Some of you may recall the somewhat unconventional tactics used by the New York City health commissioner in the war against obesity. Not only have they put laws into place that require chain restaurants to post calorie information on their menus, they have banned the use of trans fats in food production. Once they had those rules in place they started a fairly graphic advertising campaign against sugary drinks that showed a stream of fat being poured out of a bottle. 9DNZY6EMJZ6W
On the off chance that you Big Apple residents didn’t get the message the first time, though, the office of the health commissioner is back with a brand new ad.
And it’s worse.
It’s a video.
That’s right. If you weren’t grossed out enough by seeing a still image of fat being poured from a soda bottle you can now actually watch phlegm-like yellow fat ooze greasily out of an aluminum can and fall into a glass of ice with a sickening splash. But no, just watching it get poured out isn’t nearly gross enough. You have to watch some guy try to take great big gulps of it.
Really. It’s nasty.
The advertisements make the claim that drinking one soda a day could make you gain 10 pounds in a year. While that fact may be up for some serious debate it is undeniable that soft drinks are nothing more than empty calories with no real nutritional value. Whether or not this particular advertising campaign is going to have any kind of lasting impact on how much soda New Yorkers ingest on a daily basis remains to be seen, but at the very least it gets people talking about the situation.
But still…just…ew.
Calorically speaking, one full-sugar soft drink a day would contribute enough calories to equal ten pounds of fat. Their math IS right.
100 calories (and most soft drinks are 125-150) x 365 days = 36,500 calories
One pound of fat is approximately 3,500 calories.
36,500 / 3,500 = 10.43
Aye, but it’s still fuzzy math. In order for that to be true you’d have to have one soda a day while consuming exactly the number of calories to maintain your weight otherwise.
I mean, I see their point…but they are stretching.
Well, the math isn’t fuzzy, but the rationalization is[1]. If our hypothetical New Yorker simply replaced one regular soft drink with a glass of water, cup of coffee/tea (unsweetened, or using a no-calorie sweetener), or diet soft drink, then, yes, fundamentally, they could lose 10 pounds a year if they made no other changes to diet or lifestyle.
Is it likely to happen this way? Not really, no. But there are enough other arguments against consuming soft drinks that adding this to the pile might be enough to get a few more folks to make healthier beverage choices.
[1] You’ve seen me without a shirt. I know fuzzy. *grin*
That was most gross. Probably won’t be effective, but who knows. Maybe someday those sugardrinks and fast food will be as uncouth as smoking has started to become.