Food Alarmists Cry Wolf Again, Target ''Big Soda''

Nanny State Liberation Front; July 22, 2010 – Find more fresh news and unique views at nannystateliberationfront.net

Taking a short break from fear mongering about the supposed threat toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals pose to children’s waistlines, the food cops at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) are pointing their fingers at the soft drink industry for “promot[ing] expensive and debilitating diseases” among low-income Americans.

According to CSPI Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., “The federal government should be doing everything it can to reduce soda consumption, not encouraging it.” He has a beef with Americans using food stamps to purchase sugar-sweetened and carbonated drinks, and wants the feds to, basically, mandate they can only purchase water and milk under the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP – formerly known as “food stamps”).

“Already among the least expensive foods in the supermarket,” Jacobson says, “these drinks are nutritionally worthless and promote obesity, diabetes and other diseases that have a disproportionate impact on low-income Americans.”

The CSPI has long been a vocal opponent of sugar-sweetened and carbonated beverages, stopping at nothing — including fudging the statistics — to demonize the industry it calls “Big Soda,” notes the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting personal responsibility and protecting consumer choices.

“In 1998 CSPI issued a report titled ‘Liquid Candy,’ which claimed that some teenagers get up to 25 percent of their calories from soda. Just one week later, following massive media attention, CSPI admitted that it had overstated its figures by a whopping 100 percent. In fact, American boys drink less than half the amount of soft drinks initially claimed by CSPI’s flawed report,” the Center for Consumer Freedom reveals on its website CSPIscam.com. “While CSPI quietly made the correction (after the media fracas died down), it still heavily promotes its ‘liquid candy’ report, using it as the basis of its efforts to ban soda from schools and slap extra taxes on all things fizzy and sweet.”

Proving the CCF’s point about the CSPI wanting to tax soft drinks out of consumers’ reach Jacobson concludes his rant stating, “This is a product–and an industry–that needs to be taxed, not subsidized.” Of course, it’s a heck of a lot easier for the CSPI to achieve its goal of financially strangling “Big Soda” by getting Congress to prevent 43 million Americans from using their food stamps to purchase sugar-sweetened and carbonated beverages than trying to convince American consumers as a whole to make the switch to water and milk.

The CCF has an abundance of articles and fact sheets on its website disproving the CSPI’s countless myths that soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages cause obesity, all backed-up by sound science and verifiable sources. A November 5, 2009 CCF press release states, “A wealth of academic research casts serious doubt on whether there is any link between soda and obesity. A review last year [2008] evaluated the evidence of 12 studies and found virtually no associationbetween consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and children’s weight.”

Don’t fall victim to junk science promoted as fact that is used by radical special interest groups like the CSPI to scare your elected representatives in to making erroneous decisions that affect your ability to make choices about the food and beverages you consume. Educate yourself and share your knowledge of the truth with policy makers who are being prescribed bad medicine by quack doctors like the CSPI’s Michael Jacobson.

Learn more about the CSPI’s radical anti-consumer agenda from these trusted sources (we’ve provided links to their online archives for articles related to ‘CSPI’):
Nanny State Liberation Front
American Council on Science and Health
Center for Consumer Freedom

Additional websites exposing CSPI lies and myths:
Free to Choose Our Meals
CSPIscam
Activist Cash
Ron Arnold’s Left Tracking Library
Fat Head