Public health campaigns against soda have the industry on the run. The New York Times recently reported that over the last 20 years, sales of soda have plummeted by 25 percent. As a result, the soda industry has become increasingly concerned about the declining sales of soda.
While a soda tax has only been successful in Berkeley, CA, the hype around the taxes have fueled larger discussions and attention to soda’s impact on health. The public health community has jumped onto these conversations with campaigns that have reduced total consumption.
These changes in soda drinking are occurring with the help of policies, like those supported by the Advancing Prevention Project (APP), targeting environments where soda is sold. For example, New York State law prohibits the sale of sodas in any public school during the school day. In combination with an anti-soda message, these changes are making people think twice about drinking soda. The APP recently hosted a webinar that included strategies you can use to make environmental changes to offer healthier beverages in multiple settings such as workplaces, schools, and grocery stores.
According to the Times article, soda industry officials are worried. In Coca Cola’s annual report on business and profitability,the company admitted, “Obesity concerns may reduce demand for some of our product.”
Part of Coca Cola’s, and other soda companies, response to this new business environment has been to increase their offerings. This includes new products like iced tea, sports drinks, flavored waters, and smaller packages of soda that may appear healthier. A more sinister response to the rising anti-soda sentiment has been to fund research that sends confusing messages about the role of soda in the obesity epidemic.
Sending the public mixed messages was also the approach used by the tobacco industry to continue selling cigarettes in the face of overwhelming evidence that smoking is a leading cause of cancer. Internal tobacco industry documents reveal that tobacco companies knew that smoking was a cause of cancer by the late 1950s. Yet, tobacco companies continued to fund and promote scientific research that found no relationship between smoking and cancer until the 1990s. Misleading the public about the evidence on smoking and cancer allowed tobacco companies to state that cigarettes had no negative health impact.
Industry-supported research tends to bias research findings, at the cost of confusing the public about what food products negatively affect health. Nowadays, people widely recognize that smoking is a cause of cancer, and the tobacco industry is in rapid decline. It seems that soda, with its role in the obesity epidemic, may be headed down a similar path.