the newsletters I subscribe to, BeverageDaily.com, has a special edition—a collection of its articles—on what the industry is doing to address its biggest problem: reducing sugar.
Health and wellness is at the forefront of consumers’ minds, and sugar gets plenty of bad press. Obesity is as big a concern as ever, and soft drinks are in the firing line.
What is the beverage industry doing to reduce calories? How are market leaders reformulating and revamping their portfolios; and what healthier brands are appearing?
From alternative sweeteners to packaging sizes, we look at what the industry is doing to cut calories – and how well these initiatives are working.
From reformulation to nutritional labeling, the non-alcoholic beverage industry has adopted a variety of strategies to reduce the calorie content of drinks. We look at how different strategies from around the world are being implemented. .. Read
UK sugar tax: comment and analysis: The UK government has announced a sugar tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, which will come into effect in April 2018. From public health officials to think tanks, we take a look at some of the comments and analysis following the announcement. .. Read
Stevia’s star keeps rising: MintelThe use of stevia in non-alcoholic beverage launches increased 487% between 2011 and 2015, according to figures from Mintel, with carbonates and RTD iced tea in particular turning to the natural sweetener. .. Read
Scientists find way to make sweetest sweetener taste sweeter: Japanese researchers have devised a method to make one of the sweetest natural sweeteners even sweeter in a development that will be seen as a breakthrough at a time when consumers are moving away from sugar… Read
You can see why the industry has a problem. Sugar tastes good. These other things not so much.
Simon N. Williams, Marion Nestle(Editors). Big Food: Critical perspectives on the global growth of the food and beverage industry. Routledge, 2016.
Here’s what the publisher says about it:
Obesity is a global public health problem of crucial importance. Obesity rates remain high in high-income countries and are rapidly increasing in low- and middle- income countries. Concurrently, the global consumption of unhealthy products, such as soft drinks and processed foods, continues to rise. The ongoing expansion of multinational food and beverage companies, or ‘Big Food’, is a key factor behind these trends.
This collection provides critical insight into the global expansion of ‘Big Food’, including its incursion into low-and-middle income countries. It examines the changing dynamics of the global food supply, and discusses how low-income countries can alter the ‘Big Food’-diet from the bottom-up. It examines a number of issues related to ‘Big Food’ marketing strategies, including the way in which they advertise to youths and the rural poor. These issues are discussed in terms of their public health implications, and their relation to public health activities, for example ‘soda taxes’, and the promotion of nutritionally-healthier products. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Public Health.
When these papers came out in Critical Public Health, I did a post on them. The new hardback book is expensive. To save money, try the journal.
Last summer, Brian Wansink, a friend and Cornell colleague and the editor of the new Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, asked me to write a commentary on a paper to be published in its inaugural issue.
The paper turned out to be by a group of authors, among them John Peters and Jim Hill, both members of the ill-fated Global Energy Balance Network, the subject of an investigation by the New York Times last August.
The healthy defaults reduced calories (21.4%), fat (43.9%) and sodium (43.4%) for kid’s meal sides and beverages sold in the park. These results suggest that healthy defaults can effectively shift food and beverage selection patterns toward healthier options.
The authors explain:
This work was supported by the Walt Disney Company and by the National Institutes of Health…The Walt Disney Company and the National Institutes of Health had no role in the design, analysis, or writing of this article. Full disclosure: JH is a consultant for the Walt Disney Company and for McDonalds; KA is a consultant for the Walt Disney Company.”
I thought Disney’s sponsorship of this research and its withholding of critical baseline and sales data on kids’ meals that the company considered proprietary did indeed deserve comment, and wrote my piece accordingly. Brian Wansink soon accepted it for publication but to my surprise, gave it to Peters et al. for rebuttal. They filed a lengthy response. I was then given the opportunity to respond, and did so, briefly.
The paper by Peters, et al. did was published in the journal’s first issue. This issue also includes several commentaries on other papers (none of which are accompanied by rebuttals).
My commentary—and the back-and-forth—however, were omitted.
After some discussion, the journal published my commentary online. You have to scroll down to find it. The site provides no links to it in the table of contents or in the article by Peters et al.
Is it possible that Disney or the authors’ contractual relationships with Disney could have had anything to do with the omission of my accepted-for-publication commentary? Brian Wansink says no, they just ran out of room (despite room for others).
Whatever.
Here’s what I wrote:
Dietary nudges for obesity prevention: They work, but additional policies are also needed
In 2006, the Walt Disney Company announced a new initiative to improve the nutritional quality of meals served to children at its theme parks. The company would be changing the default kids’ meals—the components that come without having to be ordered separately–to include low-fat milk, juice, or water rather than soft drinks, and sides such as apple sauce or carrots rather than French fries. Parents who wanted sodas or fries for their children would have to ask for them, something many might not bother to do. Health groups had long advocated for this policy change (Wootan 2012).
As I commented to a reporter at the time, “going to Disney World is an excuse for eating junk food…Disney or its advisers must be feeling they have some responsibility” (Horovitz and Petrecca 2006). Indeed, the healthier defaults were part of a larger effort by Disney to deal with its contribution to obesity in America. After ticket prices, food is the second greatest source of revenue at Disney World. Although reducing the amount of food consumed at the parks might help create a less “obesogenic” food environment, revenues might fall. But the default change might be revenue neutral. By 2008, Disney could report that two-thirds of U.S. customers ordering kids’ meals had accepted the default, with no loss in sales. In Hong Kong Disney parks, nearly all customers accepted the default. The report, however, did not include data on the numbers or proportions of customers ordering kids’ meals (Walt Disney Company 2008).
Disney’s more recent summary of its child health initiatives states that it is funding investigators at the University of Colorado to conduct a more formal evaluation of use of the default options (Walt Disney Company 2015). The paper by Peters et al. (2016) in this issue of the Journal presents the results of that research. Their work confirms the ongoing effectiveness of the strategy. Nearly half the customers ordering kids’ meals accepted the healthy default side dishes and two-thirds accepted the healthier beverages. These choices resulted in significant reductions in the calories, fat, and sodium in purchased kids’ meals, but not sugar (Peters et al 2016).
The authors argue that gentle nudges changes like these are preferable to more coercive policies that smack of nanny statism. Such reductions help, but are they enough to make a real difference? To answer this question, it would help to know what else the children were eating along with the drink and side dishes. Although the authors were given raw sales data, Disney did not permit them to use this information as part of the overall analysis. The company also refused to provide information about the number of children who visited the park or the number of kids’ meals sold.
These missing pieces raise red flags because this is a Disney-funded study that produced results that Disney can use to advertise itself as a company that cares about kids’ health, and to deflect attention from Disney World’s’ reputation as a junk-food paradise. Corporate funding of research introduces conflicts of interest and reduces the credibility of the results, not least because the biases inherent in such research are largely unconscious, unintentional, and unrecognized (Moore et al 2005) The results of this study merit especially careful scrutiny. Taking them at face value, the default strategy worked well for the drink, but the sides are still a problem, and so are the sugars. They do not reveal much about what kids eat in a day at Walt Disney World
Nudges like this default are an important part of strategies to counter childhood obesity. But are they enough to deal with the public health problem? To make a real difference, they need to be accompanied and supported by a range of policy approaches. Current thinking about such approaches recommends combining insights from behavioral research, economics, and public health to establish a food environment far more conducive to making the healthy choice not only easy choice, but also the preferred choice. Doing so is likely to require multiple actions—for example, regulation of nutrient content and marketing; incentives such as subsidies of healthier foods; disincentives such as taxes, warning labels, and nutritional rating systems for unhealthier foods; and education of adults and children (Hawkes et al 2015). Disney’s voluntary default is a small step in the direction of such policies, but many more are needed if we are to make real progress in reducing the prevalence of childhood obesity.
Margo G. Wootan. Children’s meals in restaurants: families need more help to make healthy choices. Childhood Obesity 2012;8(1):31-33.
Bruce Horovitz and Laura Petrecca. Disney to make food healthier for kids. USA Today, October 17, 2006.
Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Company—2008 Corporate Responsibility Report. 2008.
Walt Disney Company. Magic of Healthy Living brochure. 2015. https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/sites/default/files/MOHL_Brochure.pdf.
John C. Peters, Jimikaye Beck, Jan Lande, Zhaoxing Pan, Michelle Cardel, Keith Ayoob, and James Hill. Using healthy defaults in Walt Disney World restaurants to improve nutritional choices. J Assoc Consumer Res., 2016;1:1.
Don A. Moore, Daylian M. Cain, George Loewenstein, and Max H. Bazerman, editors. Conflicts of Interest: Challenges and Solutions in Business, Law, Medicine, and Public Policy. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Corinna Hawkes, Trenton G Smith, Jo Jewell, Jane Wardle, Ross A Hammond, Sharon Friel, Anne Marie Thow, Juliana Kain. Smart food policies for obesity prevention. The Lancet 2015;385:2410–2421.
And here’s my response to the rebuttal by Peters et al.
The response from Peters and Hill still fails to acknowledge the severity of the problems posed by Disney’s sponsorship of their research—the company’s failure to produce data essential for proper interpretation of study results, and the level to which sponsorship by food companies biases such interpretations. At one point, Disney boasted of the results of this research, confirming its benefit to marketing goals. The threat of industry sponsorship to research credibility has received considerable press attention in recent months, as must surely be known to these authors.1,2
In my post about the 2015 Dietary Guidelines, I noted that they are unambiguous about the need to reduce added sugars to 10% or less of calories. But what they say about cutting down on sugary drinks—the leading source of sugars in US diets—is buried deep in the text. Fortunately, Deborah Noble of slowfoodfast.com has performed a great public service by producing the 2015 Dietary Guidelines in a searchable pdf format.Here’s where to find advice about cutting down on sugary drinks:
The Executive Summary: See under “Cross-Cutting Topics of Public Health Importance:”
Similarly, added sugars should be reduced in the diet and not replaced with low-calorie sweeteners, but rather with healthy options, such as water in place of sugar-sweetened beverages.
The major source of added sugars in typical U.S. diets is beverages, which include soft drinks, fruit drinks, sweetened coffee and tea, energy drinks, alcoholic beverages, and flavored waters.
Reading the Figure tells you that beverages comprise a whopping 47% of added sugars (closer to half if you add in sweetened milks, teas, and coffees). The text following the Figure says:
Shift to reduce added sugars consumption to less than 10 percent of calories per day: Individuals have many potential options for reducing the intake of added sugars. Strategies include choosing beverages with no added sugars, such as water, in place of sugar-sweetened beverages, reducing portions of sugar-sweetened beverages, drinking these beverages less often, and selecting beverages low in added sugars.
Strategies? How about just saying: “Cut down on sugary drinks” or “Drink water instead of sugary drinks.”
Figure ES-1 in the Executive Summary illustrates the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans at a Glance. All it says is:
Limit calories from added sugars…Consume an eating pattern low in added sugars…Cut back on food and beverages higher in these components to amounts that fit within healthy eating patterns.
Figure 3.2 shows Implementation of the Guidelines through MyPlate: “Drink and eat less…added sugars,” but nothing about sugary drinks.
This circumspection is weird. Clear, straightforward advice to cut down on sugary beverages has plenty of historical precedent.
They are now online in a version that takes up dozens of screens with annoying drop-down boxes. It’s hard to navigate, and if it’s searchable, I can’t figure out how (OK, it’s searchable but doesn’t work all that well).
First the good news. These Dietary Guidelines—for the first time—attempt to focus on foods and dietary patterns:
Previous editions of the Dietary Guidelines focused primarily on individual dietary components such as food groups and nutrients. However, people do not eat food groups and nutrients in isolation but rather in combination, and the totality of the diet forms an overall eating pattern.
They almost succeed in this mission. The Guidelines say:
Follow a healthy eating pattern across the lifespan [Pattern].
Focus on variety, nutrient density, and amount [Pattern].
Limit calories from added sugars and saturated fats and reduce sodium intake [Oops: Nutrients].
Shift to healthier food and beverage choices [Pattern].
Support healthy eating patterns for all [Pattern].
A healthy eating pattern, they say:
Includes foods from various groups [Pattern].
Limits saturated fats, trans fats, added sugars, and sodium [Oops: Nutrients].
As for (Oops) Nutrients:
Less than 10% of calories from added sugars [this is new, but consistent with many other reports such as the one from WHO]
Less than 10% of calories from saturated fats [in the Guidelines since 1990]
Less than 2,300 mg sodium [no change from 2010]
Why Oops? Because these Dietary Guidelines, like all previous versions, recommend foods when they suggest “eat more.” But they switch to nutrients whenever they suggest “eat less.”
In the 2015 Dietary Guidelines,
Saturated fat is a euphemism for meat.
Added sugars is a euphemism for sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages.
Sodium is a euphemism for processed foods and junk foods.
If the Guidelines really focused on dietary patterns, they wouldn’t pussyfoot. They would come right out and say:
Eat less meat [OK, they do but only under the euphemism of “protein” and only for males. “Some individuals, especially teen boys and adult men, also need to reduce overall intake of protein foods (see Figure 2-3) by decreasing intakes of meats, poultry, and eggs and increasing amounts of vegetables or other underconsumed food groups.” But what about processed meats? Not a word that I can find.
Cut down on sugary drinks [OK, it says “drink water instead of sugary drinks,” but good luck finding that statement without knowing where it is].
Eat less processed and junk food.
Why don’t they? Politics, of course.
Recall that Congress weighed in with an Appropriations Bill that called for an investigation of the scientific basis of the Guidelines and granted $1 million to the National Academy of Medicine to take them over.
So let’s count the 2015 Guidelines as a win for the meat, sugary drink, processed, and junk food industries.
Other concerns, nutritional and otherwise:
Calories: The Guidelines deemphasize calories. They dropped the information about food sources of calories from the 2010 edition, even though calorie balance remains a—if not the—major public health nutrition problem (an Appendix gives calorie needs).
Portion sizes: the best way to control calorie intake is by eating smaller or moderate portions. If the Guidelines talk about portion size, it must be well hidden.
Cholesterol: the recommendation to limit cholesterol has been dropped, but the document says, confusingly, that “this change does not suggest that dietary cholesterol is no longer important to consider when building healthy eating patterns. As recommended by the IOM, individuals should eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible while consuming a healthy eating pattern.” Could the dropping of the limit have anything to do with egg-industry funding of research on eggs, the largest source of dietary cholesterol, and blood cholesterol? The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has just filed a lawsuit on that very point.
Protein: My pet peeve. The Guidelines use this as yet another euphemism for meat. “Protein” lumps meat together with seafood, poultry, eggs, nuts, seeds, and soy. But grains and dairy also have protein, so using this term makes no nutritional sense and obfuscates the message to eat less meat.
Seafood: the document recommends 8 ounces a week of seafood high in omega-3s but low in methylmercury. That pretty much means salmon and sardines (anchovies are too salty).
I might have more to say when I can look at a document that is easier to read.
Full disclosure: I was a peer reviewer on an earlier version of this document.
Salt, says the city health department, is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease but also a leading driver of health disparities: blood pressure levels are higher in African-American populations.
The rule, which takes effect December 1, says that chains with 15 or more locations in New York City must display a warning symbol — a salt shaker inside a triangle — if the item has more than 2,300 milligrams of salt.
The policy does not restrict choice or limit how much sodium can be in food.
This is just the latest in a long litany of superfluous hoops that restaurants here in New York must jump through…Every one of these cumbersome new laws makes it tougher and tougher for restaurants to find success.
The health department estimates the regulation will apply to 10 percent of all menu items. Some examplesof affected products (For the record, 40% of salt is sodium; for grams of salt multiply by 2.5):
This is another example of the government creating policy based on outdated, incorrect sodium guidelines that have been refuted by ten years of research. Research shows Americans already eat within the safe range of sodium consumption and population-wide sodium reduction strategies are unnecessary and could be harmful,” said Lori Roman, President of the Salt Institute.
The consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest said the proposed warnings “will prompt restaurants to use less salt and will help consumers reduce their risk of stroke or heart attack.”
This one will be interesting to watch. Will people pay attention? Will chain restaurants take steps to reduce sodium levels? Will hypertension levels decline? I hope researchers are hard at work collecting baseline data.
This week, I’m going to be posting items about sugar politics.
Item on sugars #1:
Funny thing. I was not invited to this event, but someone who was invited passed along the invitation. You too will be sad you weren’t invited.
I am contacting you at the request of Dr. Courtney Gaine, VP of Scientific Affairs from The Sugar Association, regarding an invitational roundtable on The Role of Sugars in Supporting a Nutrient-dense Diet for Toddlers, 12 to 24 Months. It will be sponsored by the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, Department of Pediatrics, chaired by Dr. Ronald Kleinman from Harvard Medical School, co-chaired by Dr. Frank Greer from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, and facilitated by Sylvia Rowe. The roundtable is supported by an unrestricted educational grant from the Association….
Roundtable Objectives
Provide a forum to discuss the science and research voids on the role of sugars as a strategy that may help parents successfully transition their older infants and toddlers (12 to 24 months) from complementary infant foods to consuming a variety of nutrient-dense foods from the family table.
Generate potential research ideas and questions on this topic for future guidance on the feeding of young children, including birth to 24 months, which is scheduled for integration into the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Create the impetus to extend this research to public-private partnerships with industry, academy and the government.
Proposed Topic Areas
The roundtable has been tentatively divided into these 5 topic areas: 1) transitional toddler feeding and nutrition policy; 2) physiology; 3) sugars in toddler feeding practices; 4) parent-feeding strategies: emerging science; and 5) the research path forward….
Honorarium
The Sugar Association will reimburse you for all reasonable travel expenses, plus a $2,000 honorarium for your review of abstracts and presentations, which you will receive in mid-October, and your participation in the 1 ½ day roundtable.
This requires some translation. I may be over-interpreting here, but as I see it, the Sugar Association is paying academics $2000 to implicitly endorse:
Promoting the use of sugar as a way to get toddlers to eat healthier foods.
Making sure the 2020 dietary guidelines say nothing about the need for kids to eat less sugar (we don’t even have the guidelines for 2015 yet).
Making sure that government agencies don’t advise or set policies to encourage eating less sugar.
Use and enjoy the list of media resources—links to videos, audios, songs, movies, infographics, commercials—keyed to illustrate the text.
This book:
Answers the question, how did what is essentially flavored sugar-water come to mean so much and to have such devastating health and food policy consequences?
Is the first to focus on the history, politics, nutrition, and health of soda, integrating public health science with historical and cultural research
Helps readers understand how we created this food system, what its problems are, and what we can do to fix these problems
Is illustrated with 70 figures and 50 tables
Comes with a Foreword by Mark Bittman, food journalist and columnist for The New York Times
Comes with an Afterword by Dr. Neal Baer, pediatrician and television writer and producer
Here are the book’s blurbs:
“The soda industry is a powerful economic operator. Economic power readily translates into political power. Soda Politics is exactly the kind of carefully-researched investigative reporting needed to open the eyes of the public and parliamentarians to the health hazards of what is, as the author rightly notes, essentially liquid candy in a bottle.” –Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization
“No book in history has so completely laid bare the soda scourge that touches every corner of the world. Marion Nestle shows how this happened, its impact on human health and well-being, who the players are, and, most importantly, what might be done. This is the right book at the right time.” –Dr. Kelly Brownell, Dean, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
“Marion Nestle is one of the greatest muckrakers of our time, and what she does is vitally important-for our health, our environment, and for future generations. Here, she wages war against the soda titans with such piercing clarity and so many irrefutable truths that all other arguments crumble.” –Alice Waters, Founder and Proprietor of Chez Panisse
“Comprehensive and well-written, this book will help frame a thoughtful public policy debate about nutrition and the societal impacts and costs of obesity.” –Ann M. Veneman, Former US Secretary of Agriculture and Former Executive Director of UNICEF
“What happens when the food industry’s most insightful critic turns her sights on soda? This razor-sharp, fun to read, plan-of-battle for one of the greatest public health fights of our time. Big soda may have all the money, but those who would enter this fray, as we all should, now have their champion.” –Michael Moss, Author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
“For decades, soda companies have amassed fortunes off drinks that are making us sick. It took someone like Marion Nestle to cut through the spin and uncover the high cost of cheap sodas.” –Robert Kenner, Director/Producer, Food Inc. and Merchants of Doubt
“Long recognized as an important and informed voice in our national and international discussions on nutrition and health, Marion Nestle has written another book that will keep us talking. With an impressive combination of scholarship and advocacy, Dr Nestle takes an unflinching look at the soda industry, its products and the impact on health. Soda Politics deserves the attention of the public and policy makers, and should make us all think more carefully about choices we can make to improve health and well-being.”–Margaret Hamburg, M.D., Former Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
REVIEWS
Here’s the first review from the August 2015 Library Journal:
Nestle (nutrition, New York Univ.) once again exposes the dark side of the food business. As in her 2007 Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, the author examines the soft drink industry, demonstrating how products that are basically flavored water with added sugar contribute to obesity, type-2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. She discusses the composition and production of soda, the adverse effects of excess sugar consumption, and product marketing. The companies’ targeting of children, low-income, and minority communities; lobbying of Congress to prevent legislation that would impact profits; funding of research to produce results that obscure the facts about soda; and donations to health organizations and charities in order to be portrayed as socially responsible corporations make it difficult for citizens to act. Nestle reveals what can be done and how to do it, providing relevant data, analyzing that information, and illustrating its difficulties. She then advocates for smaller portions, taxing sugary drinks, and excluding soda from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and provides examples of successful campaigns, a list of groups advocating for healthy beverage choices, and extensive notes. VERDICT An outstanding manual for health educators, activists, and anyone seeking information about the soda industry and its impact on health.— Barbara Bibel, formerly Oakland P.L.
For me, the single most stunning and appalling revelation comes in the section about environmental impact and industry responses to it. It is that between 340 and 620 litres of water are used for every litre of soft drink produced, about 20% of that related to packaging. Despite such disturbing revelations,Soda Politics is not discouraging…Throughout the book, Nestle provides tactics for practical, local advocacy, such as working with school wellness committees and engaging local policymakers. And since 2002, the proportion of US citizens who say that they avoid soft drinks has risen by 20%, reaching nearly two-thirds of the population…For public health to prevail over soda politics as usual, we have miles to go. This book is the richly drawn map of how to get there, from here.
The standard operating practices of companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo demand the same level of scrutiny as cigarette companies, and for many of the same reasons, argues Marion Nestle in the introduction of her new book, Soda Politics. What follows is a thorough and unflinching look at the soft-drink industry’s role in promoting the consumption of sugary drinks despite growing evidence that they are detrimental to our health. The book begins with a basic primer of the range of health problems that have been linked to soda consumption, from tooth decay to obesity and diabetes, hitting its stride with an eviscerating assessment of the industry’s marketing and advocacy practices.
For those readers who share Nestle’s critical perspective on the food industry, it is obvious that this book would be informative. But here is the greater surprise: this solid book is by far the best source on this topic for any reader, with any perspective on economics or politics. If I worked for a trade association, or an industry front group, or an esteemed professional association that relies on soda industry funding, or the House Agriculture Committee, or a sugar manufacturer, or a high-powered corporate law firm, I might store this book in my desk drawer rather than my book shelf … yet I would read it word for word.
In Soda Politics (OUP, £19.90), Dr Marion Nestle does us all a great service by spelling out clearly and authoritatively the dreadful price we are paying for guzzling gallons of sugared water – Coke and Pepsi by any other name. Big Soda, as Dr Nestle calls the billion-dollar corporate giants behind this poison, know exactly how bad their products are for us but are so powerful no one takes them on. Rise up and rebel, Nestlé urges.
Nestle writes like an investigator hunting every possible scrap of damning material for a prosecutorial brief, which will no doubt make her book an excellent resource for activists and reformers seeking remedies in Washington, in the courts, and, perhaps, in the aisles of the local supermarket.
Fortunately, so does Marion Nestle. The nutrition professor, advocate and investigator best known for “Food Politics” profiles the soft drink industry in her expansive, superbly researched new book, “Soda Politics: Taking On Big Soda (and Winning).” It isn’t so much a narrative as a well-organized barrage of facts, some eye-popping (the world’s soda companies produce nearly two trillion 12-ounce servings annually), others banally incriminating. They come off the page like jabs in a sustained pummeling lasting more than 400 pages. Even if Nestle is only half right, it’s still a total knockout.
Nestle is foremost an educator and an activist, and Soda Politics is worth its price alone for the chapters on advocacy, from recruiting public health leaders and working from within to protecting public water resources…In other words, we can change things, one Big Gulp at a time.
Sabnavis M. Bitter fizz. Financial Express (India), March 20, 2016: A book that exposes that there’s more ill in a cola bottle than mere sugar—environment costs, high water use and pure politics.
