Big Soda’s Latest Marketing Campaign Is Embarrassing
Dear Natural Health Solutions Reader,
So on Monday, I was in line at my local Target. I usually try to avoid it (and big-box stores generally), but we needed cat litter and it was close.
As I waited with other dispirited citizens under the fluorescent lights, I passed the liquid candy Coca-Cola display on my left and saw this sticker affixed to the front:
Cokes were sold out — presumably to people who believed BALANCE would keep the pounds, and Type 2 diabetes, at bay.
I suppose to my fellow depressed linemates, it seemed innocuous. “Balance” is a lovely word — who doesn’t seek balance?
Yet to me, it was fishy — who put this up? Why? And was it really what I suspected — a ploy by soft drink pushers to persuade consumers that they can keep guzzling sodas if they just add a soupçon of exercise daily?
Back home, a little online sleuthing revealed that this sticker was from something called “My Mixify.” Aimed at teens, the program is sponsored by the American Beverage Association, though a more accurate term would be Big Soda. Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper and every other large sugar-water purveyor belongs to it.
The website says:
#Realtalk: Coke, Dr Pepper and Pepsi understand that balancing your mix of foods, drinks, and physical activities can get a little tricky. And since our products can play a part in that equation, we’ve teamed up to help make it easier to find a balanced mix that feels oh so right.
That’s where Mixify comes in. It’s like a balance wingman. Bringing you new combinations to keep your mix fresh and your body right. Like mixing lazy days with something light, following sweaty workouts with whatever you’re craving, and crossing cats with dragons. Because at the end of the day, finding balance keeps you feeling snazzier than the emoji of the dancing lady in red.
Balance what you eat and drink with what you do. That’s how you Mixify.
The incomplete sentences and tortured analogies aim for “teen breezy” but render as “fractured youth-speak via middle-aged marketer.”
Also, they’re lies.
Big Soda’s Big Bet
The idea that teens, or anyone else, can consume any quantity of hyperprocessed carb bomb and remain thin by exercising it off is pure moonshine.
For example, a 2011 meta-analysis found absolutely no association between physical activity and “fat mass” in kids.1
Adults are no different. One review finds there is “little evidence of the more physically active members of a population gaining less excess weight than those who are the least physically active.”2
All of which is not to say that exercising is a bad idea. Benefits of working out include better cardiovascular and immune health, not to mention improved mood. But as science journalist Gary Taubes explains:
The one thing that might be said about exercise with certainty is that it tends to makes us hungry. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. Burn more calories and the odds are very good that we’ll consume more as well. And this simple fact alone might explain both the scientific evidence and a nation’s worth of sorely disappointing anecdotal experience.
That’s why a seminal 2015 study concluded that the best “primary intervention” to stem both the obesity and diabetes epidemics was carbohydrate restriction — not exercise, or calorie counting, or low-fat diets.3
Bottom Line
I am a great advocate of exercise, and at age 61, I work out at least 45 minutes every day. The physical and mental benefits are legion, and I will keep it up as long as I possibly can.
But my personal experience reflects the research: Exercise is not the royal road to weight loss. Back in my running days, I would turn in 5–7 miles daily, but my weight stayed resolutely between 210–220, simply because I was hungry and ate prodigious quantities of the carbohydrates I craved. I have plenty of willpower — as running that far daily suggests — but was so hungry I simply could not summon the will to eat less.
It was only when I discovered the importance of sharply limiting carbohydrates in my diet that my hunger naturally diminished and my weight started to normalize.
As an experiment back in 2010, I stopped exercising for three months, but found that as long as I kept to a low-carb diet, my weight stayed comfortably between 185–190 pounds. As I write this, I still weigh 189 on a 6-foot, 4-inch frame.
As pushers of hyperprocessed carbohydrates become more desperate — in March, soda sales dropped to a 30-year low — expect this “balance” nonsense to be shoved in your face with distressing regularity.
Don’t buy it.
Sincerely,
Brad Lemley
Editor, Natural Health Solutions
Citations
- Wilks DC, Sharp SJ, Ekelund U, et al. Objectively measured physical activity and fat mass in children: a bias-adjusted meta-analysis of prospective studies. PLoS ONE. 2011
- Cook CM, Schoeller DA. Physical activity and weight control: conflicting findings. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2011
- Feinman RD, Pogozelski WK, Astrup A, et al. Dietary carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management: critical review and evidence base. Nutrition. 2015
Cover image: Popartic / Shutterstock.com
