Recommendations for Action from Liquid Candy: How Soft Drinks are Harming Americans' Health

Recommendations for Action
from Liquid Candy: How Soft Drinks are Harming Americans' Health

Individuals and families should consider how much soda pop they are drinking and reduce consumption accordingly. Parents should stock their homes with healthful foods and beverages that family members enjoy.
Physicians, nurses, and nutritionists routinely should ask their patients how much soda pop they are drinking and advise them, if appropriate, of dietary changes to make.
Organizations concerned about women's and children's health, dental and bone health, and heart disease should collaborate on campaigns to reduce soft-drink consumption.
Local, state, and federal governments should be as aggressive in providing water fountains in public buildings and spaces as the industry is in placing vending machines everywhere.
State and local governments should considering taxing soft drinks, as Arkansas, Tennessee, Washington, and West Virginia already do. Arkansas raised $40 million in fiscal year 1998 from that tax. If all states taxed soft drinks at Arkansas' rate (2 cents per 12-ounce can), they could raise $3 billion annually. Those revenues could fund campaigns to improve diets, build exercise facilities (bike paths, swimming pools, etc.), and support physical-education programs in schools.
Local governments could require calorie listings on menu boards at fast-food outlets and on vending machines to sensitize consumers to the nutritional "cost" of sugared soft drinks and other foods.
School systems and other organizations catering to children should stop selling soft drinks, candy, and similar foods in hallways, shops, and cafeterias.
School systems and youth organizations should not auction themselves off to the highest bidder for exclusive soft-drink marketing rights. Those deals profit the companies and schools at the expense of the students' health.
The National Academy of Sciences or Surgeon General should review the impact of current and projected levels of soft-drink (and sugar) consumption on public health.
Soft-drink companies voluntarily should not advertise to children and adolescents. Labels should advise parents that soft drinks may replace lowfat milk, fruit juice, and other healthy foods in the diets of children and adolescents.
Scientific research should explore the role of heavy consumption of soft drinks (and sugar) in nutritional status, obesity, caries, kidney stones, osteoporosis, and heart disease.