The drinks dilemma

From chocolate milk to juice to soda, the number of sweetened beverages aimed at children is a growing challenge for parents

September 07, 2011|By Jane Dornbusch, Globe Correspondent

Colleen Lawton of Newburyport pours water with lemon for Steven, 6, and… (WENDY MAEDA/GLOBE STAFF )

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Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve heard them: Slogans selling drinks - all kinds of drinks - are virtually everywhere. (The examples above promote, respectively, Pepsi, Coke, Snapple, Naked Juice, and Gatorade.) The marketing of beverages, particularly to children, has become so pervasive that it’s sometimes hard to remember how relatively new a phenomenon it is.

• “When I was a kid,’’ says Ann Cooper, the chef, activist, and Boulder, Colo., school food-service director who’s sometimes known as the “renegade lunch lady,’’ “there was water, milk, maybe Tang, Hi-C. Soda was rare, served in tiny bottles as a treat once in a while.’’ • Today, of course, soda, juice, juice drinks, flavored milks, sports drinks, energy drinks, and bottled iced teas are ubiquitous. There have never been so many choices in the beverage aisle - and, say the experts, so many bad choices aimed at children. •

“Those marketers have created an environment where it seems appropriate to drink these all day long,’’ says Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University. “None of this was a problem till obesity became a problem. Then it became a very big problem.’’

The association between the consumption of soda (and other high-calorie beverages) and obesity is not clear-cut. Chris Gindlesperger, director of communications for the American Beverage Association, says it isn’t fair to blame soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks for the obesity epidemic, because only 7 percent of the average American’s diet is made up of such drinks. But, says Nestle, “The reason soda is targeted is that it’s calories and nothing else, no nutritional value… . Research shows that people who habitually drink sodas are heavier than those who don’t.’’

Gindlesperger points to industry efforts to lower the number of sweetened beverages sold in schools: “Since 2004, we have slashed the calories available in schools from beverages by 88 percent.’’ But few would argue that the zero-calorie sodas that have in many cases replaced more sugary drinks are healthful alternatives.