Soda is the Cigarette of the 21st Century
How Coke and Pepsi Got Us Hooked
Soda is the cigarette of the 21st century.
The parallels are undeniable.
Soda and cigarettes both:
- Have been visciously marketed toward children
- Have been touted as having ZERO negative effects on health
- Glamorized a product that put the public’s health in danger
- Have been perceived by the public as socially acceptable
Only one of them, however, has done these things AND gotten away with it; soda.
To understand the sensational power soda holds and why I’m so concerned with it, you have to understand the history of cigarettes in American culture and their marketing behaviors that made them, at one point, a mark of sophistication. The same behaviors that the soda industry is using today.
Cigarettes: The Essence of Class
Cigarettes up until the 1960s had built a reputation of elegance. Something sexy and glamorous, a symbol of status comparable to a pair of Nikes or an iPhone today. Smoking rates reached 42% across America in 1965. To put that in perspective, that rate is just 15% today.
The tobacco industry had reached such heights, not because it’s product was a sensible product, but because of brand. Brand is what makes you spend $200 on Air Jordans when you can get a reasonable pair of shoes for $30 from Walmart.
Brand eliminates practicality and sound reason by creating a culture and image that people want to be a part of and represent.
We buy into brands, not products.
That is why big tobacco succeeded the way it did. Placing their ads in TV shows like The Beverly Hillbillies and children’s programming like The Flintstones, creating fictional mascots that embodied the brand coolness like Joe Camel of R.J. Reynold’s Camel Cigarette brand.
The Downfall
The industry would face its first of what would be a flurry of shots to its power in June 1967 when the FCC cited the Fairness Doctrine in ruling that television networks must allot a comparable amount of time for anti-smoking ads as it did for ads that promoted the “virtues and values” of smoking.
The FCC called on the station [CBS] to provide free each week “a significant amount of time for the other viewpoint,” thereby implementing the smoking education campaigns launched by the government under the cigarette labeling law.
These new conditions caused enough damage to tobacco’s brand perception, moving some of them to voluntarily remove their own advertising. Years later they were banned entirely from advertising through television and radio.
Due to greater public awareness and a shift in perception, cigarettes would become banned in all airlines and beginning in 1975, states began regulating public smoking and taxing the sale of cigarettes.
These developments, amongst others of course, led to the massive reduction in smoking rates to what we see today.
But it began with a shift in perception.
The product didn’t change. You can’t take junk and make it less junky. IT’S JUNK! And for the same reasons that we went after cigarettes, we have to go after soda and processed food the same way.
We’re Being Lied To
Reduced fat, no fat, low fat, 30% less sugar, 20% fewer calories, no additives, no artificial colors, no preservatives, no high fructose corn syrup, reduced sodium
These “concessions” were made by brands like Kraft and General Mills as a response to consumer demand for more healthful foods, but there’s a caveat. You see, processed food is created in a specific way to provide a certain flavor, texture, mouth-feel, aroma, sound, and overall experience. When you mess with one of its 3 pillars (salt, sugar, or fat) they lose their idenity.
Cheezitz become cardboard and Doritios become plain. To maintain appeal, and sales, manufacturers have to makeup the lost ingredient by adding more of another. That’s why your non-fat yogurt has more sugar and carbs than it’s fatty counterpart.
These “concessions” are not good enough. We need to demand more. More government regulation, more advertising space for the everyday fruit and vegetable, and no more targeting children.
The lies we are being told and the story our youth are being sold, combined with products that hook their target from a young age are destroying the health of our nation the same way cigarettes were aiming to do so before we finally clamped down and said enough.
But How?
As I mentioned earlier, the reason we, as a society, have turned our collective backs on cigarettes is because our perception of them had changed. The facts about cigarettes had been there for a while, but the public had yet to accept the facts and view cigarettes for what they actually were.
That was until we took action to reverse the damage that the tobacco companies were dishing out with their brand marketing strategies. We must do the same with processed food.
An Eye for and Eye: Regulate Advertising
The FCC forcing networks to run more anti-tobacco ads was a critical development for public health. It allowed voluntary health agencies and the Public Health Service to air ads that educated the public about the dangers of cigarettes, and at no cost to them as well which was huge because these organizations had nowhere near the spending power big tobacco did.
The Fairness Doctrine, used to enforce these regulations, was eliminated by the FCC in 1987 and formally removed completely by 2011. It’s thought that the need to mandate a network to have opposing viewpoints was no longer apparent due to the expansion of cable television, public access channels, and the internet.
Essentially, they’re saying the information is available so you should be able to find it on your own and while I’m a big believer in the powers of a Google search, we need to rethink that statement.
When new platforms (more TV channels, the internet, mobile devices) pop up, they draw consumer attention away from the old platforms. TV stole radio’s attention the same way the internet and cell phones have stolen it from TV.
As the attention shifts so does marketing strategy. Big brands from Coke to Nike are following you and your children around the internet from banner ads to Google search to Youtube ads, Facebook and Instagram sponsored posts and Snapchat ads.
You cannot escape big brand marketing and the power food companies have to influence us to consume their product is as much alive as it was for tobacco in the 50s.
We need these ads off these platforms, or, we need to enact a Fairness Doctrine type policy that forces these platforms to provide and pay for the advertisement of health organizations that oppose the fast and processed food industries similar to what happened in 1967.
We also need to ban companies from targeting anyone under the age of 13 since most habits we carry into adulthood, health/food related or otherwise, are formed during childhood. We need to prohibit junk food marketing to kids during these critical ages.
Take Back our Public Schools
Some schools have become like 7/11s with books. — Kelly Brownwell, PHD, Duke University
Government got involved with school lunches after World War II when President Truman signed the National School Lunch act after large amounts of recruits were rejected for malnutrition.
In 1981, President Regan looked to cut spending and reduce the role of government by slashing $1.46 billion from the child nutrition budget. Lacking the spending power, schools put down their cooking equipment and turned to the food industry for help making lunch easy and cheap — kid friendly favorites that could be heated and served.
By 2006, 80% of schools operated under exclusive contracts with soda companies. By 2012, nearly half of all U.S. school districts served fast food. — [Fed Up, Dir. Stephanie Soechtig, The Weinstein Company, 2014, Film]
What the food industry has done to our schools is horrifying. Schools need more funding and more incentive to break out the pots and pans and get back to serving freshly prepared lunches that students can enjoy and will benefit from. No more McDonald’s Fridays or Pepsi vending machines. Our kids are set up to fail when we provide nothing but sugary, fatty, salty bliss during their most treasured part of their day; lunch.
Surgeon General’s Warning: This product may cause heart attack and diabetes.
How much more seriously would we take the risks of junk food if every time we picked up a Coke or opened a bag of Doritos we had to look at warning label like this? One that history has tied to so closely to cigarettes and their long term effects on our health.
The stigma that would rub off on these products would be similar to which was applied to tobacco products: disgusting, harmful, nasty, and addictive.
The difference between what happened with tobacco and trying to replicate it with the food industry is that these foods aren’t inherently addictive like cigarettes.
At least, not in the same way. We do know reduced sugar intake can cause withdrawl like symptoms but I would hesitate to categorize soda with the addictive properties of cigarettes.
There is also a lack of information regarding how to eat healthier for less. It is possible to eat fruits, veggies, lean meats, and other healthy, nutritious foods regularly but there hasn’t been the same flood of information on this subject like there has been for “value” of fast food (KFC $5 fill up boxes, McDonald’s Dollar Menu)
The information may be available, but that doesn’t mean everyone will look for it. We need to set people up for success just as the food industry has set them, US, up for failure for over 60 years.
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About The Author: I’m Zach Newman. I’m an ACE Certified Personal Trainer. Conversation is insanely important to me. Its why I love creating things because creation sparks discussion and discussion is the best way to learn from each other. Whether its about fitness and health, what books to read, or what’s going on in the world today, my goal is to build the best community around conversations that better the lives of everyone involved.
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