$66 billion dollars a year. That’s what American’s spend on carbonated drinks every year. Well, according to this at least. (Notice it’s an addiction center website--I find that funny/interesting/disturbing/comical/questionable).
Another interesting factoid: from 1970 to 1990, “the supply of low-fat milk rose from 5.8 to 15.5 gallons..but that of soft drinks rose from 24.3 to 53 gallons.” Food Politics, Marion Nestle, page 9.
I started looking into the negative health effects of soda, and ahoy, there’s quite a few of them. Including, but not limited to:
Why am I writing about soda? When Jeff and I moved into our apartment back in 2008, we stopped buying soda because we realized we didn’t need to spend money on that. Ever since then, we consume mostly water and beer. And iced tea on occasion. It works out well. We save a few bucks, which allows us to buy more beer. But I digress.
After a while of not having soda at home, I realized that when we’d go out to eat, I didn’t feel like drinking soda. It was too sweet, and sounded less than appetizing. This made me realize how prevalent soda is everywhere, and how few alternatives there really are.
I was made more aware of this when I discovered Native Foods, and their non-soda beverages. It was disturbing to realize how weird it was that Native Foods didn’t have soda (instead they have delicious lavender lemonade, watermelon fresca, and native iced idea). So this got me thinking: how did this relationship develop between food establishments (especially fast food) and the soda industry, to the point that they go hand in hand?
Another food establishment that got me thinking about this, in a somewhat different manner, is In n Out’s policy regarding bottled water. The policy is that they don’t sell any. I found that really interesting, and pretty admirable. What does this have to do with soda? Well, it has more to do with the soda industry, since Dasani is owned by Coca Cola, and Aquafina is owned by PepsiCo. Interesting and long discussion on the promotion of bottled water versus tap water here.
Both of these got me wondering how this all got started, and how we ended up drinking as much soda and bottled water as we do.
Let’s start with a little history.
Carbonated drinks were sold commercially before the 19th century as tonic or “medicine,” and it wasn’t until someone started adding fruit syrups to it that soft drinks became popular. There’s also an interesting correlation between “soft” drinks and “hard” liquor, ha! It seems that soda became especially popular during the prohibition, where soft drinks were encouraged and promoted over hard liquor. Who knew?
You can find an interesting, and entertaining, history of soda fountains here. There’s also a time line and history of each major soda company (including my personal favorite, Dr. Pepper) that you can read here.
So, soda came, and it conquered.
It’s taken a special place in our culture. In an NPR article, a speaker states “I remember when I was a child, it was not considered appropriate to offer a soda with a meal on a regular basis, milk or water was the norm.” Ha!
The second segment of that NPR special talks about a student who was proud about having a healthy breakfast: a pineapple soda.
Huh.
Again, how did we get here?
Jeff has always been surprised by the legality of “lobbying.” So, you pay money to get what you want, even if it run against what’s good or in the best interest? Yep.
Food Politics has a whole chapter (chapter 9) devoted to lobbying efforts and soft drinks. It talks about how soft drink companies (mostly the Coca Cola company) pour tons of money into schools in exchange for exclusivity rights (aka “pouring rights”). Many schools are not in a position to turn down these financially lucrative offers, so what happens? “...soft drinks have replaced milk in the diets of many American children as well as adults...From 1985 to 1997, school districts decreased the amounts of milk they bought by nearly 30% and increased their purchase of carbonated sodas by an impressive 1,100%.” Nestle, 198-9; emphasis added.
The book has an interesting timeline of the history of regulations governing sales of soft drinks in elementary and secondary schools. For example, in 1970: amendments to 1996 Act ban sales of sodas in or near school cafeterias during mealtimes...then in 1972 another amendment permits sale during mealtimes if the proceeds benefit schools or school groups. Regulation authority is then transferred to the USDA, who tries unsuccessfully to clamp down even more and ban completely the sale of soda on school campuses. Every time they try to propose such amendments, the Coca Cola company and PepsiCo lobby against it. One bill introduction caused Coca-Cola to organize a letter-writing campaign “among school principles, superintendents, and coaches who feared losing revenues generated by vending machines.” Nestle, 208-9, 210.
Part of some state regulations include restrictions like “no water ices except those which contain fruit or fruit juices, shall be sold in any public school within the state.” So... “companies developed sweetened fruit ‘drinks’ that can be sold on lunch lines; these contain just barely enough juice (5%) to get around being defined as a food of minimal nutritional value.” Nestle, 212. Take THAT!
Food Politics focuses on lobbying only at the educational level, but I think that has longstanding implications: you get used to drinking soda at a young age, and probably continue to do so way past your formative educational years.
This website has some interesting, albeit outdated, information concerning campaign contributions and the Coca Cola company. The site breaks down campaign contributions by year, and by political party (up to 2003, $491,000 to Republican party committees and $8,850 to Democratic party committees--I find that interesting), as well as lobbying expenses.
“Congressional reluctance to favor children’s health above the rights of soft drink producers is a direct result of election laws that require legislators to obtain corporate funding for their campaigns. Like most corporations, soft drink companies donate funds to local and national candidates. More rational campaign financing laws might permit Congress to take positions based on public good rather than private greed.” Nestle, 217; emphasis added.
This influence on congress has far reaching implications.
The Coca Cola Company has been demonized in Latin America because of it’s influence on fighting local labor unions. There are sites dedicated to lobbying against the Coca Cola Company, suck as Killer Coke.
There’s also the issue of the environment. The Coca Cola Company seemed to be pretty bent out of shape when the Grand Canyon decided to ban plastic bottles from the park. Coca Cola has donated more than $13 billion to the parks, and the park started to second guess whether it really wanted to ban plastic bottles or not when Coca Cola representatives weren’t happy with the news. Hmmm. In the end, the park moved forward with its plans, but with some conditions.
Yikes, I kinda went all over the place on this one (this includes mixing issues such as soda health concerns and bottled water environmental concerns). I'm sure this could be a whole research paper on the subject, but hopefully these little tid bits of information are interesting to you. What it means to you is up to you. I still enjoy a Coke or Dr. Pepper on occasion, but I’m glad I stopped consuming as much of it as I used to.
“Young people are capable of doing widely extraordinary work, their voices should be heard.”
If you’re one of those people who think you can’t make a difference in the world, I hope this Charity of the Month changes your mind.
Mike Kang was a freshman in high school when he started a youth activism campaign, which sprouted from a documentary made by Invisible Children. After his fellow students saw the documentary, Mike noticed there was a large response from students who were interested in the cause, but did not have an avenue or system on how they could get involved.
Most high school students would probably shrug their shoulders, and move on to their next class. But Mike decided to actually create the means through which his fellow students could be active participants for these causes, straight from school. So he created Generation Against Global Injustice (GAGI). One thing Mike really liked about this organization was that it was breaking the stereotype that young people can’t do much, or that young people can’t make a difference in the world. They can, and they did. In four and a half years, GAGI raised over $10,000 for partner organizations like Invisible Children, Just One, and One Day’s Wages (to name a few).
So what does GAGI have to do with Illuminate International? After Mike graduated from high school, he decided he wanted to focus on education, so it would be aligned with his career path in education and educational policy. So GAGI became Illuminate International. Why “Illuminate International”? Because their mission is to light the fire so that students can get an education, and because their purpose is to shine light on the issue of education, and lack of education in developing countries.
The plan is that Illuminate International will have one year partnerships with organizations that are working on education in developing countries, and Illuminate International will raise money for that partner organization throughout the year. The plan is also to use their growing network and social networks, such as YouTube, to bring awareness to education issues in developing countries, to people here in the United States.
Mike was inspired to act by his own childhood: growing up in Palos Verdes, he had access to everything he needed to succeed in life. After watching the documentary by Invisible Children, he realized that not everyone has this privilege: people have no access to the same things he had. Mike decided it was his responsibility to use these privileges for the public good, and to lend a helping hand were he could.
And he is doing just that.
Illuminate International wants to help schools become the central hubs of communities in developing countries, so that individuals realize that education is the only way for upward mobility for themselves and their families, and for the community to make education their main focus.
Mike hopes that years down the road, Illuminate International will be a political voice, a voice that can influence policy and the educational community, to make a political impact. In discussing who the lack of public education in developing countries can be attacked, Mike said “the governments have to take action, they have to setup quality public schools, have their own infrastructure instead of relying on nonprofits: individual governments have to take action and invest in their education.” I have no doubt that Illuminate International will try to make this a reality.
A few weeks ago I had to write a legal brief for a client who applied for asylum. Part of the brief involved researching “country conditions,” to explain why the applicant wasn’t willing to return to his country of origin.
In this case, my client is from Guatemala, and left the country fleeing from gang members. So I started doing research on gangs in Guatemala, including crime rates, prosecution rates, etc. I’ve written about violence in Guatemala before, so parts of this weren’t too shocking. Others were.
In my research, it was interesting to learn how a couple of the main gangs started, mainly Mara Salvatrucha. They began in the streets of Los Angeles, and spread to Mexico and Central America after immigration legislation allowed illegal aliens with a criminal history to be deported. This meant that thousands of gang members began to be deported to their country of origin, and they began spreading gangs in those territories, frequently coming back to the United States, or establishing connections on both sides. These gangs have now created loose affiliations with “narco-traficantes,” aka drug dealers. Small Central-American countries with little police enforcement, and absolute corruption and impunity, create great corridors for drugs that are making their way from South America into the United States: bring drugs into El Salvador and Guatemala, where you can bribe the local police, and smuggle them in to Mexico, and onward to the U.S. (You can check out organizations like International Crisis Groups for more info on this situation.)
Here in South Orange County, we seem to be having a gang problem of our own. It won’t be a huge shocker to know that gangs are made up of Hispanic men, mainly from Mexico and Central America. A news article was published early this year in a local paper of San Clemente, commenting on the “racial backlash” resulting after a gang-related shooting. As I tend to do, I started reading the comments, and as always, was pretty blown away by some of them. For example:
These are but a few examples, obviously there are tons of “insightful” comments.
But these comments got me thinking. Is it racism to want to live safely? These gang members are Hispanic, and although I don’t have the facts to back it up, most of them are probably here illegally. What’s the right answer? Community understanding, or protection of your home and neighborhood? People have a right to be upset when their communities are no longer safe, through no fault of their own.
What is it about our Hispanic community that makes our young men vulnerable to gang recruitment? Is it parenting? Lack of quality jobs? Lack of education? Is it social? Economic? Political? Cultural?
Probably a little bit of everything.
The point I want to make with this post is that this problem is real. It is real in Mexico, it is real in small Central American countries like Guatemala and El Salvador. Those lands are foreign to many, and maybe that’s why there has been little interest in finding and fighting the root causes of these gang problems. Why should we care? But as we can see from recent news, these issues are affecting cities here, in our home, that used to be safe havens from crime.
So what do we do? Do we put the blame on a whole ethnic community and tell them to leave? I think the more reasonable solution, but by no means easier, is to work towards combating the root causes that have created this crisis. Given the current financial situation, I know we can’t go out there and find jobs for everyone, but perhaps supporting small local community organizations that are trying to provide these men with educational and technical skills, even the self esteem to believe they can be more than a gang thug. If you’re asking, why should I support someone who’s here illegally, living off of my tax dollars, I’d say: why not? We’re all human beings. We all deserve a right to earn an honest living. National borders are becoming more porous, not less. Why should we care less about an individual simply because of political boundary lines? I'm not saying we should financially support gang members, I am saying we should help them figure out how to earn a decent living so they don't think joining a gang is their only option.
I think I’ve gone off topic...but the reality is that they’re all interrelated, and it’s difficult not to lump all of these issues together, because you can’t have one without the other.
What are your thoughts on this issue?
