Several weeks ago, when I voiced my misgivings about what a pregnant woman with a voracious thirst should drink, it paved the way for much larger questions that touches all of our lives, preggo or no: “Wait, what ARE we drinking“? “What’s IN this can/glass/bottle/cup, anyway“?
In recent news there has been a spirited debate about whether the government should impose a penny-per-ounce tax on soda and other sugary beverages.  The fact that it has garnered so much attention by the national media shows us how interwoven soda and its affordability is to our national fabric.  And although I’m not prepared to weigh in on whether such a tax might promote a healthier lifestyle, I’m listening intently to the debate.  And I’m aghast at what I’m learning simply by paying a little attention.

I’ll say this out front: I like a good glass of juice or lemonade, but otherwise I’m not a big fan of sweet drinks.  My tea contains neither sugar nor honey, nor does my morning coffee contain sugar or cream.  I’ve never been a soda person, though I’m no stranger to the occasional can.  My choices in wine and alcoholic beverages are always dry.  For me, it’s just a matter of what my taste buds prefer.  So suffice to say that I do not have a personal stake in this debate.

Given where I’m coming from, I’d like to match up two opposing arguments that I’ve heard; exhibit A and exhibit B:

Exhibit A: Lobbyist for the soda industry appearance on MSNBC within the last few weeks (apologies for not being able to provide specific show/guest info) making the case that beverages account for only 5 Percent of daily caloric intake for the average American, and that the blame that such a tax implies is patently unfair, an argument similar to the one defended by Kevin Keane of the American Beverage Association in this Chron.com article.

Exhibit B: Eat This, Not That‘s documentation of the 20 worst drinks in America, including the “worst soda“, Sunkist; a 20 ounce bottle contains 320 calories and 84 grams of sugar, as much as 6 Breyers Oreo Ice Cream Sandwiches.  Additionally, Sunkist makes use of “the artificial colors yellow 6 and red 40—two chemicals that may be linked to behavioral and concentration problems in children”.  WikiAnswers lists the ingredients in Sunkist as these:  “Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar, citric acid, sodium benzoate (preservative), food starch-modified, natural flavors, caffeine, glycerol ester of wood rosin, ascorbic acid (preservative), yellow 6, red 40″.

So, according to the argument posed in Exhibit A, if one measly 20oz bottle of Sunkist was all the caloric beverage that you drank for an entire day, your overall calorie intake could be extrapolated to 6400.  Is this reasonable?  Would even Kevin Keane agree that this is reasonable?  And I wonder whether he would be willing to weigh in on the effect of the ingredients list: high fructose corn syrup, yellow 6, red 40; as well as what specific ingredient tends to hide behind the term “natural flavors” (hint: MSG).  So, it seems to me that this “don’t pick on us because there are other, bigger fish to fry” is really just awfully sad.  And although the proposed soda tax has been defeated on the several occasions thus far that it has shown up as proposed legislature in Maine, New York, and San Francisco, I hope that the movement gains momentum, and that in time, the American Beverage Association does have its fish fried.  I’ll take a water with that.

In the meantime, if a 2000 calorie-per-day diet is the ideal for most of us, let’s really try, as a culture, to observe that 5% idea — really, it turns out not to be such a bad one — 5% of your calories from beverages: that’s 100 calories a day.  Let’s just all pay a little closer attention to the labels and try to observe this.  It’d be way more effective to our lifestyle than a tax, though our states would still be that much more cash-strapped.

If just 100 calories to drink a day sounds way too restrictive, note the following from TLC Cooking: “look at the calorie count of any soft drink. For example, a typical carbonated soft drink will have 200 calories in a 16-ounce serving. All of those calories come from sugar, and sugar contains 16 calories per teaspoon. By this measurement, a 16-ounce serving contains 12.5 teaspoons of sugar.So go down to the kitchen and get out a 16-ounce glass, a teaspoon and some sugar. Measure 12 teaspoons of sugar into the glass — it’s an amazing amount. Then multiply that by however many sodas you typically consume in a day”.

For further reading, see also New England Journal of Medicine’s “Ounces of Prevention — The Public Policy Case for Taxes on Sugared Beverages”, and the New York Times’s “Health Official Willing to go to the Mat Over Obesity and Sugared Sodas”