Posted October 14, 2009
There’s some good news for the Hostess cake company: It’s not their Twinkies making Americans fat.
The real culprit is non-diet soda, according to research by health advocates who are calling for taxes to be placed on sugar-filled beverages to pay for obesity-prevention programs.
The new study conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Health Policy Research has made a direct link between soda consumption and obesity. A person who drinks at least one soda per day — which is calculated in the study as 16 ounces — is 27 percent more likely to be obese than a person who drinks none, the study suggests.
These statistics may even weigh heavier among San Joaquin County adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17. According to the study, 77.8 percent of adolescents in San Joaquin County drink at least one 16-ounce soda per day, the highest of any county in California.
In other age groups, San Joaquin County ranks in the middle of the pack, with 26.6 percent of adults consuming 16 ounces of a sugary drink per day and 44.2 percent of children ages 2 to 11.
“We consider soda nothing more than a sugar-delivery device,” said Dr. Harold Goldstein, co-author of the study. “We drink soda like water because it’s cheap and because it is so heavily marketed.”
In the report — “Bubbling Over: Soda consumption and its link to obesity in California” — UCLA researchers deduced that Americans in 2009 consumed an average of 278 more calories per day than the average person did 30 years ago. Soda or other sugar-sweetened drinks, the study suggests, accounts for as much as 43 percent of the additional calories a person consumes each day.
San Joaquin County Public Health Services Director Bill Mitchell said that county adolescents may drink more soda than their peers in other counties for social reasons.
“Education and poverty play a part. You have children living in areas where they don’t have access to health-food stores and may not have access to information to teach them healthier eating habits,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said county Health Services does have an outreach program in schools designed to help children make healthy food choices. Some school districts, such as Lodi Unified and Stockton Unified, have also taken sodas out of vending machines at every grade level.
At Tokay High School in Lodi, vending machines offer water, a regular sports drink and a zero-calorie sports drink, but no sodas. Some students, such as 14-year-old Brian Coon, said they would like soda to be sold on campus. Others said they don’t mind the absence of soda.
Junior Jesse Guadarrama, 16, walked on campus Thursday drinking a can of Fizz Ed, a combination of fruit juice and sparkling water made by the Apple & Eve company. Guadarrama said he bought it because it is labeled as being made from 100 percent fruit juice, and he believed the Fizz Ed was healthier than soda. He was surprised to read the nutrition facts and learning the seven-ounce can contained 20 grams of sugar in it, more than a 20-ounce soda.
Still, the physically fit teen was undeterred.
“I don’t know if soda or sugar in drinks causes obesity,” Guadarrama said. “I think it just depends on your metabolism and moderation.”
Moderation might be the key, Goldstein said, but the statistics and massive advertising efforts by soda companies indicate that people do not drink sugary drinks in a balanced fashion. High obesity rates also indicate that not enough people are watching calories, he said, adding that people typically drink sodas in combination with high-calorie meals at restaurants and fast-food establishments.
“There are a lot of tricky marketing schemes to get people to buy sugary beverages. The industry spends $40 million a year to tell us it’s cool, or that we need it,” Goldstein said. “We find ourselves drinking sodas for a lot of reasons. But we don’t need it.”
Contact reporter Keith Reid at (209) 546-8257 or kreid@recordnet.com.
Date: Sept 24, 2009
To see more of The Record, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.recordnet.com.
Copyright © 2009, The Record, Stockton, Calif.