Sugar-sweetened soda contributes to rising rates of obesity, diabetes and other life- threatening chronic diseases. Soda companies profit by targeting children and young people for their unhealthy products. Counter-advertising against the tobacco industry helped convince many young people not to start or quit smoking, saving thousands of lives.
The Healthy CUNY Initiative invites you to design similar campaigns to educate the CUNY community about the harmful health effects of soda and help end Big Soda’s targeting of young soda drinkers. Winning videos, posters, music, photographs, spoken word or other submissions will be used in a Spring 2012 Healthy CUNY Campaign to reduce sweetened soda drinking among CUNY students, faculty and staff and build support for policies to reduce promotion of unhealthy sweetened beverages.
Some facts about soda and NYC:
- 48% of NYC young people 18-24 years drink one or more sugar-sweetened beverages (including soda, iced tea, sports drinks) per day, and almost 20% drink two or more sugar-sweetened sodas per day.
- The US food and beverage industry spends $1.6 billion on marketing to children and adolescents. Each day the soda industry spends $1.3 million – $492 million a year – on marketing to youth, almost all directed specifically to adolescents.
- More than half of adult New Yorkers are overweight or obese, as are nearly half of all elementary school children.
- One study found that each additional sugary drink consumed per day increases the risk that a child will become obese by 60%.
- The cost of soda and unhealthier foods is significantly cheaper than healthier foods — much of this is because billions of taxpayer dollars are spent on agricultural subsidies. From 1995 to 2010, approximately $17 billion in tax dollars subsidized corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, and soy oils – 66% of all high fructose corn syrup consumed in the US is through beverages. Find out more.
- For the first time in more than a century, the current generation of children in the United States may have shorter life expectancies than their parents, primarily as a result of rising rates of obesity and diabetes.