Next Shots in the Cola Wars
Are full-calorie soft drinks making people fat? The answer is not clear, and it depends on who you listen to. What I can tell you is that soft drinks have calories. And if you’re going to enjoy a soft drink or two in your daily diet, you have to compensate for the calories by cutting back elsewhere. When we developed the 400 Calorie Fix meals, we included very few full-calorie soft drinks. Why? Because even a portion-controlled 100-calorie can of cola is still 100 calories, one-quarter of the calories for the entire meal. Most soft drinks are only about enjoyment since they’re not very filling and often not very nutritious.
Enter the soda tax. New York State and others are considering upping the tax on soft drinks as a way to discourage their use, much like taxes on cigarettes. Will it work? A study in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine found that as soda prices go up, daily intake goes down, and so does body weight. The same held true for pizza. This suggests that a soda tax would cause people to drink less. In a different approach, President Clinton’s Alliance for a Healthier Generation banded together with the American Beverage Association to create school beverage guidelines for schools. Schools now sell almost no full-calorie carbonated soft drinks and kids now drink very few of these drinks at school.
So what should you do? By all means swap full-calorie soft drinks for water, seltzer, or calorie-free beverages. Also be sure to include high-nutrition drinks like milk that supply hard-to-get vitamins and minerals. And there’s nothing wrong with having a full-calorie soft drink on occasion, as long as you keep total calories in mind.











