When I was a kid I used to bring my lunch to school. For two cents a day or ten cents a week I could by a little ?milk card? that allowed me to get a little container of milk to drink with my lunch every day. For twenty five cents a day I could buy a card that allowed me to get lunch from the cafeteria every day and a little carton of milk. I never got that because it was too expensive. But at every meal we drank milk. Before school we drank milk, when we came home we drank milk, with dinner we drank milk. There was no soda, or as my western Pennsylvanian wife would call it, ?POP?, in my house as a rule. Sometimes in the summer my mother would buy some Acme brand sodas to have for barbecues or special occasions. But if I really wanted something other than milk to drink I needed to sneak over to my aunt and uncle?s house, they lived next door. There I could get Tang and better yet??Coca-Colas!
As I grew older I developed a serious ?Coke? problem?..Coca-Cola that is. I consumed mass quantities of it. April 23rd 1985 was a devastating day for me. My world had suddenly changed. I didn?t know what I was going to do because the Coke people on that day introduced the ?New Coke? and later that week discontinued the production of ?My Coke?.
I remember being in a little store in a campground somewhere during that time period and finding a shelf full of undiscovered ?My Coke.?
I bought it all.
But eventually the Coca-Cola people realized their mistake and returned to the recipe I had grown to love. But more importantly, eventually I began to reduce my ?POP? consumption to what it is now which is just occasional.
In June, the New York State high court struck down New York City’s law banning the sale of super-sized sugary drinks, a very controversial initiative of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. You might have thought that extreme but when I was a kid, a typical bottle of Coke from a vending machine was 6.5 ounces??try to find something that size in a Seven Eleven today. And according to the Harvard School of Public Health:
? Two out of three adults and one out of three children in the United States are overweight or obese.
? The rising consumption of sugary drinks has been a major contributor to the obesity epidemic.
? A typical 20-ounce soda contains 15 to 18 teaspoons of sugar and upwards of 240 calories.
? In the 1970s, sugary drinks made up about 4% of US daily calorie intake; by 2001, that had risen to about 9%.
? From 1989 to 2008, calories from sugary beverages increased by 60% in children ages 6 to 11, from 130 to 209 calories per day, and the percentage of children consuming them rose from 79% to 91%.
? People who consume sugary drinks regularly?1 to 2 cans a day or more?have a 26% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes than people who rarely have such drinks.
? Nearly 30 million children and adults in the United States have diabetes and another 86 million Americans have prediabetes and are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes.
I remember when my kids were younger and active in sports, we thought we always had to pump them full of Gatorade. I guess kids aren?t the only ones who are influenced by advertising.
Something to think about.
November is American Diabetes Month.
And if you are looking for some exercise, this is an easy time of the year to find a 5K or 10K to run with all the Turkey Trot Races happening all over the place supporting a variety of charities.
And Potomac River Running has the Turkey Day 5K on Thursday in Reston and the Gingerbread Man Mile on Friday also in Reston. Get the kids out for these because both events are geared towards kids of all ages with a fun run and a 100 yard run on Thursday and Friday?s events are all structured for kids at different ages with different distances. See their website:
Have a great weekend!
Curt Christiansen
Chief Operating Officer
Sport and Spine Rehab
