Health experts support NYC mayor’s limit on soft drink size
Protests flowed like Coke from a soda fountain after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently proposed limiting the size of soft drinks sold in the city to 16 ounces or less. But Bloomberg’s gambit was extremely effective in one way: It shone a spotlight on the link between sugary drinks and obesity.
“I really agree with him,” said Joanna Gorman, a registered dietitian at University Medical Center. “You’d be surprised by the lack of basic nutrition knowledge the general public has. They know soda has calories; if they have three or four or five 12-ounce cans, they don’t realize how it adds up.”
Jamie Benedict, a registered dietitian and associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said studies have revealed a “strong relationship” between sugary drinks and the risk of being overweight or obesity in both children and adults.
“We can’t assume it’s a direct cause-and-effect,” Benedict said, but “it certainly provides very strong evidence that there is an association.” Besides, she said, “overall, most Americans have way too many of what we refer to as ‘added sugars,’ ” or sugars not normally occurring in foods.
Anjala Krishen, an associate professor of marketing in the Lee Business School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said other studies have found that larger portions encourage us to consume more.
“With weight-loss products, their frame is to try to get you to reduce your portion size,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to ban the larger soft drinks.”
Dr. Ivan Goldsmith, an internist and founder of Trimcare, agreed that limiting sizes may not be a bad idea.
“The whole 32-ounce, 64-ounce thing is causing people to indulge even more,” Goldsmith said. “You’re creating an addiction to high-fructose corn syrup.
“It’s a very far-reaching thing. But then you get people who don’t want Big Brother to tell them what to eat or drink. Society’s paying. If we don’t limit the amount of sugar, we’ll keep seeing this epidemic of diabetes in the youth.”
Benedict said another concern, particularly in the case of children, is that soft drinks take the place of other, more healthful beverages.
“As sugary-drink consumption increases, consumption of milk decreases,” Benedict said. “As children are weaned off of either breast milk or formula, the next beverages are water, milk or 100 percent fruit juice. Over time, those start to decline as soft drinks start to increase. As they displace those beverages, then we see a decline in the consumption of those really important nutrients like calcium, vitamin D and potassium.”
Gorman said drinking too many sodas can increase phosphorus consumption to a harmful degree.
“Phosphorus is needed to help with bones,” she said. “What happens is, when you throw that out of whack and have an overload of all this phosphorus from the sodas, it can cause problems with bone maintenance.”
And soft drinks are, it seems, all around us – in restaurants and supermarkets and advertising. Benedict added that on TV shows, “You don’t see milk in the glasses anymore. It’s teas, soft drinks.”
But Krishen said despite the fact that product placement is huge these days – across all categories – she doesn’t see some Machiavellian scheme on the part of the soft drink companies to get us addicted to their products. Evidence of that, she said, is that those same companies have started to market alternative beverages such as bottled water.
“They do want to grab the two dichotomous ends,” she said. “They want to grab the health freaks and they want to grab the unhealthy ones.
“I don’t know that they want to change behaviors. I think it’s about variety. I think we’re extreme variety-seekers, and we’re grand switchers. There’s so much innovation out there. Soft drink companies are trying to innovate constantly. They’re just trying to grab as much of the market as they can.”
So, then, who’s at fault for our attraction to soft drinks – and especially the fact that such habits tend to be formed early? Benedict said that among children younger than 12, most of the sugary drinks they consume are consumed at home. And Clark County School District spokeswoman Melinda Malone said no soft drinks can be sold in schools during the school day or for a half-hour before and after.
“Parents really have an opportunity here to help promote their children’s health by limiting their access to sugar drinks,” Benedict said.
What should we all be drinking instead? Goldsmith said while most people in “the weight-loss world” agree that alternatives such as agave and stevia are acceptable, several large studies have shown that the use of artificial sweeteners increases a craving for sweets and can lead to increased consumption of sugars.
“For people who are trying to diet,” he said, “water is always the best – eight to 10 8-ounce glasses of water a day.”
“We all need to drink more fluids in the summer,” Benedict said, “and usually it should be water.”
But some people just don’t like drinking plain water. In that case, Goldsmith recommends green tea, Crystal Light or unsweetened chai tea.
Gorman suggests adding 2 or 3 ounces of fruit juice to a glass of seltzer.
“Pour the juice in the bottom of the glass and fill it up,” with seltzer, she said. “Put a slice of lemon or lime or a piece of orange in there and it’s really nice.”
She said members of her diabetes-education classes also tend to like Ocean Spray diet juices, which contain 5 calories in 8 ounces compared to 110 calories for regular juices.
“It’s very hard to cut sugar craving,” Goldsmith acknowledged. “It’s a big issue in people. The goal is to get people away from these soft drinks. All this stuff feeds on each other. At the end of the day, all it’s done is cause people to gain more fat in the midsection.”
Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@review journal.com or 702-383-0474.
