Our Love of Sugary Drinks

Over a hundred years ago, we started drinking soda. Today, soda is part of a larger category called sugar sweetened beverages, that includes energy drinks, Dunkin’ frozen matcha lattes, giant Boba teas and Starbucks strawberry acai refreshers. How did these companies tap into our innate cravings to sell us more drinkable calories than we are supposed to eat in a week? In this episode we explore why we are so susceptible to sugar and how soda companies influenced the way we drink today, marketing their drinks aggressively (especially to children), externalizing costs, and making the consumer and society at large responsible: for our excess calorie consumption and for the waste created by single use drink containers. In this episode we speak with Lina Ghanem, director and co-founder of Saba Grocers Initiative; Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University and author of Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning); Michael Moss, author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us; Anupama Joshi, Vice President of Programs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest; Bart Elmore, author of Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism; and Mike Belliveau, director and founder of Bend the Curve. What You’re Eating is produced by Jerusha Klemperer, Nathan Dalton and FoodPrint.org, which is a project of the GRACE Communications Foundation. You can find us at www.FoodPrint.org where we have this podcast as well as articles, reports, a Food Label Guide and more. Follow @foodprintorg on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky