Soft Drinks

In an age of long commutes, late sports practices, endless workdays and 24/7 television programming, the image of Mom hanging up her dish towel at 7 p.m. and declaring "the kitchen is closed" seems a quaint relic of an earlier era. It also harks back to a thinner America. And that may be no coincidence. A new study, conducted on mice, hints at an unexpected contributor to the nation's epidemic of obesity - and, if later human studies bear it out, a possible way to have our cake and eat it too, with less risk of weight gain and the diseases that come with it. Just eat your cake - or better yet, an apple - earlier.

Florida, it seems, has just gotten its very own Jerry Dewayne Williams. Mark Abaire, who has a history of petty theft in addition to an evident attitude problem, walked into a McDonald's restaurant in East Naples, Fla., recently and asked for a free courtesy cup. You're supposed to take this cup to the soda machine and fill it with water, but Abaire allegedly cheated: He filled it with about $1 worth of soda instead. When a manager asked him to pay, Abaire allegedly cursed at him and refused to leave, prompting employees to call police.

Sugary soft drinks are in the news again, this time linked to raised blood pressure. Added sugars in sodas, for example, have no nutritional value and pack on the calories. And though Americans hear the refrain over and over to cut back, they may not know by how much. The American Heart Assn. in 2009 issued guidelines for the maximum amount of sugar people could have in their daily diet. (Of course, it's OK to have none.) RELATED: Sugary drinks and high blood pressure -- a link?

The Center for Science in the Public Interest says its testing has found "high levels" of an animal carcinogen, 4-methylimidazole, in Coca-Cola and Pepsi cola drinks. The chemical is a result of the process used to give the colas -- including the diet versions -- their caramel coloring. But the federal Food and Drug Administration said there is not much to worry about, according to Bloomberg News. Agency spokesman Douglass Karas said Monday in a statement that a human would have to drink more than a thousand cans of the drinks in a day to reach the chemical level shown to cause cancer in rodents.  And the American Beverage Assn.

Children and teens are consuming too much added sugar in their diets, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly one in every six calories they eat and drink comes from some type of added sugar. This finding isn't exactly surprising, but it's worth looking at some of the statistics to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. The data here is on U.S. kids between the ages of 2 and 19, culled from the government's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: * Boys consumed an average 361 calories' worth of added sugar each day. For girls, the daily average was 282. * Though the total amount of added sugar in the diet was higher for boys than for girls, the proportion of total calories that came from added sugar was similar - 16.3% for boys and 15.5% for girls.

Venezuelan Regulators Investigating Coca-Cola Contract: PepsiCo Inc. has asked the country's antitrust agency, the Superintendency for the Promotion and Protection of Free Competition, to annul the contract between Coca-Cola Co. and Cisneros Group. The bottler is owned by Venezuelan businessman Oswaldo Cisneros and was for five decades Pepsi's exclusive bottler in that country. Last week, the bottler abrogated its contract with Pepsi to sign with Coke.

After successfully quashing discussion of a federal tax on soft drinks last year, Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and the fast-food industry are facing a new battle on the state level, where legislators are beginning to consider their own taxes on sweetened beverages. The next showdown could be in California, where legislators last week pledged to pass such a tax in light of new studies linking soft drink consumption to obesity in children and adults. One study suggests that obesity and related problems cost California alone $41 billion a year in medical expenses and reduced productivity.

Think nothing gets through to teenagers when it comes to making better dietary choices? Try telling the texting, video-game-playing, sofa-bound generation what it'll take to burn off the calories in one of their favorite soft drinks and they will run -- not walk, run! -- for the bottle of water beside it, a new study suggests. A message that required a bit more calculation -- the percentage of daily calorie intake a soda represents -- also succeeded in discouraging the purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages.

In the 1990s, a ruckus erupted in the beverage industry. Chemical tests revealed that benzene -- a cancer-causing chemical -- was present in Perrier water. Today, benzene is again causing a stir in the world of bottled drinks. Class action lawsuits filed April 11 in Massachusetts and Florida claim that two beverage companies' drinks have more benzene than the Environmental Protection Agency allows for water.

THE BIG GET BIGGER: Coca-Cola, the world's largest soft-drink company, agreed Thursday to buy No. 3 Dr Pepper for $470 million. The deal, which would give Coca-Cola 45.7% of the $25 billion-a-year soft-drink market, comes less than a month after arch-rival Pepsico agreed to acquire Seven-Up. The acquisitions, if allowed to proceed by the FTC, would give Coca-Cola and Pepsico nearly 80% of the market. 1985 market share of leading soft drink manufacturers Pepsico 27.4% Dr. Pepper 7.1% Seven-Up 6.

In a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the consumer watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest called on officials to ban the use of caramel coloring in popular soft drinks, citing a possible cancer risk.  This isn't the first time that CSPI has targeted the food additive that gives colas, including Coke and Pepsi, their familiar brown color. The organization first petitioned the FDA on the matter in 2011, noting that 2-methylimidazole and 4-methylimidazole, which form when sugar is mixed with ammonia and sulfites to create caramel coloring, had been shown to cause lung, liver and thyroid cancer in mice and rats.

Children and teens are consuming too much added sugar in their diets, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly one in every six calories they eat and drink comes from some type of added sugar. This finding isn't exactly surprising, but it's worth looking at some of the statistics to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. The data here is on U.S. kids between the ages of 2 and 19, culled from the government's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: * Boys consumed an average 361 calories' worth of added sugar each day. For girls, the daily average was 282. * Though the total amount of added sugar in the diet was higher for boys than for girls, the proportion of total calories that came from added sugar was similar - 16.3% for boys and 15.5% for girls.

Think nothing gets through to teenagers when it comes to making better dietary choices? Try telling the texting, video-game-playing, sofa-bound generation what it'll take to burn off the calories in one of their favorite soft drinks and they will run -- not walk, run! -- for the bottle of water beside it, a new study suggests. A message that required a bit more calculation -- the percentage of daily calorie intake a soda represents -- also succeeded in discouraging the purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages.

Looking for a drink worthy of a man's man? Don't cue that Dos Equis commercial just yet -- the maker of Dr Pepper is rolling out Dr Pepper Ten, a 10-calorie soda with an ad campaign that asserts that the soft drink is "not for women. " A gunmetal-garbed can of the drink (which holds 12 fluid ounces) would contain 3 grams of sugar and 15 calories, compared to a standard Dr Pepper, with 150 calories and 40.5 grams of sugar. This isn't the first time food products have blatantly targeted men -- Pocky biscuits, popular in Japan, have a Men's Pocky edition (in blue packaging)

French fries, slathered with ketchup and washed down with a pint of soda, are a favorite part of fast-food lunches and dinners for millions of American youngsters. But taking a cue from nutritionists, a group of 19 restaurant companies are pledging to offer more-healthful menu options for children at a time when concern is growing over the role of fast food in childhood obesity. Burger King, the nation's second-largest burger chain, for instance, will stop automatically including French fries and soda in its kids' meals starting this month, although the items will still be available.

It was a new, foodie-type twist to the old inner-city gun buyback program. Hunger Action L.A., an advocacy group that helps to feed the poor and promotes healthful eating, called on Koreatown residents to surrender their high-calorie soft drinks on Saturday and get a bag of fresh fruits and vegetables in return. The "soda exchange," which was held as part of an annual food fair at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, wasn't exactly a raging success, however. Only two residents from the area around Normandie Avenue and Olympic Boulevard took their sodas to the fair.

April 6, 1920: Three boys at Polytechnic High School in Long Beach broke into a shed beneath their school's grandstand and helped themselves to soda pop, cider and near beer left over from a weekend event. Soon, more than 100 students were drinking with them and burying what they couldn't drink around the campus "for future reference," The Times reported under the headline "Soda Pop Scandal Stirs Long Beach."

Soft drinks continue to lose their fizz among consumers as bottled water and other noncarbonated drinks gain popularity. Growth in the U.S. carbonated soft drink industry was relatively flat during 2001, and per-capita consumption of the bubbly beverages fell for the third year in a row, according to reports released Thursday by market research firms.

The time has come, America, for a tater tax. Now that a groundbreaking study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has demonstrated that potatoes may be a bigger culprit in weight gain than sugary soft drinks or red meat, it seems appropriate to exact a little spud money. You want chips with that? Ante up. No, we're not being serious. But politicians and health advocates nationwide are very serious about imposing taxes on the culinary villain du jour, soda pop, which is thought to be a key cause of the country's obesity epidemic.

Sugary soft drinks are in the news again, this time linked to raised blood pressure. Added sugars in sodas, for example, have no nutritional value and pack on the calories. And though Americans hear the refrain over and over to cut back, they may not know by how much. The American Heart Assn. in 2009 issued guidelines for the maximum amount of sugar people could have in their daily diet. (Of course, it's OK to have none.) RELATED: Sugary drinks and high blood pressure -- a link?