Are You Drinking Blubber? New Video Rallies Against Sugary Drinks

Posted on Dec 15th 2009 3:00PM by Kristen Seymour

According to the New York City Health Department, just one daily soda can pour 10 pounds of fat onto your frame in a single year. New Yorkers may already know this thanks to subway posters and educational brochures that appeared around the Big Apple this summer. But now, the New York City Health Department has taken the message to the next level -- video. This stomach-churning ad makes the link between sugary drinks and fat abundantly clear by showing a man chugging blubber from a can.

Click on the video below to see the anti-soda ad for yourself.

"Sugary drinks shouldn't be a part of our everyday diets," Dr. Thomas Farley, New York City Health Commissioner, said in a press release. The Health Department reports that Americans are consuming, on average, 200 to 300 more calories per day now than they were 30 years ago.

"Half or more of those calories come from sugar-sweetened drinks," Cathy Nonas, director of the New York City Health Department's Physical Activity and Nutrition program, told That's Fit, saying that sugar-sweetened drinks include things like soda, of course, but also sweetened teas and sports drinks.

"We wanted a hard campaign for what we believe is a very big problem," Nonas said. "The Health Department is doing a lot to reduce obesity, including our calorie posting and access to healthy foods in under-served areas. We're working to consistently make the healthiest choice the easiest choice for New Yorkers."

While opting for drinks like water or tea is the best option, consider cutting your soda habit by drinking smaller amounts at first. One soda company is even making it a little easier to sip less. It's still not good for you, but it's better than drinking twice as much!

Click on the gallery below to see which beverages can help, and hurt, your waistline.

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Drink Yourself Thin

By Myatt Murphy

What you choose to quench your thirst could go a long way towards helping you shed those unwanted pounds. No matter kind of drink you're after -- electrolyte replacements, energy boosters, high-in-fiber, or protein-filled -- we have the best beverages to keep you hydrated while boosting your weight loss.

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Drink Yourself Slim

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Green Tea

We Choose: Vida Tea Ultra Premium Sparkling Green Tea

The Weight-Loss Edge: Studies have shown that drinking green tea can raise your metabolism. It's also rich in catechins, a polyphenolic antioxidant that has anti-inflammatory properties, so you have less aches and pains when you exercise. Studies have also shown that catechins may prevent your body from storing as much fat.

Why We Love This One: Vida Tea comes in three delicious flavors (desert pear, wild berry and pomegranate) and gets its taste from organic agave nectar, which is low-glycemic so it won't cause a rise in your blood sugar, and trigger your body to store excess calories as fat.

Vida Tea

Antioxidants

We Choose: Sambazon Organic Açaí Juice

The Weight-Loss Edge: Most people think eating any type of fat means you'll get fatter. However, regularly consuming healthy fatty acids helps stabilize your blood sugar and leaves you feeling fuller longer, so you snack less throughout the day.

Why We Love This One: Sambazon is loaded with antioxidants: These helpful substances do a lot more than just prevent cardiovascular disease and help slow down the aging process -- they make sure you can exercise longer and harder for better results.

Sambazon

Calcium

We Choose: Farmland Dairies' Special Request Skim Plus

The Weight-Loss Edge: The mistake many dieters make is following diets that limit how much dairy they should eat -- leaving their bodies lacking in key vitamins and minerals, especially calcium. The problem? Studies have shown that getting plenty of calcium in your diet actually keeps you leaner by increasing fat-burning potential, while decreasing how much fat your body can store.

Why We Love This One: This fat-free, 100 percent cow's milk contains no artificial hormones or antibiotics and comes in mini 12-ounce grab-n-go bottles. But what makes it unique is that it contains 37 percent more protein and 34 percent more calcium than whole milk.

Farmland Dairies

Water

We Choose: HINT Water

The Weight-Loss Edge: Keeping yourself properly hydrated throughout the day can leave you feeling fuller and decrease your appetite without adding a single calorie. It also keeps your metabolism churning, since being dehydrated can slow it down.

Why We Love This One: Unlike many flavored waters that add excess sugar and calories, this top contender doesn't have a trace of sugar, sweeteners, sodium or preservatives. It's just as healthy as regular water, yet comes in 13 guilt-free flavors.

Hint

Water

Another Favorite: Skinny Water

Why We Love This One: It's fortified with good-for-you nutrients, vitamins and antioxidants that may help suppress your appetite. While it comes in fewer flavors than HINT water, you still have plenty of satisfying, zero-calorie options. Now, that's a weight-loss bonus.

Skinny Water

Fiber

We Choose: Lightfull Satiety Smoothie

The Weight-Loss Edge: As fiber expands in your stomach, it takes up volume in your stomach, giving you the sensation of feeling fuller and less likely to eat more food than you really need. It also speeds up digestion, so the foods you do eat pass through your system quickly and fewer calories are absorbed and stored elsewhere on your body.

Why We Love This One:Weighing in at just 90 calories per 8.25 ounce bottle and available in five yummy flavors (chocolate, café latte, peachy cream, strawberry bliss and mango), one LightFull smoothie contains 5 grams of fiber and 5 grams of protein, a mix that can curb your appetite and leave you feeling full for an average of two to three hours.

Lightfull

Fiber

Another Favorite: Kellogg's All-Bran Fiber Drink Mix

Why We Love This One:The easy-pour packets fit right in your pocket or purse, mixes instantly with water and contains a whopping 10 grams of fiber (that's 40 percent of what experts recommend you should have daily in one tasty serving).

Kellogg's

Protein

We Choose: Designer Whey's Protein Blitz

The Weight-Loss Edge: The more lean muscle you have, the more calories your body burns even when you're not doing a thing. Another bonus: Your body spends more calories digesting protein compared to carbohydrates and fats, plus, it helps you feel more full so you're less hungry.

Why We Love This One:Packed with 30 grams of high-quality whey protein, this non-fat, super-low carb drink (it has 1g of carbs) tastes just like juice and has only 120 calories. Most protein drinks tend to be thicker in texture, harder to digest and loaded with unnecessary fat and carbs.

Designer Whey

Caffeine

We Choose: FYXX Energy Water

The Weight-Loss Edge: Many dieters look to caffeine to jumpstart their metabolism by giving their central nervous system a boost. But that effect can be minimal. Instead, it's best used as to give yourself a little more push with your exercise regime. Research has shown that having 140 to 400 mg of caffeine 30 to 60 minutes prior to exercise can increase your heart rate and breathing, which can increase your endurance so you last longer -- and burn more calories.

Why We Love This One: FYXX is natural spring water -- that means no calories and no sodium -- but each 20-ounce bottle is infused with 110 mg of caffeine. Don't worry -- it's tasteless!

FYXX

Drinks aren't the only place sugar is lurking. One company is taking steps to reduce sugar in kids' cereals.

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Tags: fat, health department, new york city, obesity, pouring on the pounds, soda, sugary drinks, weight gain

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)

Sylvia 12-16-2009 @ 1:12PM

As a registered dietitian, I find this video from the NYC Department absolutely misleading and inaccurate to say the least! First of all, sweetened beverages don’t have any fat and there are many non-calorie options available. Secondly, and most important, you ONLY gain weight by consuming an excess of calories, no matter where the calories come from. Americans derive sugar from many places --- not just soft drinks. Thirdly, while all calories count, including calories from soda, it is simply inaccurate and irresponsible to demonize any one food or drink. Obesity is the result of many complex issues – social, environmental, cultural, etc.; and studies have demonstrated that is not caused by one single food or beverage. As I tell my clients which include food and beverage companies, we need to understand that balancing calories consumed from all foods and beverages (with the extra calories burned through physical activity) is what matters.

Ralph 12-16-2009 @ 3:01PM

Sylvia is absolutely correct. Soda contains many very healthy ingredients. Such as water. We should all drink more water. Water is essential for all life to exist. And Salt. During different times in history salt has been considered more valuable then gold. And sugar. I don't know about you, but eating sugar makes me happy -- and being happy is healthy. And caffeine. Caffeine wakes the world up and makes us more productive. We should all drink soda for breakfast. And phosphoric acid. Phosphoric Acid might eat away tooth enamel and lower bone density, but phosphoric acid is also the key ingredient to making kittens and puppies so gosh darn cute. Who doesn't love a cute little puppy?

"As a registered dietitian" I believe that drinking soda is not bad for you. As a registered lobbyist for the Beverage Manufacturing and Bottling Industry I ask you all to drink more soda. To your health!!!

Pashta 12-16-2009 @ 3:08PM

Sylvia, you are wrong. SUGAR and BAD CARBS make us fat! Get real already!

Ralph 12-16-2009 @ 3:10PM

It is very difficult to explain to people how sugar and fat are equivalent. They read a label on a product, and see 0 fat and think they are ok. Even this dietician is sadly mistaken. Sugar is a precurser to fat. Once the muscle's and liver are filled with simple sugars from a drink like non diet sodas, the body takes excess and stores it in its long term stores called fat.

People must start outting an qual sign between sugar and fat and not be decieved by high sugar foods with labels that say 0 fat if things are ever going to start changing.

I realize that as a doctor, I had to go through multiple hours of schooling to learn these points, so it is not simple. For your health's sake, and our rampant obesity problem, this point is crucial.

Sure excess is never good, but non sugary soda like diet soda are great options for excluding hundreds of calories from your diet.

THis commercial tries to emphasize the point that too much sugar just becomes fat. A fact little uderstood outside the medical world. Proven by rampant obesity and deceiving product labels mant to make consumers feel that high sugar foods are low in fat.

Beth 12-16-2009 @ 4:48PM

Thank you for this.

While it's true that too much soda is bad, more so for the onset of diabetes, it doesn't cause much weight gain unless it's consumed in high quantities on a daily basis with other poor diet, lack of exercise.

I enjoy one regular coke a day but exercise and eat lots of salads and do not have weight problem.

TOMMY D 12-16-2009 @ 4:33PM

Most repulsive?? Not even close! Back in 1963 Kleenex ran an ad which had someone on a subway train sneezing into a tissue which wasn't 'strong enough' and visible snots were spraying all over the other passengers, much to their disgust. I saw it twice on TV and never again!

Beth 12-16-2009 @ 4:49PM

Thank you for this.

While it's true that too much soda is bad, more so for the onset of
diabetes, it doesn't cause much weight gain unless it's consumed in
high quantities on a daily basis with other poor diet, lack of
exercise.

I enjoy one regular coke a day but exercise and eat lots of salads
and do not have weight problem.

Teresa 12-16-2009 @ 8:45PM

You sound much like my former mother-in-law, a registered dietician, who insists ketchup is a vegetable because it contains tomatoes!

If Americans, on average, are consuming 300 more calories now than x years ago, and Americans, on average, are encountering marked weight gain, and Americans, on average, consume a HEINOUS amount of soda, and if excess calories turn to fat, which they do---then your comment, while technically accurate if looked at with a very very very narrow focus, really doesn't make sense.

In Europe if you buy a Coke with a meal, you get one small glass, it costs about $5 in Switzerland, and that's it--no refills. You savor it. Here? ENDLESS REFILLS! A person can easily consume an additional 300 calories in sodas alone during one meal. That's about two refills. I recently saw a billboard advertising Coke products--a two pack, each bottle containing 50 ounces, and the tag line read 'enough for a meal'!!! There are 97 calories per 8 ounces of coke---hmmm, let's see...that's 1,212 calories for that lovely meal. Holy crap. No wonder obesity is an issue in this country.

Scott 12-16-2009 @ 6:10PM

This all may be true, but it goes without saying that soda is NOT part of a healthy diet. Ideally, good portions of healthy food should be the focus...soda is not in this picture. And a registered dietitian shouldn't be finding ways to justify why clients can continue to consume that which is not healthy for them (i.e. soda).

Davie 12-16-2009 @ 6:35PM

It is a pleasure to read a remark from a knowledgeable intelligent person on this site.

mahmoud 12-16-2009 @ 7:22PM

I read your post, but you have to understand you have to start from somewhere.

mahmoud 12-16-2009 @ 7:22PM

I forgot to ask you. Are you really a registered dietician? If so, what is your license number?

Or...maybe you really are an agent for the sugar and processed foods industries.

kat 12-17-2009 @ 9:28AM

thanks- you are actually informative!

DENNY 12-17-2009 @ 11:36AM

WOW THIS IS WHAT WE ARE WORRIED ABOUT HUH? any one know what cigarettes do they kill over 400,000 americans every year! it's funny what people think are priorities are. but that blubber taste so good!

isog 12-16-2009 @ 2:39PM

You sound very old school. Many drinks on the market today contain artificial sweeteners, and corn syrup which can be made from genetically altered corn. Studies have shown that these substances even in small to trace amounts have been linked to weight gain. In other studies, many of the chemicals were found in adipose tissue. People have used these products because they were told it had one calorie. Well they're obese and have an alarming time in reducing the fat even when they abstain from those products or soft drinks.

Calorie counting is good , but we now live in the age of chemicalized food and genetically modified-altered food additives. So you are talking apple and oranges.

TONY 12-16-2009 @ 2:40PM

THIS IS THE TRUTH,IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR HEALTH YOU SHOULD STOP DRINKING SUGARY DRINKS.

weezee 12-16-2009 @ 2:53PM

LMAO! I've yet to find a soda that contains even 1 gram of fat per serving. I'm more concerned about what it does to your teeth. The human body needs sugar in order to function properly. It's those artificial sweetners that are dangerous. Who the heck knows what they are made out of. A can of soda a day is not going to make the average person become obese. As for reducing the sugar in cereals, what's the fun of a kid's cereal if it isn't super-sweet! Get those lazy @$$ kids off the couch and let them go outside and play to get some exercise. That's an easy way to prevent childhood obesity.

chuckie 12-16-2009 @ 3:09PM

I just trashed my Diet Pepsi.

dww348 12-16-2009 @ 3:26PM

This ad has been around for a while and is part of NYC and NY State's campaign to increase taxes by taxing soft drinks. If NYC was really interested in the health of their people, they would ban all the pizza with the dripping orange grease that is sold all over the city.
Soda bans and campaigns against soda are not so much about nutrition as they are a campaign against American capitalism. Just look at who sells soda all over the world - two big American corporations. It is one of the "purest plays" on anti-American business that you can get if you are one of those Americans or Europeans who just love to hate American business.

By the way - simply look at the calories on any soda can and compare it to the same amount of low-fat (2%) milk - and even low-fat chocolate milk has more calories than a soda . If calories are what matter - then why are all the anti-obesity people making excuses for milk? Calcium? Vitamins? - you can get those from a zero calorie pill. So why not a campaign against milk?

I am not a nutritionist - or a lobbist for the soda industry. Just someone who took the time to find out why there is such a vicious campaign against soda. What I found was politics as usual.

Justin 12-16-2009 @ 7:48PM

AMEN TO THAT. These people dont give a flip about health, they only care about ONE THING, the ONLY thing that matters, the almighty dollar. If anyone cared anything about people's health, there would be more focus on helping people sleep, and serious work done to reduce work stress. Being overweight, having diabetis, etc,etc have all been linked to poor sleep in addition to other factors (stress and unhappiness). I dont see the Goverment or anyone chopping up the work day, or making weekends official days of rest, hell in Italy they have more hours off work in a single work day. HOW ABOUT STARTING THERE YOU HEALTH NUTS!!!