Amputation, Impotence, Painful Dentistry: Soda Equals Sadness

When it comes to making people feel good about a brand, no one does it more skillfully than Coca-Cola. Picture a perfectly multicultural, sun-dappled chorus wanting to teach the world to sing. Or "Mean Joe Green" tossing his jersey to a young boy who offered him a Coke. The company circulates videos of its vending machines "dispensing happiness" in the form of balloon animals and free pizza in one instance and by soliciting hugs in another. The message is that Coke equals happiness. That's pretty close to Pepsi's message, too.

Soda might have been a source of happiness when it was served occasionally in 6.5- or 10-ounce bottles. But in its current form -- the default, everyday drink at dinner, lunch and, increasingly, breakfast for so many people and in 20-ounce bottles or 32- or 64-ounce vats -- soda is actually a powerful promoter of obesity, tooth decay, diabetes, heart disease, and other problems. Some of the complications associated with diabetes, including amputation of infected limbs and erectile dysfunction, are downright depressing. In other words, despite the industry's sunny and manipulative messages, soda is causing more than its fair share of sadness.

The Real Bears is an animated short film we produced in order to tell the truth about Big Soda. For this we turned to Alex Bogusky, formerly of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, who has actually done a little Coke advertising himself, but who also developed the trail-blazing anti-tobacco Truth campaign. Jason Mraz was kind enough to write and record an original song just for this project. We may not have the big budgets that Coke and Pepsi have, but we do have the truth.

If this film does anything, I hope it encourages people to view the soda industry's marketing messages in a critical new light. Coke and Pepsi aren't selling happiness. They're selling a nutritionally-worthless product that's over-consumed to the extent that it leads to amputations, erectile dysfunction, and painful dental decay. The Real Bears learned the truth the hard way, but in the end, they decide to pour out the soda and take back their health -- and their happiness. So should we all.

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Comments

[Thaddeusgadfly]

08:37 PM on 10/13/2012

When Coke changed its recipe in the 70s, replacing sugar with fructose sugar, or something like that, I distinctly remember that it did not taste as good. And I think all colas and sodas did this. I remember what Coke used to taste like, and there was no other cola as good. But, I'm so happy they changed their recipe, because it caused me to stop drinking it when I was in my 20s, and my health the better for it. I switched to bottled water. Way better. And, just add some lemon or lime, and it tastes great ! ( You do have to wean yourself off of the sugar addiction, though ).

[yumitori]

07:19 PM on 10/12/2012

Okay, you've convinced me. I'll still to gin.

[vegas one]

10:21 AM on 10/12/2012

Just like in the old days when they sold cigarettes thru tv advertising!

[frozenlake]

09:04 AM on 10/12/2012

One of the few pleasures of my life is to drink diet soda. Done this for many many years, it really brightens my days and makes me happy for a couple of minutes. I also drink tea, but only with large amounts of sweeteners. I don't care about marketing and I don't buy the brand stuff anyway, but I love sweet soft drinks. Who wants to live forever?

[solnox]

03:46 AM on 10/12/2012

Soft drinks are evil, period. "Regular" soft drinks, if they contained actual sugar, would be a much lessor evil than the HFCS which is in the majority. HCFS is just plain bad for you HFCS = Disease = death!
"Diet" soft drinks contain a greater variety of nasty chemicals; so while not making you fat, will rot your brain and body. Do yourself a tremendous favor - DON'T drink soft drinks!!!!

[LeftRightCenter]

11:48 PM on 10/11/2012

very powerful video

[allerleirauh]

05:47 PM on 10/11/2012

You can add one more illness to that list - esophageal scarring and cancer.

[Justgot2thinking]

04:13 PM on 10/11/2012

1) Well, their Big mistake was in drinking regular soft drinks and not "diet" drinks. It's always been a big laugh when you hear someone order a Big Mac, fries and a Diet Soda, but in reality you save over 250 Calories! No small thing. We just need to work on having a more organic, natural sweetener, no calories, that isn't made by a Chemical company! With no after taste. Lots of soft drinks used to be, on the label anyway, just water and carmel color. Were they lying to us by not putting all the bad things on the label? Was there always those unpronouncable things in them? The kind of things that if we'd known of the dangers, we wouldn't have all started drinking sodas like Water? Now Years later we find out the health consequences!...............

[Justgot2thinking]

04:12 PM on 10/11/2012

1 1/2) This is why in California right now we are trying to stop GE and GMO food from sneaking into our everyday food supply by them not having to label foods that they are in. In case you are out of the loop, GE and GMO (to name a couple) are made to keep bugs away from the crops so they don't have to spray them because the Poison Pesticides is in the DNA of the plants! So, in the end, we eat the chemicals and pesticides when we eat the food it's in. Worse than that, it doesn't work! The bugs were able to evolve right away where it doesn't affect them and they go right on attacking the plant anyway. SO, they go ahead and Spray toxic chemicals ON the crops too because it's getting harder and harder to keep a handle on the bugs.................

[Justgot2thinking]

04:08 PM on 10/11/2012

2) Now, they have created these "Super Bugs" that become immune to the Poisons before long every time, so they just add more and more Pesticides and on it goes. GE and GMO food is even sold at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods! It's even in their Baby food! Almost Anything you eat that has any kind of corn or soy in it has been GE or GMO grown. We don't have to wait years to alert people, we know NOW that it's DANGEROUS. The people who do the GMO and GE seeds are Chemical Giants: MONSANTO, makers of the most toxic chemicals on the earth like Agent Orange, DDT and Roundup. DOW is another and there are more. Chemical companies in charge of our FOOD! You are eating it everyday in all kinds of foods. They have gotten it past the FDA by having relatives of the top Monsanto company being on the voting board! Probably pay offs, who knows? You tell me how a company who makes Deadly, toxic chemicals has been allowed to use us as experiments without our permission! You don't know what foods it's in and which foods it's not in. They even want to call it "Organic". Look it up, fight for your life. Your kids are eating it. CA is voting to at least have anything it's in be LABELED. We have a right to know what we eat. I hope soda makers haven't tricked us this way too!

[TheByrd]

03:23 PM on 10/11/2012

The real problem is that evolution has provided us with a craving for fat and sugar, both difficult to come by in most pre industrial settings. Agri-business has now found huge profit in corn sweetener and relies on basic instinct and subterfuge to ply us with promises of pleasure. In effect, such practices are ultimately destructive and have disrupted our health care system. In a sane and moral society, such things would not occur. The sad truth is that we not only tolerate this kind of behavior, but even admire it. Shameful!

[eva07]

10:11 PM on 10/11/2012

Not so much evolution as the food chemists at every single food company are the ones who provided us with cravings. The main goal of their work to make you addicted to their products.
Plus HFCS, that makes us fatter than sugar would even if we consumed the same calories.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/..

[yemaya]

02:34 PM on 10/11/2012

I know people who are so addicted to sugar that even w/kidney problems AND diabetes, they still can't get off sugar. They cannot resist it at all. It's so powerful a force; like a drug.

[Cuyahoga]

02:08 PM on 10/11/2012

I am a 61 yr old female. A few yrs ago I started to experience slight incontinence. Very upsetting. A few months later for financial reasons I stopped drinking the 2-3 cans of diet soda I had every day. In about a month - the incontinence STOPPED! Recently I went nuts and drank a lot of diet soda in one weekend. Guess what came back? It's gone now - I'm drinking water and coffee and nothing else.

[yemaya]

02:34 PM on 10/11/2012

good for you.

[eva07]

10:13 PM on 10/11/2012

Wow, that is one side effect I didn't know about, thanks for sharing...diet soda is evil, worse than the original ones..

[Wendyda]

01:47 PM on 10/11/2012

They forgot to mention that it's nasty, too.

[Matthew W Mebert]

12:58 PM on 10/11/2012

When I were younger you could buy an occasional soda in a 10 to16 oz. bottle at most. Now they sell Liters and Liter And a half bottles for individual consumption. When I was in HS they debuted the "Big Slam" bottles of Mt. Dew and Pepsi to give us about 10 times the daily amount of sugar in one serving. Kids drinking this on a daily basis are contributing to a nation of obese, diabetic, sickly, and so out of shape that they can't be accepted into the military. If we act like petulant children and continue to kill ourselves, the government has a responsibility to treat us as such to keep us from self destructing and harming the greater good of the nation. Its not saying don't drink ANY soda. But the corporations are pushing so that you will have it at every meal and as a refreshing drink when you are snacking or thirsty. This is their goal that they readily admit. Its all about making maximum profits at the expense of the consumer. This is the irresponsible corporate mentality that drives individual profit over the health and well being of the rest of the nation. Its almost comparable to the tobacco industry.

[suzannji2]

12:07 AM on 10/12/2012

Mr. Mebert, I would respectfully disagree--the government does NOT have "a responsibility to treat us as such to keep us from self destructing and harming the greater good of the nation." We are responsible for our own health and behaviour and as intelligent persons we should make our own decisions and stick to them. I am not a Tea-party Republican--far from it--but I strongly believe in individual responsibility, and this growing tendency I'm seeing, to place blame for one's problems on anyone other than one's own self, is something I find disturbing, to say the least.