“Is Coke Paying Dietitians To Tweet Against the Soda Tax?”
“Are Dieticians Accepting Money From Coke to Tweet Against the Soda Tax?”
This is the story, IMHO.
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Here’s what I did: at the onset of a two-week protein shake protocol, I attempted to give up coffee. I felt hideous, like thick bloodied pipecleaners and foam tubes were jamming my brain crevices. The fourth day I went to a chichi coffeehouse, had one cup of black coffee, licked the mug’s inside clean, and never put any sweetener in my coffee again.
I do alternate between using Ceylon cinnamon and heavy whipping cream in my coffee now. The heavy whipping cream is empty calories, and not recommended for people losing weight unless they’re on a very low carbohydrate ketogenic (high fat) diet.
Not only are dietitians/dieticians (global variant) paid by Coca-Cola to tweet scare-stories about soda taxes, they also comment on food politics blogs (e.g. aforementioned Rosanne Rust on Dr. Marion Nestle’s blog) about how pop can be part of a ‘balanced diet’, which is hogwash. No one has a nutritional deficiency from soda pop abstinence.
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I don’t wish to minimize the severity of the covert-propaganda-campaign issue; since the story of bought-and-paid-for ‘neutral experts’ is a real horrorshow and crops up all over the place; but is the practically unreadable word-salad-and-banality slurry produced by those dieticians something that anyone actually endures, voluntarily?
I imagine that the real damage is done when “Registered Dietician weighs in on proposal” rather than on twitter; but to my(admittedly non-twitter-using) eye, the feed of co-opted dietitians was viscerally painful to try to read. Vapid affirmations; shoddy ‘infographics’, gruesome looking recipes, incomprehensible elisions to meet character limits.
Even with the desensitization provided by years of exposure to textbooks, Hegelians, software ‘documentation’, and similar user-hostile text; scanning through that was pretty harrowing. Do people actually do that voluntarily?
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They’re trying to frame this as a “grocery tax” to fight the initiative currently on the ballot here in San Francisco.
Yet I can’t help but notice that all the money behind the “Say no to the grocery tax!” campaign seems to be coming from Big Soda instead of local farmers’ markets. I wonder why that is.
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Wokka wokka
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This always bugs me, as I have taken my coffee black for 50 years, and black coffee is regular. Best response for this situation is, If I wanted cream and sugar I would have ordered a milkshake.
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As others have mentioned, Starbucks basically popularized espresso in the United States to the degree it is today and allowed for the expansion of smaller and better coffeeshops as people got into coffee and the taste spread.
Additionally, as someone who often buys drip coffee, I’ve never had them add cream and sugar without my saying so. I order a drip in a size and I get a big cup of black coffee. I’m in Seattle though so maybe that helps?
Having lived in a region where small coffee / espresso shops were abundant, and people would line up yearly for their orders of Jaimacan Blue Mountain, my opinion of the encroachment of Starbucks is entirely different. They may have introduced the flyover states to milkshakes with espresso shots, but they destroyed a lot of the smaller shops in our area.
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As a Seattleite I might be in a weird spot, so I’ll concede the point to some degree. But even when I was younger I remember ‘coffee’ being something that sat on a burner all day and and inevitably terrible.
At least around here there’s a huge number of local coffeeshops and roasters, and more than existed before the huge coffee boom in the NW.
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Once I stopped drinking soda for a year, when I tried it again it was disgusting. I could taste the saltiness, almost as much as the ocean. The sweetness was cloying. After an hour, I felt sick, after only drinking about half of a 16 oz cup.
If there is one thing you can do for your health, it’s quit soda. Just stop, and never look back.
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Meh. I still like colas and grapefruit sodas. I just am good to not have them every day and keep it for treat time. Like all things of that sort. Not like you should be having 2 slices of cake a day either.
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I’m not too fussed about the health issues associated with fizzy drinks myself; my problem is I fucking love Coke, but I hate the company.
What ever happened to the Opencola thing that was an effort to reverse-engineer Coke?
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Cake has more nutrition than soda. Much more. At least you’re getting some protein and maybe even some complex carbohydrates in there. Your grapefruit soda may have juice, so I can’t fault you there.
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Happily, where I live, the Starbucks are closing down while the independent coffee shops and boutique roasteries are going gangbusters.
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The formula exists, and as far as I know, the company is still in business. I think Cory @doctorow is one of the principals. His original article is still here: http://boingboing.net/2007/05/24/howto-make-opencola.html
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It must be amazingly wonderful to be in favor of taxing things that Other People (Not Me) consume. So emotionally satisfying.
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I’m not in favor of the soda tax. I think it will be ineffective.
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I’m not sure why you’re trying to take me to task on this. I’m not in favor of taxing any beverages, including soda. I don’t drink sugared/HFCS sodas, but I couldn’t care less whether you do.
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