WASHINGTON - Health campaigners remain on a war footing against the U.S. soft drink industry, which this week announced a plan to limit sales of products blamed for obesity among American schoolchildren.

Pepsi bottles filled with soda on a conveyor belt. The US soft drinks industry, which critics claim plies kids with 'liquid candy' to the detriment of their health, is promising new measures to limit soda in schools.(AFP/File/Mauricio Lima)

The move by the American Beverage Association (ABA) came after advocates urged lawmakers and regulators to mandate warning labels on soda containers like those printed on cigarette packets.

Activists vowed to push for more changes in the soft drink industry even as they trained their sites on another dietary target: salt, blamed for hypertension, strokes, and heart attacks.

The ABA, representing soft drink manufacturers and distributors including industry majors Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo, said Wednesday its board had approved a new school vending policy aimed at limiting the availability of soft drinks in schools while providing lower-calorie or relatively nutritious alternatives.

''Childhood obesity is a serious problem in the U.S. and the responsibility for finding common-sense solutions is shared by everyone, including our industry,'' said ABA president and chief executive Susan Neely.

''We intend to be part of the solution.''

The ABA said that under its new policy, the beverage industry would sell:

-- Water and 100 percent juice in elementary schools, where students are 5-11 years old.

-- Water, 100 percent juice, sports drinks, no-calorie soft drinks, and low-calorie juice drinks to 11-14-year-old middle school students. Sales of full-calorie soft drinks or full-calorie juice drinks with five percent or less juice would not be allowed until after school.

-- Bottled water, 100 percent juice, sports drinks, and juice drinks in high schools, with 14-18-year-old students. Soft drinks would continue to be sold, too, but must not exceed 50 percent of the vending selections available to students.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a campaign group that last month called for health warning labels on soda containers, endorsed the ABA policy but said it did not go far enough.

''That the member companies of the American Beverage Association will voluntarily pull soda out of elementary schools is an encouraging step from an industry that, up to now, has thwarted angry parents who want to get soda out of their kids' schools,'' said Margo Wootan, the group's nutrition policy director.

''Given that poor diet and obesity are problems among teens, soda also has no place in America's high schools and middle schools, which are much bigger markets for soda companies than elementary schools,'' Wootan added.

''The industry surely hopes this voluntary half step will forestall efforts to get soda out of all schools,'' she said. ''But we hope that Congress, states, and school systems act to ensure that schools sell only healthful drinks and snacks to all children.''

Health campaigners assailed the $85 billion soft drink industry for, in their view, exploiting budget gaps in the nation's public schools. Many schools, they said, had signed contracts under which soda distributors set up vending machines on campus and the schools earn a portion of the resulting profits.

''These contracts, while bringing in much needed income to schools, are counterproductive to children's health,'' said Carol Friesen, a professor of family and consumer sciences at Indiana's Ball State University.

''The policy statement from the American Beverage Association will help school districts and state legislatures take a more forceful--albeit unpopular to some--step for our children's health,'' Friesen added in a written comment.

Thirty-eight states have considered laws establishing nutrition standards in schools for all foods sold, not just for beverages, she said, but only 15 had succeeded in enacting legislation.

Concern about childhood diet has risen on a wave of medical research connecting eating habits in early life to health problems in adulthood. On Wednesday, for example, a study in the International Journal of Cancer suggested that 3-5-year-old girls who eat French fries regularly are at increased risk of breast cancer later in life.

The national rate of obesity has doubled since 1990, according to government statistics. Last year, 23.1 percent of Americans were classified as obese.

Some studies have estimated that obesity costs the United States around $75 billion per year.

Separately, the Center for Science in the Public Interest released a study Wednesday accusing the U.S. food and restaurant industries of pumping Americans full of salt, blamed for hypertension, strokes, heart attacks, and a raft of other health complaints.

The organization is pushing for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to set up a Division of Sodium Reduction and said it wants restaurants and makers of food products to cut salt levels, allowing consumers to decide for themselves how much to add at the table.

Industry lobbyists the Salt Institute on Thursday rejected the center's study, saying 11 U.S. and British studies had found ''no population health benefit to reducing dietary salt.''

Even so, U.S. and British health authorities have sought to reduce citizens' daily salt consumption.

The government's 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that young adults consume less than 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day. People with hypertension, African Americans, and middle-aged and elderly people--almost half the population--are advised to consume no more than 1,500 mg per day, according to the center.

''Americans now consume about 4,000 mg of sodium per day, about twice the recommended amount,'' it said, adding that 80 percent of the total comes from processed and restaurant foods and only 10 percent from salt added during home cooking or at the dining table.

© 2005 OneWorld.net

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