A story…<\/p>\n
Back when we still lived in Ohio, I used to shop at a regional grocery store chain, “Meijer.” Meijer stores were one of those convenient, full service grocery\/department store hybrids, so quite handy when I needed to – say – pick up some printer cartridges and<\/em> something for dinner.<\/p>\n The local Meijer store also had its own soda fountain – you could buy a ginormous<\/strong> plastic cup at the checkout stand, and then fill it up at the self-service dispenser on your way out of the store. I never bought one of these (ugh), but plenty of people did, since the cashiers frequently prompted a purchase. Like the magazines, chewing gum and candy, the soda cups were about encouraging last minute, impulse buying.<\/p>\n One day, I found myself standing in line behind a woman who was approximately my own age, with her teenaged daughter in tow. The daughter looked to be maybe 15 or 16… she was petite and fashionably thin – with the exception of her prominent “baby bump” (I guesstimated she was 6 – 7 months along). Upon seeing the stack of plastic cups at the check stand, she asked her mother to buy her a soda… and “Mom” immediately smiled and nodded her approval. The request didn’t even make her blink – it seemed totally routine.<\/p>\n At that point, you could have knocked me over with a feather. As noted, this girl was thin<\/em>… while many pregnant girls\/women take “eating for two” a little too seriously, she wasn’t one of them: her face, hips, arms and legs did not betray an ounce of surplus “baby” fat. Yet there she was, contentedly slurping on a pint-and-a-half of Coke (minimum) while her mother finished paying for the groceries. I hoped, for the baby’s sake, that this wasn’t a regular habit, since it would be tough to both remain skinny AND suck down a daily bolus of ~300 empty calories, unless the soda calories were displacing those from more nutritious sources.<\/p>\n As an aside, I also felt like whacking the mom with my purse. 15 – 16 year olds don’t always make good choices, but it goes without saying that their bad choices shouldn’t be aided and abetted by their parents. If one of my kids had asked for a bladder-buster soda at the grocery store, the answer would have been a firm no (not that they ever asked – they were almost as disgusted by the checkout soda hustle as I was).<\/p>\n But I digress… the point of the anecdote is to illustrate that there’s another side to the discussion of sodas\/sugar-sweetened beverages and their impact on public health. The obvious one is the direct effect of excess sugar intake… but the other is the indirect effect of what people may\/may not be eating, adjacent to their soda consumption. In the case of the pregnant teenager, I wasn’t thinking so much about what she was drinking, vs. what it suggested about her overall dietary habits (and the effect that this – not the soda per se – might have on a developing fetus).<\/p>\n