The soft drink industry has expressed such faith in its products that it wants to voluntarily limit their sale.
Responding to the clamor of school principals everywhere who can’t say no,
The president of the American Beverage Association, the industry’s main trade group, announced in a speech yesterday that major players in the business have signed on to a set of voluntary limits that would keep all soda and juice drinks out of elementary schools while curtailing the sales of certain beverages in middle and high schools.
This is a strict no tolerance policy.
For middle schools, from sixth grade to eighth grade, vending machines will sell no full-calorie soft drinks during school hours, or any full-calorie juice drinks containing 5 percent real fruit juice or less.
So the kids will get to choose between sugar substitutes that probably cause brain cancer and sugared water that contains 6 percent juice.
In high schools, the industry is asking that no more than 50 percent of a vending machine’s options be soft drinks.
The other 50 percent can be trans fat treats at 50 cents per ounce.
Advocates of children’s nutrition generally praised the effort while suggesting that the directives don’t go far enough.
“It’s really the first clear admission on the part of the beverage industry that soft drinks in schools are a problem,” said Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group that promotes nutrition.
But Wootan said the guidelines, while setting very strict limitations on marketing sodas to children up to fifth grade, are fairly lax when it comes to older kids. She said that in addition to soft drinks, there should be restrictions on sales of sugary fruit drinks or sports drinks, which are just as bad as soda pop nutritionally.
“In elementary schools, you might find one vending machine in a gym somewhere,” she said. “But in high schools, you might find several banks with half a dozen or more vending machines. To have such a weak policy for high schools is to miss the whole point.”
Now wait a minute. Give the beverage industry some credit here. They’re replacing the whole point with a 2% point, or even a skim point.
Under pressure from parents and advocacy groups, the soft drink industry has been slowly scaling back its child-focused marketing, but the new unified plan represents a change in approach. For the past couple of years, the vending and soda industries have largely responded to the issue of obesity in children by stressing that kids aren’t getting enough exercise and need to eat more balanced diets in general.
It’s just that the soft drink industry has yet to create a more balanced Coke, Mountain Dew or RC Cola. They are reportedly in talks with McDonalds and Burger King to create solid food products that will complement the empty calories of sodas with the full calories of saturated fat, thereby creating a more balanced approach to early death.
Anybody got change for a dollar? I’m thirsty.