
The Decline of ‘Big Soda’ - coloneltcb
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/upshot/soda-industry-struggles-as-consumer-tastes-change.html?_r=0
======
klenwell
_When Mr. Nutter was fighting the soda tax battle, he kept a bottle of
Mountain Dew and a container with 17 teaspoons of sugar — the amount in the
bottle — on the table in the center of his office. It was a good “conversation
piece,” he said, about the surprising number of calories in a typical soda._

I think this is key. Better information and transparency is having an effect.
I'm glad to hear we're approaching a point where the RDA for sugar will be
listed on products just like fat, sodium, and potassium. I expect this will
have a major impact on consumer behavior and industry behavior, much like
calorie listings on fast food menus. It still requires government regulations,
but instead of challenging First Amendment principles, it embraces them.

Most consumers aren't idiots. But they're aren't scientists or academic
researchers for the most part either. Bring them relevant, accurate
information and they are capable of making rational choices. This article is
encouraging evidence.

~~~
caseysoftware
That's why we haven't had anyone start smoking in decades..

Soda sales are down but obesity is still up, so the calories are coming from
somewhere. If you believe the other common stories, we're drinking the
calories.

I'd wager they come from the rise of coffee-based beverages - which would not
be considered soda - but I don't have data to back that up.

~~~
_delirium
For now I think Starbucks et al are benefiting from being culturally
identified as more upper/middle-class. Obesity stereotypes seem to have
fixated mostly on a "people of Walmart" type image of the fat, slobbish lower
classes. So even though a 12-oz Starbucks caramel latte is far worse than a
12-oz Coke, it gets a pass.

~~~
mikenyc
Sugar-wise, the can of coke is about 70% worse.

12-oz caramel macchiato = 23 grams of sugar
[http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/espresso/caramel-
macchi...](http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/espresso/caramel-
macchiato#size=126197&milk=63)

12-oz can of coke = 39 grams of sugar [http://www.coca-
colaproductfacts.com/en/coca-cola-products/c...](http://www.coca-
colaproductfacts.com/en/coca-cola-products/coca-cola/)

~~~
_delirium
Good point, the source of calories isn't the same mix, even though the latte
has more total calories (200 calories/12oz, vs. 140). Though I was thinking of
the caramel latte rather than macchiato, which is a bit closer, at 27g of
sugar: [http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/espresso/flavored-
latte...](http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/espresso/flavored-
latte?foodZone=9999#size=177970&milk=63).

And since it's autumn, it's now time for their signature seasonal drink, the
pumpkin spice latte, 300 calories and 39g of sugar per 12oz:
[http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/espresso/pumpkin-
spice-...](http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/espresso/pumpkin-spice-
latte#size=183886&milk=63&whip=125). You can bring that down to 240 calories
and a mere 37g of sugar if you ask for no whipped cream.

~~~
greggman
Another issue is size. In Europe or at least at many of the places I've been
lately the sizes they have at Starbucks USA do not exist.

A latte for example in Paris or Barcelona is no more than ~6oz or so, maybe
less whereas Starbucks USA they start at 8oz and go up to 24oz. I have not
visited a Starbucks here to see the sizes. Every coke I've ordered has come in
a 8oz bottle as well unlike the unlimited refills and or big-gulp sizes seen
in the USA.

~~~
grogenaut
Ugh, as an americano drinker I'd be annoyed as hell by this. I have a 52oz
water cup at my desk, for me much of things is about the quantity of liquid so
I dilute everything. I get my alcohol drinks heavily cut with mixers so they
last longer. If drinks are small I finish them way too fast. So a tumbler of a
mixed drink lasts me 8 minutes but the same drink in a pint with little ice
and more mixer is more like 40 minutes. One leads to shitfaced quick and is a
nice buzz. Same for coffee. Sitting at my desk with a small drink I'll finish
it without noticing I'm drinking it. 20 oz coffee with the same # of shots and
It'll take 30 minutes to finish and I'll actually notice and enjoy it.

I'm an adult, I can pay attention to what I order, and I'm not embarrassed to
order things that are not directly on the menu. I'm tipping the bartender and
the barrista so they make it the way I want it anyway.

~~~
baby
Coffee in Italy, France and other places in Europe is meant to be drink in
small cups. Like a shot. I've asked for Americano in France and people are
always making fun of me. But I will never understand why you would drink a
shot for pleasure when a drink can last way longer. So yeah totally agree with
you.

~~~
_delirium
This varies a lot within Europe. In the Nordic countries, the norm is to drink
larger cups of coffee, traditionally brewed filter coffee, but lately also
various latte/etc. type drinks (overall, similar to what Americans drink),
slowly over a longish period of time. That's embedded in cultural expectations
as well: going out "for a coffee" is a popular type of casual socializing, and
means sitting at a table and chatting for maybe an hour or so while you sip a
coffee. Not the Italian-style 30-second outing, where you drink a shot of
espresso at a bar standing up.

------
lemevi
Just take some time next time you're in a supermarket and walk down the cereal
aisle, it's just incredible. It's all sugar and carbohydrates in colorful
cartoony boxes meant to appeal to children. Just a cup of cereal has many
calories and people and children eat huge bowls of this stuff.

So I think an anti-cereal campaign might also help. I often wonder what would
happen to national obesity rates if cereal aisles in supermarkets just
disappeared overnight.

~~~
frenchy
There some much healthier options in there if you know where to look, but
unfortunately its not easy to identify them, and even things like granola
which are colloquially thought to be healthy are often jam packed with sugar.

~~~
jobu
Exactly. They put extra sugar/sweeteners in absolutely everything these days.
You have to look at the ingredients and calories on anything you buy.

Even super healthy-eeming things like granola or dried fruit usually have
sugar added. Yogurt is still promoted as a healthy snack, but most of them
have as much added sugar as a candy bar.

~~~
sampo
> Yogurt is still promoted as a healthy snack, but most of them have as much
> added sugar as a candy bar.

At least plain yogurt is still made only from milk, milk solids and yogurt
cultures.

...unless that "nonfat milk solids" means sugar?

------
jimmar
It's interesting to me that diet soda consumption has dropped from its peak. I
would have guessed that sugary soda would have been replaced by diet soda, but
it appears that water has replaced sugary soda more frequently. Mind mildly
blown.

~~~
rhino369
A lot of people just can't get over the terrible taste of artificial sugar. If
someone ever creates an artificial sugar indistinguishable from sugar or corn
syrup, it'll be a multibillion dollar invention.

I'd give my right arm for zero calories coke, I'd rather have a perrier than
diet coke.

~~~
icelancer
I agree. Though Coke Zero is significantly better than Diet Coke.

------
neverartful
Like many of the posters here, I realize that much of the food and drink sold
is unhealthy. On the other hand, I don't think that nanny state regulations
are the answer. Plenty of unhealthy things abound (when overused): chips,
candy, pizza, fast food, cookies, ice cream, video games, television, etc.
Maybe some of the same marketing tactics used to sell the unhealthy things can
also be used to counter them with healthier alternatives.

~~~
kw71
Under a socialized healthcare regime, every sick person is a problem for the
whole society in that we have to pay for it. So, being careless with your
health is a crime against the people. If you are in the USA, consider that you
have been funding healthcare for some of the worst offenders for decades by
paying taxes which fund hospitals. Now with the healthcare reforms in mind,
which have itemized your contribution to social healthcare separately from
your taxes, take a walk around Walmart and consider all the preventable health
issues you see in the crowd. Do you really want to pay for that? I feel like
you and I should have the freedom not to, and our collective freedom not to is
more important than any individual's freedom to eat and drink his way to
costly, lifelong illness.

~~~
hugh4
Which is precisely why some of us are opposed to socialised healthcare. Once
you have it, every little decision you make becomes everyone else's business.

~~~
arethuza
You make "socialised healthcare" sounds like we have a NHS food police
tracking us and sending us off to a health re-education camp if we don't eat 5
bits of fruit and veg a day.

~~~
adventured
And even if that were true, they're obviously not doing a very good job of
restricting bad food intake given the UK's own obesity problems.

If the NHS were following everyone around, they'd have to be stuffing people
full of low quality food to get the present outcome.

------
kevin_thibedeau
I would like to see a decline of "Big water". It astonishes me that bottled
water is consistently sold for more than sugar water and not one bottler
breaks from the pack and sells it for less. That can only happen with industry
wide collusion to fix prices and yet no one in the government does anything
about it.

~~~
chrisseaton
I think my local supermarket sells bottled water for as little as 19p (29c)
for 2 litres, as as much as about £2 ($3) so I think you are mistaken.

~~~
twic
That stuff is probably more or less tap water:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tesco-and-
as...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tesco-and-asda-deny-
claims-that-own-brand-bottled-water-is-in-fact-tap-water-8059703.html)

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Actual spring water is uniformly
45p for two litres:

[http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=258016736](http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=258016736)

[http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/sparkling-
wate...](http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/sparkling-
water/sainsburys-caledonian-scottish-water--sparkling-2l)

[http://groceries.asda.com/product/sparkling-water/asda-
eden-...](http://groceries.asda.com/product/sparkling-water/asda-eden-falls-
sparkling-natural-mineral-water/19028)

[https://groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/product/Morrisons-
Pe...](https://groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/product/Morrisons-Pennine-Vale-
Sparkling-Water/111996011)

That said, i imagine kevin_thibedeau was referring to the situation in the US.
Perhaps bottled water is more expensive there. Or perhaps sugar water is
cheaper.

~~~
ars
> That stuff is probably more or less tap water

Is that bad? People buy bottled water for the convenience, and because it's
filtered tap water which tastes better than regular tap water.

If you want to reduce bottled water purchases you should advocate for a law
requiring water fountains to have carbon filters for taste. (Although I kinda
like knowing there is chlorine in there when I drink from one.)

------
hisham_hm
"Soda companies" are already moving to controlling water supply in many
countries. In Brazil, it's already hard to find in some stores water which is
not owned by either Coca-Cola or Nestlé.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Does the "water supply" of most citizens of most countries come from a grocery
store? Or does it still come from things like _municipal plumbing_ or _rural
wells_?

~~~
seizethecheese
In Latin America tap water is not drinkable so most people get their drinking
water bottled.

~~~
patrickaljord
Not in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and probably Colombia. People there massively
drink boiled tap water.

~~~
seizethecheese
I just got back from Peru, everybody was drinking bottled water and boiling
water for cooking. I'm sure this is a matter of preference.

~~~
patrickaljord
You were probably with middle class people (lived there for 5 years, wife's
from there).

------
bluedino
What are restaurants doing to combat the loss of their highest-margin items?
Another bonus of drinking water instead of a soft drink is a cheaper bill at
lunch.

~~~
jmcphers
They're just increasing the prices of everything else. In earlier decades,
restaurants used to sell their food at a near-loss because everyone had a
couple of high-margin alcoholic drinks with their meal. When that started to
go by the wayside, the restaurants had to increase the menu prices of the
actual food. I expect we'll see the same thing happen if people stop buying
beverages entirely, especially at fast-food restaurants where the soft drink
is almost always the highest-margin element of the meal, making up for loss
leaders like the "dollar menu".

------
makecheck
Soda isn't inherently evil. Education on how to track calories and understand
the density of some foods is more important. Of course, since sodas don't have
really any nutrition, it is _hard_ to drink a lot of them.

You can't single out soda while you still have people eating "healthy" salads
that are twice as big as they should be, covered with dressing and cheese and
olives and fatty meats.

You can't single out soda while you let people drink "coffee" (which by itself
is fine) that includes 1000 calories worth of additives like cream and
sweeteners.

And oil is extremely calorie-dense; simply cutting in half the number of fries
that you eat would go a long way.

With a proper diet and exercise you can certainly have a couple of sodas a
week. There is also a better way to drink soda: don't use a straw. Just _try_
to get through a 32 oz. soda when you sip it a bit at a time; you'll find that
you don't really drink it that fast, that it tastes better, and that a small
amount is still satisfying. After awhile it'll seem much more natural to order
a small soda.

------
Eric_WVGG
pro-tip for anyone trying to kick a soda (or alcohol) habit: get yourself a
seltzer maker, and an assortment of bitters (Fee Bros Cranberry, Walnut, and
standard Angostura are a good place to start).

This is just my personal experience, but I found that most of the unhealthy
drinking I was doing was out of habit and boredom. I’m just as happy with a
seltzer + a few dashes of bitters as I was with a beer or a coke.

~~~
bradlys
Even if you don't get something like that, just having a glass of water nearby
is a great way to reduce consumption. I drink a lot of diet soda and it's
mainly out of compulsion to constantly drink liquids. If I keep a nice cold
cup of water near where I am, the soda consumption drops super fast. Once I
start drinking water during that day, that's usually what sticks.

For me, it's almost all about the habit of constantly drinking. That said,
even though I know how to kick the habit, I still tend to drink a lot of diet
soda because it's a nice pick-me-up.

------
hugh4
It's amazing how many people seem to think drugs should be legalised but sugar
should be banned.

~~~
stouset
For starters, I don't think there's any conceivable risk of boxes on
supermarket shelves being stuffed to the brim with cocaine.

If you want to look at the number of cumulative life-years lost to drugs vs.
sugar in the past several decades, my intuition is that it's not even remotely
a close contest.

~~~
jpmattia
> _For starters, I don 't think there's any conceivable risk of boxes on
> supermarket shelves being stuffed to the brim with cocaine._

Then again, it might be worth remembering the origin of the brand name Coke.

~~~
simoncion
When remembering _that_ , it's also good to remember the regulatory regime
present at the time. [0]

From a food and drug regulation perspective, _that_ time is _very_ different
from _this_ time. That difference makes your pithy quip not so very clever.

[0] Compare the date at which cocaine was _removed_ from Coca-Cola [1] to the
enactment date of the Pure Food and Drug Act. [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-
Cola#Coca_.E2.80.93_cocai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-
Cola#Coca_.E2.80.93_cocaine)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Food_and_Drug_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Food_and_Drug_Act)

------
littletimmy
What we really need is a limit on advertising. Corporations manufacturing
packaged sugar like coke, cereal etc. should not be able to manipulate young
children to get them addicted to their crap. Sell this stuff in plain white
boxes, ban advertising to young children, and in general, limit the free
speech of soulless legal fictions when they target children.

~~~
PKop
Young children don't do the grocery shopping. Parents need to take
responsibility and not buy unhealthy food for their kids. I'd say children up
to a certain age are drinking this stuff simply because their parents bought
it for them (How else?).

Plus, "when they target children" would simply become harder to define as
companies would modify their ads, but the problem would remain if parents
aren't taking an active role in educating their children themselves as to what
is unhealthy, and making purchasing decisions that are healthy, instead of
depending on the government (or corporate advertising) to do it for them.

~~~
kachnuv_ocasek
Kids can buy whatever they want if they have money. And surely, they'll buy
the shiny thing thing they saw on TV or the internet when they encounter it in
the shop and see it's cheap.

~~~
PKop
Again, kids won't do "whatever they want" if their parents do their job and
instill proper discipline, education, and consequences for behavior that
_they_ don't want.

If you want the government to do your parenting for you, I don't know what to
tell you. Not my idea of good parenting, and I think the results will be
disappointing. We can agree to disagree on that.

~~~
wpietri
> Again, kids won't do "whatever they want" if their parents do their job and
> instill proper discipline, education, and consequences for behavior that
> they don't want.

Clearly you aren't a parent, and I suspect you also have never been a child.
It would be handy if what you wrote were true. But children aren't robots, and
parents aren't the only people who influence them. The reason that food
companies target children in their advertising is that it works to manipulate
them.

------
tripzilch
> It’s clear that soda’s calories contribute to weight gain and obesity, but
> whether its impact is greater than that of other unhealthy foods has not
> been conclusively demonstrated. Nevertheless, the change is already
> underway.

I think that if you consume a lot of sugary stuff, like drinking soda all day,
you're going to get used to the taste of sugar. If you cut soda, consume a lot
less sugar, you may find you have less desire for other really sweet products
like ice cream, cake, candies, etc., because they are just _so sweet_ and at
the very least won't feel like eating a whole bunch of it any more.

------
tzs
Submission from 18 minutes earlier:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10324311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10324311)

Submission from 19 hours earlier:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10321396](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10321396)

~~~
dang
A small number of reposts is ok if a story hasn't had significant attention
yet [1]. After that, we bury reposts as dupes.

This is the main device for migitating the randomness that otherwise dominates
which stories make it off /newest [2]. Basically, it's ok to roll the dice a
few times.

If we see a good-by-HN's-standard story that fell through the cracks, we've
been emailing the submitters and inviting them to repost it. We invited
coloneltcb to repost this one. This is the latest in a series of experiments
that I've written about at [3] and [4] if anyone's interested.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

2\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828818)

3\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134)

4\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140)

~~~
tzs
I was aware of that. That's why I didn't flag the duplicates.

My purpose in providing back links on each duplicate to the earlier posts was
to try to avoid fragmenting the comments. When there are two submissions 18
minutes apart, there is a decent chance comments will be split between them.

> If we see a good-by-HN's-standard story that fell through the cracks, we've
> been emailing the submitters and inviting them to repost it. We invited
> coloneltcb to repost this one

That seems pretty inelegant for a site named "Hacker News". Why can't you
diddle the database to give the original another shot? The "invite a
resubmission" approach makes the submitter have to figure out a different URL,
and increases the risk of comment fragmentation.

~~~
dang
I don't think we need worry about comment fragmentation on posts that have few
points and no comments and are more than a few hours old. The odds of new
comments appearing there are minuscule. On live threads, yes, but we often
move those [1].

We do give originals another shot, by rolling the clock back on them
internally, if they're up to a few hours old. Beyond that, it feels weird to
have a story on the front page with just a few points and a timestamp that
says e.g. "23 hours ago", let alone "163 days ago".

We don't change the user-facing timestamp, because that feels like rewriting
history, the sort of thing that HN users wouldn't like. It would also make
/newest look weird as neighboring posts could then have different ages.

The repost invites don't require users to come up with a different URL. You
click on a link and the software fills that in for you.

Probably our next step will be to add a setting to user profiles that people
can turn on if they want the software to do such reposts for them
automatically. In that case, no need for an email, plus the software could
pick a good time to do the repost. On the other hand, it's already clear that
many users like getting these emails. The positive feedback has been striking.

An open question is what to do in cases where the submitter has no email
address in their profile, or doesn't check their email.

If you or anyone knows of a more elegant solution, please tell us! We would
love that.

1\.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20comments%20moved&sor...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20comments%20moved&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

------
cheez
You realize what happens when "Big Soda" declines, right? "Big Water" is next,
and with that, privatization. GIVE THEM FAT KIDS.

