Don't rely on soda companies to lose weight: Your Say
Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Dr Pepper Snapple Group announced they would aim to reduce the beverage calories consumed per person nationwide by 20% by 2025. Comments from Facebook are edited for clarity and grammar:
So now they will reduce bottle and can sizes but probably still charge the same price. They will make more per ounce and appear to be helping everyone, but it is more about profit than our health. This is a joke.
— KeithandJohnette Barton
A lady came into my clinic the other day. She had lost 30 pounds in four months. I marveled and asked her how she did it. "Simple," she said, "I ate kid-portioned sizes." Amazing.
— Curtis Foy
The American Dream may have been downsized, but Americans' ever-expanding waistlines clearly have not. Blame in no small part can go to our penchant for the super-sizing of our soft drinks.
Long before Americans began drinking tons of carbonated beverages each year, soda was enjoyed in the confines of the local soda fountain. When it became available for home consumption, the advertising men of midcentury Madison Avenue began hawking soda as a family drink, good and wholesome for everyone.
— Sally Beth Edelstein
This sounds like the soft drink industry is now acting like a nanny state. Perish the thought!
— Peter Urcuioli
This is a PR maneuver straight out of Big Tobacco's playbook. When evidence began piling up that smoking caused disease, the tobacco industry said it cared about public health and would make changes. We know how that story ended.
— Erica Etelson
Letter to the editor:
The American diet is prized, but it also has been blamed as the culprit of America's growing obesity epidemic. In reality, the phenomenon is simply the American people choosing to eat all those cheeseburgers and doughnuts.
Americans are killing themselves with their food choices. They are taking years off their lives with every trip to a fast-food restaurant and sip of super-sized soda. The kicker to this is that diseases, heart attacks and strokes could have been prevented if people would have taken more care about what goes into their bodies.
Sara Sharos; Conway, Ark.