The next time you think of grabbing a soda, sports drink, fruit-flavored beverage, lemonade, punch, Snapple or other sugary drink, just imagine lards of fat spewing out.
If "Yuck!" is your response to this disgusting image, then the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will have accomplished its mission: To shock New Yorkers to stay away from nutrient-lacking, calorie-filled sugary drinks.
Indeed, thanks to a brilliant, new "Are you pouring on the pounds?" campaign from the city's health department, many subway riders are being confronted via posters (some 1,500 in all), which alert them to the consequences of their sugary beverage consumption.
I'm thrilled by this bold move to shock New Yorkers — especially overweight and obese ones — to action by spreading the message, "Don't drink yourself fat."
As more and more New Yorkers are becoming obese, a hard-hitting, in-your face approach is exactly what's needed to wake people up to sugar's dangers.
"Just
trying to be positive and encouraging doesn't always get people's
attention," New York Associate Commissioner Geoff Cowley told the Daily
News. "If you get in people's faces a bit, that does get people's attention."
It's also smart, I believe, for York health leaders to state what's so patently obvious to those of us who are sugar experts.
“Sugary drinks shouldn’t be a part of our everyday diet,”
As New York City Health Commissioner Thomas A. Farley said in a statement, “Sugary drinks shouldn’t be a part of our everyday diet. Drinking beverages loaded with sugars increases the risk of obesity and associated problems, particularly diabetes but also heart disease, stroke, arthritis and cancer.”
More kudos go to Cathy Nonas, the department's director of physical activity and nutrition programs, for recommending that “We need to start thinking of the sugar in sweetened drinks as
unwanted, wasted calories. These calories provide no nutritional
benefits and can lead to weight gain," says Nonas, who is blogging about the campaign on the NYC Healthy Blog.
Not surprisingly, the soft drink industry is irked by the campaign, as The New York Times points out.
But you can't ignore the facts. Downing sugary drinks, as well as eating sugary and high-glycemic foods, can make people fat, trigger type 2 diabetes, and can lead to heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, infertility, low libido and more.
Even so, most people remain clueless, especially those who unthinkingly gulp soft drinks. In fact, I've received a huge volume of emails from readers of my book SUGAR SHOCK!, who been astonished by how dangerous sugar is and how it can even cut your life short.
By the way, the New York City "Are you Pouring on the Pounds?" campaign contains one minor error. A 20-ounce bottle
of soda contains slightly more than the 16 ½ teaspoons of sugar stated
— rather, it has about 16.87 teaspoons of sugar.
Again, congratulations to New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for stating this much-needed campaign.
To learn about how Americans are committing Suicide by Sugar –– the title of the new book from sugar expert Nancy Appleton – tune into my Gab With the Gurus Radio Show on September 8 at 3 pm EST.