Dear Editor:
What a wonderful story about a principal involving his school, his faculty and his students in production of a television commercial! Team work and team efforts are a great example for our children. You can almost hear the cheers and see the smiles of those children.
But what about the message sent by the advertisement? The principal stated that he likes diet raspberry; do we want our children drinking diet drinks? What is the harm? The harm is that consumption of fruit drinks and other soft drinks leads to an excess intake of calories or sugar substitutes and a decrease in consumption of milk. What’s so wonderful about milk – low fat milks provide needed calcium and protein! The best way for a growing child to ensure adequate calcium intake is by eating cheese or drinking milk.
If a child picks the regular Snapple juice drink; he or she will be selecting a 16 ounce bottle (two servings – but which child or adult drinks just half the bottle?) of sweetened water. The juice content varies from 0 to 10 percent; ingredients include water and high fructose corn syrup as the major components. Calories per serving are 100 to 120 (so that is 200 to 240 per bottle) with the calories coming from sugar. Well, you say, what about the teas? The teas are also sweetened with about the same amount of high fructose corn syrup and so, contain about the same amount of calories. The diet selections are sweetened with aspartame or sucrolose. These drinks contain no vitamins or protein.
We are in the midst of an epidemic of obesity. Sweetened drinks are a major cause of increased calories with no nutritional value. Why do children drink so much sweetened juice? Besides the fact that it tastes good, there is a barrage of advertisement and a general misperception that fruit drinks such as Snapple are good for your nutrition. So do we want school children to participate in advertising for non-nutritive drinks? I think not! Let’s advertise health and good nutrition, proper portion size (eight ounces, not 16), and increased activity levels. It is time to get Snapple and other soft drinks out of schools. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended removing soft drinks from schools (Committee on School Health, American Academy of Pediatrics published in the January 2004 volume of the journal Pediatrics); let’s encourage our children to understand how advertising affects their choices!
Sincerely,
Margaret C Fisher, MD
Pediatrician and Chair,
Obesity Task Force, New Jersey Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics
Editor/secretary, New Jersey Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics