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Will the Coca Cola Company buy Monster Energy in the largest beverage industry acquisition ever? The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that a deal, valued at over $10 billion dollars, was in the works.

That’s a lot of money to spend on a company that sells sugar loaded caffeine water. But when Coca Cola, the leader in sugar water, realizes it has failed to compete in the caffeine water category, it brings out its acquisition card.

Energy drinks are the fastest growing segment in the beverage industry ($8.9 billion in sales last year). Monster is the market leader with about a third of the market. Red Bull is number 2.

What you need to know:

This is a sad commentary about the state of affairs in nutrition today. Not only is this a totally unnecessary product category, energy drinks are being consumed in growing numbers by teens, some of which overdose on caffeine and find themselves in hospital emergency rooms.

The caffeine content in Monster is 160 mg per can, which is about 2-3 cups of coffee worth. Coke has 35mg.

A 16 ounce can of Monster has 27 grams of sugar – that’s 7 teaspoons of sugar. If that’s not sweet enough, it also contains artificial sweetener sucralose. For Pete’s sake!

Here is the ingredient list ”Energy Blend”:

Energy Blend: L-Carnitine, Glucose, Caffeine, Guarana, Inositol, Glucuronolactone, Maltodextrin. Carbonated Water, Sucrose, Glucose, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Taurine, Sodium Citrate, Color Added, Panax Ginseng Root Extract, L-Carnitine, Caffeine, Sorbic Acid, Benzoic Acid, Niacinamide, Sodium Chloride, Glucuronolactone, Inositol, Guarana Seed Extract, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Sucralose, Riboflavin, Maltodextrin, Cyanocobalamin.

Can you identify anything good in here?

For a deeper drill down, check out Monster’s Fooducate grade:

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A few weeks ago we wrote about a product formulation change by cola manufacturers, including Pepsi and Coca Cola, modifying the type of caramel coloring used in order to avoid being labeled as carcinogenic.

But that’s small peas compared to a joint announcement planned for tomorrow morning by Muhtar Kent and Indra Nooyi, the CEOs of Coca Cola and Pepsico, respectively, which was leaked late last night to the Huffington Post. Here is what Mr. Kent is planning to say:

“As industry leaders, employers, and community members, our companies strive to do the best for all our stakeholders. Over the past few years, the beverage industry has made immense efforts to offer a wide variety of hydration solutions to address the public’s changing needs. Today, we are taking our commitment one step further by announcing our plan to reduce up to 30% of the sugar content in our companies’ cola line of products. We project that this move will reduce the annual sugar consumption in the US by 25 billion pounds.” read more…

What you need to know:

The dramatic announcement by the 800 and 500 pound gorillas in the beverage industry is nothing short of amazing. In one fell swoop, these two companies will be reducing close to ONE TRILLION CALORIES from the annual US intake. That works out to about one pounds of body weight per year for every American!

There is no mention in the announcement of a timeline for this reduction in sugar and whether it will happen overnight or gradually over the course of a few years.

Indra Nooyi, Pepsi’s CEO, is quoted saying that in market tests over the past 9 months in several key metro locations, results were surprisingly favorable. Pepsi tested various formulation changes, and the one that seemed most successful was around the 30% reduction in sugar for the classic cola flavor. The changes and testing were done under tight control and shrouded in secrecy, but according to a Coca Cola spokesperson, the FDA and department of Health were notified well in advance of the planned reductions in sugar.

Both Pepsi and Coke will be making adjustments to other ingredients in their drinks, but no new ingredients or additives will be included in the reduced sugar formulation. This means that high fructose corn syrup will still be used instead of sugar.

We at Fooducate commend Coke and Pepsi for this brave move. It’s not an easy decision to take a hundred year old winning formula and change it. This is a huge bet on a core product that’s pretty much been a license to print money. Recall that Coke got burned in the early eighties when it made a formula change to the New Coke.

In the press release, neither CEO mentions America’s obesity problem or the connection between soft drink consumption and weight gain. But it is quite clear that the companies have been getting squeezed more and more by both consumer groups and the government over the course of the last few years. This is likely a preemptive move to buy the beverage behemoths more time.

Mind you, the new formula colas will still contain 5.5 teaspoons of sugar per 12 ounce cans. But this step is better than none.

The first reformulated products will be out in “select markets” (not mentioned in the press release) in the early fall. The branding and graphics have not been shared by either company.

What do you think about this change?

Will it have a real effect on America’s waistline?

PS: If you think this story is too good to be true, you’re right. We Gotcha! April fools… But sometimes you just have to stretch the limits of what’s possible. Who knows…And now, to polish off that extra large soft drink…

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Around this time of year, people start making their new year resolutions. Many of us will decide that this year we will finally go on that diet and keep the pounds off.

We’d like to offer some suggestions for food swaps or introductions that may help. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Sardines. Much cheaper than salmon. Additionally, due to their small size and diet consisting of plankton, sardines do not accumulate heavy metals in their bodies like the big fish do. There is also no fear of stock depletion any time soon. Sardines are a nutrition powerhouse: rich in omega-3 fatty acids, high in vitamin D and B12, and a great source of protein. Bonus:  lots of calcium from their edible bones. The one caveat – high sodium content. So watch out.

2. Nuts (instead of salted nut mixes). Buy them in the bulk section. unsalted. mix them up. Place in a ziplock bag and keep in your backpack, purse, office drawer, glove compartment, and anywhere you may get the munchies.

3. Home made granola. It takes no more than 5 minutes preparation and 60 minutes in the oven to make your own batch. You’ll never go back to store brought. Promise.

4. Legumes. If you’re looking for a more plant based diet, legumes are an important source of protein. Whether beans, lentils, or peas, there are endless recipes and serving variations.

5. Hummus Dip (instead of mayo). It’s a healthy dip because it is full of heart healthy fats, high in protein and very satisfying. The beans also contain nice amounts of fiber. But it can also be a healthy spread to use instead of mayonaise. By the way, hummus is a type of legume.

6. Berries. Fresh or frozen, berries are rich in antioxidants, sweet and tasty.

7. Plain yogurt (instead of flavored). Yogurt has become all the rage in diet circles, and Greek Yogurt even more so recently. If you’ve moved up to yogurt, take the next step and buy it plain. You’ll save yourself half the amount of sugar. Additionally, you’ll avoid all sorts of unnecessary ingredients used to suspend and preserve the fruit inside the yogurt.

8. Unsweetened tea. Americans are drinking too much sweet. Even if you’re off the soda bandwagon, iced tea can contain just as much sugar. In Japan, unsweetened tea brands such as Ito-En are sold at every train station and supermarket. Ito-En is now available in the US, as is Sokenbicha (by none other than the Coca Cola company).

9. Flavored Water. For some people, water gets too boring. You can add a slice of lemon, or cucumber, or lemongrass, or other herbs, and instantly you’ve upgraded your drink. Too lazy to do this on your own? Companies such as Ayala’s Herbal Water offer a wide variety of flavored waters with 0 added sugar.

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This is a guest blog post by Parke Wilde, PhD

Would you say Coca-Cola, the parent company for FANTA, is marketing to children here?

Would you say Coca-Cola is marketing to children in these lesson plans for elementary school students?

If you say “yes” to either question, then do you think Coca-Cola is breaking its pledge not to advertise to children?

Coca-Cola’s pledge says:

We have a global Responsible Marketing Policy that covers all our beverages, and we do not market any products directly to children under 12. This means we will not buy advertising directly targeted at audiences that are more than 35% children under 12. Our policy applies to television, radio, and print, and, where data is available, to the Internet and mobile phones.

I can think of some ways that Coca-Cola could say these marketing efforts are consistent with the pledge. Perhaps one could find research showing that the FANTA cartoon characters are designed to appeal to 13-year-olds but not 11-year-olds. Perhaps the websites where these characters appear have a children’s audience share under 35%.  Perhaps the lesson plans don’t qualify as “marketing.” Perhaps the use of the word “directly” is supposed to give the marketers some wiggle room.

Still, under any of these explanations, the detailed defense only serves to show how empty the pledge is.

This post was provoked by reading the Rudd Center’s new report on marketing sugar-sweetened beverages to children (.pdf).

Parke Wilde teaches and writes about U.S. Food Policy at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Read his blog – US Food Policy

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Infographic: the Wall Street Journal

Yesterday’s post on the extent of obesity in the US led to an outpouring of comments an tweets by many of you. No doubt we were all bamboozled by the stats. We’re pretty sure that managers and executives at junk food companies are aware of the numbers. And although they can’t publicly admit that they are contributing to obesity, some may actually want to produce and sell better, healthier food to the public.

Such are the soft drink behemoths, Coca Cola and Pepsi. Their core products – sugary drinks – account for most of their revenue.Trying to redesign a company that’s raking in billions from selling sugar water is far from easy though:

Hailed as a strategic visionary since taking PepsiCo’s reins nearly five years ago, Mrs. Nooyi is facing doubts from investors and industry insiders concerned that her push into healthier brands have distracted the company from some core products. Emphasizing fruit juice, oatmeal and Gatorade, she has set an ambitious goal of more than doubling revenue of nutritious products to $30 billion by 2020 while cultivating a corporate image tuned in to health and global social responsibility. Read more from WSJ…

Not that Gatorade is a healthy product, but Ms Nooyi has definitely been minded to the fact her company sells slow release poison to the masses. She was given a chance to re-invent PepsiCo through new and “healthier” products. But as you can see, the analysts on Wall-Street, as well as the large institutional investors, couldn’t care less about health. They want to see a bottom line of revenue and profit that grows from quarter to quarter. If 100% of the US will be obese in a decade in order to achieve this, so be it.

So while cola consumption is declining in the US, it still accounts for 25% of sales of ready to drink beverages. In marketing, Coke and Pepsi are considered “milking cows”, established brands that make billions for their owners. Not so simple to give up the easy money. Especially when the “rising stars” (another marketing term for promising product lines) are not delivering on their potential.

Pepsi seems to have given up on finding healthy things to sell. After dropping points to rivals, it is increasing spending on its Cola. This after 6 years of steady decline in cola advertising. Bad news.

What can be done?

Although many people are against soda tax, there is one thing nobody can argue about – junk food companies are externalizing many of the costs associated with their products. If there was a realistic way to incorporate these costs into the price of junk foods and beverages, perhaps they wouldn’t be so abundant and popular.

Got additional ideas besides “personal responsibility”?

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Fuze is a line of beverages that got its start in 2001 in Northern California but has expanded nationally in the past 10 years, especially after it was acquired by Coca Cola in 2007.

The idea is to provide a cool, new age beverage, that is portrayed as healthy because it is jacked up with vitamins.

Let’s see if the name lives up to its reputation.

What you need to know:

The drink has only 15 calories for a rather large serving – 14.5 ounces. But that’s because it is artificially sweetened. It has 200% of the daily value for vitamin C, and a few other vitamin and mineral values are very high. But that doesn’t mean that this product will help you lose weight. More on that in a bit.

Here is the ingredient list:

Water, Apple Juice Concentrate, Less than 0.5% of: Malic Acid, Natural Flavors, Garcinia Cambogia Rind Extract,  Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Acesulfame Potassium, Sucralose, Purple Sweet Potato Concentrate (Color), L-Carnitine, Dl- Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate (Vitamin E), Black Carrot Concentrate (Color), Beta-Carotene (Vitamin A), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Chromium Picolinate.

As you can see, there is almost nothing real about this drink. Barely any fruit (5%). All the vitamins are added on. And artificial sweeteners that are plain bad for you.

The one good thing we can say about this drink is that unlike many of its counterparts, at least it is not artificially colored. The color comes from purple sweet potatoes and black carrots.

So why won’t you slim down with this drink? Because instead of drinking water, or unsweetened tea, your taste buds become accustomed to overly sweet things. As a result, you’ll crave sweet foods more, and have a harder time with naturally sweet fruit. For more information see Artificially Sweetened Beverages: Cause for Concern by Harvard Professor David S. Ludwig, MD.

What to do at the supermarket:

We’ve said it a million times, and we’ll keep repeating it. Tap water is your best hydration solution. It’s free, it won’t get you craving sweets, and with money saved you can buy real fruits.

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Can you guess which megacorp on the right owns each of the young brands on the left?

Solution after the jump.

Read more…

UPDATE: See ADA’s response below.

We’ve just learned from several dietitians about an online survey the American Dietetic Association is circulating among its 70,000 strong membership, focusing on RDs attitudes about the organization’s corporate sponsorship program. You know – taking money from big food companies and pretending it doesn’t matter. Current sponsors include The Coca Cola Company, PepsiC0, Mars, Hershey -  purveyors of healthy foods and beverages that make America the healthiest, slimmest nation in the world…

From the survey:

• Are you aware that ADA has a Corporate Relations Sponsorship program? Yes/No
• Would you say, knowing that an organization or brand is an ADA Partner or Premier Sponsor, that you would feel that they are an organization or brand you would value … More / Less / No different … than other organizations or brands?

Some of the questions seem a bit loaded:

How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

• The Coca-Cola Company promotes ADA members as the experts when it comes to helping people eat well and stay healthy.
  
• The Coca-Cola Company has taken a leadership role in communicating information about beverage science and innovation, as well as educating consumers about factual, science-based nutrition information.

Who cares? The point is it should not be a sponsor.

It’s a lengthy survey that seems to be doing everything it can to explain the benefits of the partnerships. Thankfully though, it does conclude with a clear question on the sponsorship issue:

From what you know, how do you feel about ADA’s Corporate Relations Sponsorship program in general?
Strongly approve / Somewhat approve / No opinion / unsure / Somewhat disapprove / Strongly disapprove

What you need to know:

Fooducate’s position is well known. Taking money from Coke, PepsiCo, and Hershey portends serious credibility issues for the organization. Many RDs agree and we’re glad enough of them have raised a red flag that has led to this survey. Hopefully the results will lead to an ADA policy change.

The funny thing is that all the sponsorship money adds up to less than 10% of the ADA’s total funding. With a little “kvetch” and some creativity, the ADA can easily overcome this and feel more free than ever to give clear cut advice such as:

Skip the soft drinks. Drink Tap water. Eat a bag of chips once a month. Dark chocolate is good, one tiny square a day at most. Moderation means a rare treat, not a daily snack….

We have emailed the ADA and are hoping to hear directly from them on the matter.

Here is the response we got from ADA Media Relations Manager Ryan O’Malley:

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your posting regarding ADA’s Corporate Sponsorship program. This is actually the fourth consecutive year that ADA has sent a Corporate Sponsor Survey to a sampling of active ADA members. We work with an outside firm to develop and deploy the survey and analyze the results, which are then shared with ADA leadership as well as the respective sponsors.

The purpose of this survey is to receive objective feedback and gauge attitudes and perceptions with regard to ADA’s Corporate Relations Sponsorship program and ADA Partners and Premier Sponsors.

To reiterate, ADA closely evaluates all potential sponsorships to ensure that they are consistent with ADA’s science-based positions and messages. ADA does not endorse any companies, products or services. Sponsors do not influence the Association’s decision making process nor do they affect policy positions.

If this is the 4th year the survey is running, how many more will be required until something changes?

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This is a guest blog post by Daniel Green.

In her August 21 New York Times Slipstream column, Natasha Singer opens

“WHY are Americans getting fatter and fatter? The simple explanation is that we eat too much junk food and spend too much time in front of screens — be they television, phone or computer — to burn off all those empty calories.”

Now I agree that, as a population, we are eating too much, but is exercise really the solution to America’s growing obesity epidemic?

Consider the following example: at a recent trip to McDonald’s you consume a Chocolate Triple Thick Shake, of which even the ‘small’ 16oz version contains 580 calories according to McDonalds.com. Expending that same amount of energy would take about an hour if you jogged at a briskly 5mph pace (580calories x 1mile/100 calories x 12minute/1 mile for those of you who want to see the math). Now it probably didn’t take you an hour to drink the shake, even if you were sipping it on the ride over to soccer practice.

Weight balance is largely determined by the law of thermodynamics which states that

Change in Bodyweight = Change in Energy Intake minus Change in Energy Expenditure.

So if we want to lose weight, we either need to decrease energy intake (eat less) or increase energy expenditure (move more).  According to Coca Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, Americans are just lazy. But is the CEO of the largest soft drink company in the world really a trusted source for advice on reducing obesity? I don’t think so, especially seeing as how ‘lazy people’ funded his earnings of nearly $20M in 2009.

As seen from NHANES data (see figure above), food intake and obesity rates are directly correlated. Starting around the late 80’s food intake and obesity rates sky rocketed, but why? There are a lot of causes:

• food prices dropped as a result of aggressive farm subsidies,
• food availability increased (even Auto Zone, the automotive retail chain, now sells a wide range of snack mixes and roasted nuts!),
• and the elephant in the room -  increasing portion sizes.

A 2009 study by the Cornell Food and Brand Lab compared 18 recipes that had been published annually in the “Joy of Cooking,” inarguably one of the most read cookbooks of all time. Between 1936 and 2006 calories per serving jumped 63 percent on average.

While exercise may not have as much direct influence on bodyweight as we’ve been taught, it is still an important part of a healthy lifestyle. But if on January first you find yourself making the same weight loss resolution you’ve made every year for the last decade, consider making a conscious effort to eat less before going out and buying another diet book that will just collect dust on a shelf or spending $750 to renew the gym membership you use maybe once a month.

Daniel Green is an Applied Nutrition and Psychology major and Food Psychology researcher at Cornell University. He is also the Founder and Interim-CEO of Dynamic Automated Nutrition Innovations, an Ithaca-based startup that focuses on finding innovative solutions to global obesity.  He can be reached at dpg64 at Cornell dot edu.

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POM, the beverage company that turned an old pomegranate orchard into a money machine with POM Wonderful juices, is taking the Coca Cola Company, parent of Minute Maid, to court. The reason: false advertising.

According to POM, Minute Maid’s pomegranate juice name and label make it appear as if pomegranate is the main ingredient,

though the blend actually contains less than 0.3 percent of pomegranate juice and is over 99 percent apple and grape juice.

When customers see Minute Maid’s 59-ounce bottle selling for less than $4, compared to POM’s 16-ounce bottle at $4.99, they tend to opt for what appears to be a better deal.

But the issue goes beyond unfair competition, said POM spokesperson Rob Six. “Most people drink pomegranate juice for the health benefits. So, it fools with people’s health,” Six said. “We see it more as a consumer issue – a consumer alert issue.” read more…

What you need to know:

While POM has a point – Minute Maid is being very deceptive here – POM is not clean of deception either. Both companies tout the health benefits of the fruit they turned to juice, but fail to mention that most of the nutritional value is lost in the process. Not to mention the ridiculous amounts of sugar in these drinks, at the same level of Soda Pop. The standard single person bottle of POM contains 17 teaspoons of sugar! That’s not healthy.

What to do at the supermarket:

How about buying real fruit and eating it to get the maximum benefit from the vitamins and antioxidants? If you’re thirsty, drink tap water instead. If you insist on juice as an occasional treat, go for what tastes better. From personal experience, POM is superior, but comes at a much higher price.

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