For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast, 1999, Excerpts
In his 1998 publication, Liquid Candy, Jacobson observed, “Twenty years ago, boys consumed more than twice as much milk as soft drinks.” Today, those figures are reversed. Jacobson was particularly concerned about girls, who also consume twice as much soda as milk, and who build 92 percent of their bone mass by age 18. Americans drank an average of 576 twelve-ounce servings of soft drinks per year in 1997 – or 1.6 cans a day for every man, woman, and child.
For Coca-Cola CEO Doug Ivester, of course, that was cause for jubilation rather than concern. “Actually,” he observed in 1998, “our product is quite healthy. Fluid replenishment is a key to health. Coca-Cola does a great service because it encourages people to take in more and more liquids.” Indeed, a fifth of American toddlers on one or two drink soft drinks at an average of seven ounces a day.
By relying primarily on the instant energy of glucose, people forego vitamins, fiber, and other necessary nutrients. While it is possible to get those vital nutrients elsewhere, the more Coke you drink, the less room you find for healthy food in a typical 2,500-calorie daily “budget.” It is more likely that Coca-Cola fiends, particularly those who use it to wash down fatty junk foods, will ingest too many calories – one of the reasons that 12 percent of teenagers and 35 percent of adults in the
As for those who lump Coke with junk food and blame it for the poor nutrition of immigrants, inner-city blacks, and
