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Hard on soft drinks
On the list of things parents warn their children about, soft drinks never ranked very high. Cigarettes, booze, heavy petting, sure. But a Coke at the ballpark was as innocent as the game itself. That was then. Anyone who's been to a mall lately has probably noticed a certain, shall we say, broadening of today's youth. The Centers for Disease Control reported last fall that the average weight of an American 10-year-old has gone up 11 pounds since the 1960s, and parents and health advocates have in recent years begun to see a boogeyman in the sugary drinks and junk food that kids eat. Across the country, the 10 largest school systems - including Boston Public Schools last year - have banned soda sales in schools. In this new campaign against Big Macs and Big Gulps, a veteran of the tobacco wars is leading the charge against what he calls Big Soda. "There is something just wrong with continuing to thrust calorie-dense, zero-nutrition sodas into the hands and mouths of schoolchildren," says Richard Daynard, an associate dean at Northeastern University and director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute, which receives support from both Northeastern University School of Law and Tufts University School of Medicine. "The evidence is crystal clear that this is making a substantial contribution to the obesity epidemic and the likelihood of developing chronic illness." But Daynard's group, which studies public health problems and goes after the corporations it blames for them, is about to take the fight a step further. They plan to put soda on trial.
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