How different would America—and our relationship with soft drinks—be if we embraced a return to old-fashioned soda fountain shops?

While you perhaps saw one of the SodaStream commercials during this year’s Super Bowl, the other ad was pulled, mainly because it was critical of both Coca-Cola and Pepsi, two of the event’s biggest sponsors (Pepsi produced the Half Time show). SodaStream, which is a DIY tool that allows you to make unlimited amounts of soda at home, targeted the excessive plastic and aluminum waste created by the soft drink industry.

The numbers are staggering—plastic bottles are an immense problem, with more than 340 billion produced around the world each year, and fewer than half of those find their way to proper recycling facilities. Coca-Cola’s own website reports the brand sells more than 1 billion servings of its products every day. And even if those are from the soda fountains at fast food restaurants or convenience stores, those sodas still wind up in plastic cups with plastic lids and plastic straws.

Beyond the environmental reasons for ditching the bottled soft drinks, there are of course a plethora of health reasons as well. Sodas are full of caloric high fructose corn syrup, which is closely linked to our nation’s obesity epidemic. They also contain artificial colors and flavors, and those diet drinks, are full of artificial sweeteners that have been linked to  neurological and reproductive issues and even certain types of cancer.

SodaStream’s product challenges an industrial food mainstay that has an incredibly influential power over our culture. After all, little else is as refreshing or satisfying as a fizzy, bubbly, sweet and cold soft drink. But, too much of a good thing is…well, a crippling obesity and diabetes epidemic and a giant gyre of plastic floating in the ocean causing irreversible damage to the planet.

But can’t we have our Mountain Dew and drink it too?

I thought you’d never ask.

Flip on the television to Turner Classic Movies and inevitably you’ll soon see a gaggle of teens or a couple of young lovers sitting in a soda shop, sipping on a rather mediocre sized glass of cola. Our original foray into carbonated beverages was as an attempt to reproduce naturally effervescent mineral waters, which were renowned for their health-giving properties. It’s why the original formulas for products including Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper were touted as healthy tonics that could treat, cure and even prevent disease—a mix of herbs and spices measured and formulated to enhance the bubbly waters—and it’s also why they were first only available in pharmacies.

Our modern soda shops (rhymes with “Farducks”) serve as communal watering holes, but they’re not quite as alluring as a traditional soda shop. (There’s something about the vibe of a place that serves bubbly, fizzy, fun drinks versus the seriousness of bitter, hot coffee, right?) At the turn of the 20^th century, when soda shops were hitting their peak, they preceded the era of commercial food transport and refrigeration. So, many shops had to make their own syrup formulas, mixing each drink to order by the masterful baristas of their time: soda jerks (the name comes from the jerking motion of pulling the taps).

According to Julia Moskin of the New York Times, as consumers become more enamored with local and artisan-crafted foods, we’re also beginning to see the return of the soda shops in all their steampunk glory: “Places like Blueplate, the Franklin Fountain in Philadelphia and the Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain are leading a revival that is bringing up-to-date culinary values — seasonal, house-made, ripe, local — to ice cream sodas, sundaes and egg creams.”

Whether a full on soda shop revival is even possible, or whether we’ll all get SodaStreams and make our own sodas at home, we do now more than ever seem to need a return to the soda shop mentality. We do well to invest in the experience of consuming these beverages as much having more control over what’s in them.

While this is certainly a much different world than the dawn of the 20th century, where we can get our social fix at the swipe of an iPhone and our soda fix around every corner, our need for gathering places has not diminished. Our need for treating ourselves and stepping out on occasion is still critical to our sense of pride and participation in our communities. Drinking a 20-ounce Pepsi from a plastic bottle in the solitude of a car or a cubicle, is not.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: hsld

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Just for the taste of it?

Today Diet Coke celebrates its 30th birthday. Since that fateful day when it  was introduced on August 9, 1982, ad campaigns have been targeting sexy, savvy women that just want to keep their waistlines small. In our mid-80s and early 90s stupor (most likely shoulder-pad induced), we were seduced by the likes of Paula Abdul and Whitney Houston selling us a chic and slim product that was made to make us look and feel good. Or at least so the advertising led us to believe.

Lest you think that our newfound love of farmers markets, quinoa salads and artisan cheese would have us move away from mass marketed, artificially sweetened and carbonated drinks, thanks to advertising, branding and marketing, Diet Coke has seated itself as the second most popular soda in the world, with 927 million cases sold in 2010. In Europe you can buy lingerie-inspired Diet Coke bottles designed by Jean Paul Gaultier himself, and apparently it’s so delicious that one consumer in England was drinking seven pints a day for 10 years.

Diet Coke makes you feel sexy. An empowered woman. And hey men, if you drink it, the ladies will be drooling all over you!

We have been seduced by advertising, forgetting to ask ourselves what downing a diet soda a day really does to our bodies.

Diet Coke’s addicts will probably tell you that the research on aspartame is inconclusive (despite the fact that it has over 90 known side effects). As Zoe Williams put it in an article on the history of Diet Coke in the Guardian:

Artificial sweeteners are a very controversial subject. Some governmental health authorities may say they are safe enough, but in the nutrition industry, that’s still up for debate. Some studies indicate that the man-made molecular structure of some artificial sweeteners could be linked to certain health problems. This requires much more research. Research however, has indicated other adverse issues from consumption of artificial sweeteners, including encouraging sugar cravings; and increasing appetite.

No matter how many cheesy ads we watch, deep down we know we shouldn’t be drinking the stuff. Just like you know fully well that you shouldn’t down an entire chocolate cake, or eat barbecued ribs for every meal. “All good things in moderation!” some might say, but is Diet Coke a good thing? Sure, we have yet to prove causation between drink consumption and obesity, but do you see scientists having to come to conclusions on the health effects of water? The fact that we have to test soda to begin with should be true cause for concern.

We should know better. We can forgive our predecessors for sucking down Tab and later turning to Diet Coke when it rebranded, but the fact that we’re still guzzling sodas of any kind in 2012 is simply unacceptable. Single use plastic bottles (because it doesn’t always come in cans), artificial sweeteners, global greenwashing… pick your poison; the entire soda industry is one that’s made up of not only promoting a product whose nutritional elements we don’t need – trust me, Diet Coke is not the place to get your daily dose of, well, anything – but also using resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.

Want to really celebrate Diet Coke’s 30th birthday? Try drinking a nice, sexy glass of water instead.

Image: Amy McTigue, Tim’s Blog

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A perfect media storm blew in for the week of Fat Tuesday.

First came an impassioned TED speech by Jamie Oliver challenging Americans to solve our obesity epidemic through food and nutrition education and more excellent cooking.

Then came New York City’s Fashion Week with its requisite news of models getting fired from runway gigs for allegedly “being fat” at size puny.

In parallel, there was a huge debate around the emotional outbursts, each in 140-character Twitter format, by Kevin Smith the actor and filmmaker who was kicked off of a Southwest airlines flight this week for being too large and a “safety” concern.

One of the milder tweets he offered: “Wanna tell me I’m too wide for the sky? Totally cool. But fair warning, folks: IF YOU LOOK LIKE ME, YOU MAY BE EJECTED FROM @SOUTHWESTAIR.”

Obesity-haters on Twitter and comment boards web-wide suggested it was fair for airlines like Southwest to kick Smith (a.k.a. Silent Bob) off a flight if, in their estimation, a passenger was too large to fit in a single seat, and no other seat was available. Others sided with Kevin Smith but wondered if a “fat tax,” which essentially punishes people who stress the healthcare system and food supply, is worth considering.

An informal survey on Hunch.com of 12,000 site visitors showed that – rather unsympathetically – people who aren’t fat are more likely to support airlines’ charging fat people for two tickets, if they can’t fit into one seat as opposed to offering a wider seat, or two for the price of one.

If you’re fit, would you pass the buck to the obese? If you’re fat, would the tax help motivate you to lose weight by eating less, or healthier (and presumably more sustainable) foods?

Study up on all sides of the argument for and against fat taxes on everything from plane tickets to sugary foods with the links and resources here.

BASIC READING:

“Daniel Engber has likened fat to height. ‘How fat you are has a lot more to do with your genes than with your behavior,’ he argue[s]. ‘As much as 80 percent of the variation in human body weight can be explained by differences in our DNA. (Your height is similarly heritable.)’…Instances of radical, lasting weight loss are exceedingly rare. Diet and exercise schemes tend to yield only minor effects over the long term…” – A post by William Saletan for Slate comparing the tall to the fat.

“The idea of a special tax on soda, similar to those on tobacco, gasoline and alcoholic beverages, is attracting more interest. Advocates of a tax note that sugared beverages are the No. 1 source of calories in the American diet, representing 7 percent of the average person’s caloric intake, according to government surveys, and up to 10 percent for children and teenagers. ‘What you want,’ says Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, ‘is to reverse the fact that healthy food is too expensive and unhealthy food is too cheap, and the soda tax is a start. Unless food marketing changes, it’s hard to believe that anything else can work.'” – A feature by Mark Bittman in the New York Times

“In Canada, the Supreme Court has ruled that obese and disabled people cannot be forced to buy a second seat on flights….Bill Fabrey, a director at the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, a non-profit group that advocates for larger people said airlines should provide some bigger seats to accommodate people of size, just as many cinemas and theatres had increased their seats. ‘People come in all shapes and sizes,’ he said. ‘Judging someone by the size of their body, not health level, comes down to discrimination against a class of people.'” – A feature story in The National

FURTHER RESOURCES:

A post by BigFatDeal Blog that aggregates Kevin Smith’s Tweets about “flying while fat.”

A Web M.D. article about a new survey that says 8 of 10 adult males will be fat, not of healthy weight, by 2020

A story in the Syracuse Post-Standard about New Yorkers’ support of a “fat tax” of a kind, on sugary sodas.

A News-Herald story about curbing childhood obesity through more environmentally sound nutrition and standards for food in schools, which is one alternative to levying a fat tax against the obese.

A story by Tom Fudge for KPBS about new research that shows obesity is partly determined by the place where you live.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco trends, and tech highlights by Lora Kolodny.

Image: Alan Cleaver

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