Cross my heart, we’re not making this up, even though it flies in the face of conventional wisdom, anatomical reality and the billions of dollars raked in last year by Victoria’s Secret:First, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg banned the sale of mega-sodas by some retailers. Now, a non-profit group has come up with another system to reduce consumption of sugary drinks.
A group led by the Horizon Foundation, a nonprofit in Columbia, Md., has launched the Better Beverage Finder, a searchable online database that reveals the sugar content of about 300 drinks. The idea is to help parents and children find alternatives to sugar-laden drinks such as soda, sports drinks and fruit juices. Of course, finding alternatives, including flavored waters and diet soda, is no guarantee that people will choose water over cola.
The campaign, based in Howard County, Md., provides some scary stats: a quarter of Maryland children are obese or overweight and sugary drinks are the No. 1 source of empty calories in children’s diets. Organizers add that if each student in the typical Howard County middle school drank just a single 12-ounce can of soda each day, they would consume about 10 tons of sugar over the course of a year.
