Coca-Cola — kwown for its wildly popular sugary, caffeinated soda — plans to urge sixth graders to exercise and eat heathily.
Wait a minute. The company that sells empty-calorie drinks — other than its Dasani water, a bottle of which I’m now drinking — wants kids to pay attention to good nutrition?
That’s right. This fall, the world’s largest beverage corporation is launching a new Live It program where six-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and other sports figures will seek to convince two million children in 8,500 public middle schools to become physically active and live healthy lifestyles.
While Coca-Cola’s new program sounds promising, it seems to me like a defensive reaction to a hostile junk food climate.
Let’s face it, soft drinks and other unhealthy snack foods are rightfully being blamed for contributing to childhood obesity and other diseases. After all, one 20-ounce bottle of Coke contains nearly 17 teaspoons of sugar, usually in the form of high fructose corn syrup.
Obviously, I’m not a fan of soft drinks, but to its credit, Coca-Cola won’t use the new Live It initiative to sell its sweet drinks.
"The program is about education, not selling product," Coke executive Melanie White told The New York Times.
But that claim just doesn’t hold water with critics such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and Commercial Alert.
Representatives of both groups decried the intense lobbying that Coke has been doing to keep soda in school vending machines.
"They’re lobbying as hard as they can against [removing soft drinks from the schools]," said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert.
What it comes down to is that Coke is saying one thing but doing another. The company is selling non-nutritive soda but promoting nutritive foods. Hmm. Fascinating.
Hey, I’ve got a great idea for Coke. Why not push Dasani water more and Coke less?
Tell us your thoughts. What are your views on Coca-Cola’s new Live It program?
4 thoughts on “Coke Promotes Exercise”
‘Cause they’d lose money selling more water and less Coke! I think it’s great that they’re promoting healthy activity… but like you said, it’s little two-faced. Too bad Lance fell for it – he couldn’t have talked Nike into something like this??
I agree about all the problems with coke and sugar, but I’ve been told that Dasani is merely filtered water. Why pay all that money to Coke (who makes Dasani – or maybe it’s Pepsi that makes Dasani)? And you’re only getting the kind of water you could filter yourself. Best to filter and take your own, or look for actual mineral water. Oh, I’ve also been told that the spring at Poland Spring shut down many years ago. People should definitely be drinking water, not colas, but people should also know that bottled water also has problems.
Well Coke promoting health is like Phillip Morris promoting programs on the risk of cigarette smoking and distributing material to help people who want to stop smoking.
Dasini is a Coca-Cola owned product.
It’s like drugs – as long as people are buying, someone will be selling. Coke still has demand for it’s sugar-choked sodas, but they are also finding demand for, and profit in, healthier options. I think Coke should be applauded for trying to make some effort to promote health. No one forces people to purchase their products – ‘healthy’ or otherwise. We all have a choice. If everyone stopped buying sodas, fast and junk foods, these companies would go bankrupt (or scramble to find a new profitable product). While I’d actually like to see the convenience food industry crumble at some point, I find it unlikely to happen in my lifetime. Until then, all advocates for doing healthy things should be supported. There aren’t enough of them.
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