If you live in New York State, you’ve probably seen this anti-beverage tax commercial, featuring a working-class mom unloading grocery bags in her kitchen. As she puts away her milk, she complains about the proposed beverage tax on juice drinks and sports drinks, barely mentioning soda. Targeting frustrated consumers, she whines about the threatening impact on food budgets of families. As she gripes about “Albany” cutting into her grocery bill, the tally of taxed items appears onscreen. Over by the sink, her adolescent son stirs a glass of instant lemonade. It’s not Wild Cherry Pepsi or Mountain Dew Baja Blast or some other crap marketed to kids. No, sir — just good old-fashioned lemonade.
Meanwhile, the ad’s targeted demographic is subtle, but it’s there. Are mom and son Hispanic? Probably. It’s all under-the-radar yet enough to register, as she obliquely refers to the beverage tax hurting “families like ours”.
There’s so much wrong with these commercials — where do we even begin? Well, here’s the short list:
- First, the ads are sheer propaganda spawned by the beverage lobbies; they’re not produced by advocates for families. The American Beverage Association has nothing to do with families or their grocery budgets. They care about profits on soda and juice drinks. Period.
- Second, of the two beverage tax commercials currently airing in NYC, both feature people of color. Kat and I are both white, but that pisses us off. It’s exploitative and horrible. We live in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a thriving and diverse neighborhood — though it’s still mostly working-class and black. African-American kids are more prone to diabetes, obesity and other health issues. This concerns us. Kids are our future. And our future, quite frankly, is addicted to soda and sugary juice drinks. Thanks to Michelle Obama, there’s now a grassroots movement to fight the nationwide pandemic of childhood obesity.
- Last but certainly not least, SHAME on soda lobbies for trying to manipulate public perception of this beverage tax — and doing it by targeting lower-income people who are most hurt by their products. As a consumer, I’m not usually so full of sound and fury. But this ad campaign is beyond despicable. We’re sick of seeing television commercials that depict working-class people and/or racial minorities buying only fast-food and sugary beverages like soda and juice drinks. It’s one thing for corporations to sell non-nutritive products — it’s quite another to market them using such pernicious stereotypes.
It’s not just about soda pop. (Although, next time you’re out shopping, take a look at Sunkist Orange Soda which contains 52 grams of sugar per 12 ounce can — that’s FOUR TIMES (4x) MORE SUGAR than a serving of Vitamin Water!) Take a look at kids’ juice drinks. Juice drinks like Capri Sun Surfer Cooler contain 27 grams of sugar in each tiny 6-ounce pouch. If your kid sips two pouches … it’s worse than Sunkist Orange Soda. Juice drinks are deceptively high in sugar, especially because they’re packaged in such tiny boxes and pouches. It’s not unusual for a kid to sip two or three juice drinks per day, maybe even more.
That’s enough of the soap box. Some of you may like sugary beverages and we’re not here to judge your Vanilla Coke habit. Nonetheless, those bottled sodas and prepackaged juice drinks don’t make good economic sense.
How about some REAL lemonade? Unlike the powdered commercial version, real lemonade comes from lemons. Buy some and make it at home for just pennies per glass. Or how about grape juice? Unlike juice drinks, all-natural grape juice is full of antioxidants — you can even make popsicles with it! Or try this: squeeze an orange or a tangerine. Fruit, because it’s healthy, will never be subject to a beverage tax.
Putting a tax on soda is absolutely NOT going to solve or even make a dent on obesity problems. Use a little logic people! It’s a petty excuse to raise more money to help ease the stress of people who do not know how to run this state, otherwise there would be no deficit. I’m not claiming that the $1.44 per 12 pack is going to deeply hurt us but really where does this crap stop. A petty tax here and a petty tax there all in the name of health or some other irrelevant cause. If people like soda they will drink it. 12 cents wont stop them and its not going to even make a dent on obesity. If obesity was their main concern they could do tons of other effective things that DONT INVOLVE MORE TAXES.
Sorry, Nick, but we disagree. Studies have shown that cigarette taxes reduce smoking, save lives, and — as a result — save everyone money. Hopefully, the beverage tax will have a similar effect.
BTW, aren’t you tired of paying Medicare taxes and high insurance premiums to subsidize/offset America’s out-of-control healthcare costs? Do you enjoy paying for other people’s diabetes and obesity-related problems? We sure as hell don’t.
And if your argument were valid, I guess we’d see a different demographic in these commercials; people from all walks of life, making the same points. But we don’t. It’s just the same working-class people of color, over and over again, buying soda and junk food for their kids. That’s OUR point.
Regarding the beverage tax, creating yet another tax is not the right way to go with food regulation.
A better solution would be to regulate the ingredients used in the products.
High Fructose Corn Syrup and virtually all artificial sweetners have damaged the health of virtually all the people who have consumed them and yet no one wants to tackle the issue of getting these ingredients out of our food.
If you want to do something that will really affect the overall health of the American people you should devote yourself to outlawing these ingredients, not putting yet another tax on people when we are in the middle of the worst economic period of American history.
Putting a tax on these products do nothing to prevent the mental stress dealing with their advertising on a day to day basis will create in those who cannot afford them and the comparison to smoking is rather silly in my mind. Smoking should have been banned years ago when we first discovered that companies were intentionally creating products designed to addict their consumers while all the time they knew beforehand that the products were deadly.
Sadly, we have seen in the past, that even the best of intentioned taxes go by the wayside when other administrations come into power/ No matter what the good purpose of this tax is now, the future usually brings changes with it that screw the whole idea up.
You insistence that sweets causes diabetes is marginal at best and overly simplistic. The only way sweets can cause diabetes is because of weight gain which can trigger type 2 diabetes insulin resistance due to fat blocking the absorption of sugar into the bodies cells. Any other accusation that carbs or sugars cause diabetes is utter nonsense from a medical perspective. Although the intense sweetness of HFCS does seem to cause a issue with metabolism.
I loathe this commercial. The worst part of it for me is how they scripted it to make it sound like juice is up for this tax. She says (VERY CAREFULLY WRITTEN) that the tax is on “juice…and sports drinks(sodas).
Juice drinks- contain like 1% juice and are garbage. That’s what they’re thinking of taxing. Not real juice.
Juice drinks and sports drinks are up for this tax, but that’s not how they have her say it.
Soda is obviously the main piece of this puzzle, and everybody knows soda is crap. They barely squeeze the word soda(s) into this ad the way they have her say it. They have her pause after juice so that uninformed people will think the tax is so evil that it will affect good old fashioned juice. It’s subtle, but they know what they’re doing.
Oh, and she’s putting milk in the fridge at the top of the ad. How wholesome.
The beverage tax is unpopular but losing weight is so hard and this would be an easy way to stay in shape. Just stop drinking sugary sodas. I would like to find something fun to do to stay in shape. I used to play hockey all the time years ago and without realizing it it kept me in shape.
The beverage tax has nothing to do with diabetes. In order to cope with diabetes, it is important to maintain their weight and exercise regularly. Alcohol consumption can be regulated to its utmost maximum, better if cut out completely and smoking is an absolute health risk to both the lungs and diabetics. Regular visits to the doctor are an absolute must in order to check and make sure that their blood glucose levels are on tract.