How cigarette makers applied their marketing wizardry to sweetened beverages
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I used to drink one of those 99c tall cans of Arizona iced tea pretty much every day.
For context, I quit smoking cold turkey (1 pack a day) with no vaping in between or any type of patches or help. I just said "I'm done" and that was it. Truthfully, I found quitting smoking pretty easy because deep down I wanted to quit. That was 8ish years ago and I never touched one since or even had the urge to smoke again. The smell alone is revolting to me.
About 9 months ago I quit drinking those stupid cans of iced tea, but then after about 2 months I thought to myself "well, if I reward myself once a week with one that might not be too bad". So that worked for about 2 weeks, and then once a week became twice a week, and before you know it I was back in a rut of my brain saying "psssst, go drink a can" every day and it became a distraction.
Will power and determination are some of biggest strengths but sugar cut right through it. Since then I quit again and I'm sure I'll never drink another one again but I wanted to share this for anyone who might be in the same boat as I was. Those drinks will drain you of energy and get you addicted but if you can power through it, it doesn't take long to break out of it. Couple days should do it. I can't even put in words at how much better I feel mentally.
Most fizzy pop I can't drink - hate Coke and anything that tastes that sweet. Diet too as they aim for similar levels of apparent sweetness with bonus nasty after taste. I can drink a can or two of energy drinks, and one or two other things daily for a week or two, then not have another for a year. I assume the sweetness is masked rather than actually reduced.
I also hate most of the sweetening of everything, even fruit - in the UK which is far behind the US in that respect. Take current grapes - far too sweet compared to years ago, and now so ridiculously consistent about delivering sugar but no taste. Grapes used to be nice, now they're pointless. Same with apples and much citrus, I like the less sweet but more complex flavour in varieties that are damn near impossible to buy any more.
It's frustrating.
For all the lifestyle hacks with cutting out sugar, anyone have any ideas on how to hate sugar less?
Now, I'm starting to get older and I am putting on fat I'd rather not have.
At no point do I think sugar would have helped me at all (except to treat low blood sugar); quite the contrary. Fat has a lot more calories, and it sounds more likely that it would be healthy for someone. Is there a reason you are seeking out sugar rather than fat?
Regular gym with trainer was the only thing that ever reliably increased my weight. I tried for years to find a food based approach - nope. With fitness+lifting, cycling, swimming and 4x gym weekly, strength increased fine, actual weight gain was still very slow. So I was super well defined, strong but still looked too scrawny. By the time I'd gained 28lbs, my waist had actually lost 2". What the actual fuck? I had nothing there to lose. I could match lifts with guys who looked far bigger, which I know irritated one or two. :D
Calories alone simply didn't work. I could push to eat 5k+ calories a day and gain nothing that month. Almost no one believed this of course, until they spent enough time with me to see what I regularly, and easily ate daily. I once caught a BBC weight loss documentary series that had everyone in a house like Big Brother, which also included a couple of calorie-proof people like this, along with regular guys and some who always struggled with obesity. They carefully monitored in, out, blood and metabolism, and tried to force feed the guys who couldn't to gain. They too concluded some were somehow immune beyond a certain, maintenance intake. I forget what explanation was offered, or whether that explanation was merely guesswork.
Still, for routes to sugar and calories, my own one real sugar weakness is cake. Mainly the more complex, older recipes - the rich Victorian cake or a brandy laden fruit cake in preference to newer, lighter sugar-only crap. Or a nice sharp apple or fruit pie (home made then, shop bought is pure sugar pretending to be apple) still has plenty of sugar. Lots and lots of snacking in between meals. I used to search out the full fat of everything. Premium brands of dark chocolate lose the ugly sweetness of regular, good 70 and 80% have a nice bitter edge, and some of the posher brands of milk chocolate are higher cocoa, lower sweetness. There's plenty of chocolate and sugar laden bars that have some bitter mint or something strong enough to take the sweetness away - always the expensive premium or continental though! Nuts, pies and pasties, especially pork pies are very energy dense, so plenty of those too.
Yet despite all this and pushing intake to the most I could cope with, I eventually realised that this was all completely pointless. The only way to win was not to play. I could still gain just as quickly (i.e. almost imperceptibly, and painfully slowly) via the gym, especially when I got a spotter/trainer (this was the only real secret actually - a trainer and/or training buddy to push me to breaking every single time), eating only what my body said it needed/wanted. If you go with gym buddy rather than trainer, make sure they want to push hard enough - I found almost none did. The second I drop to an 'approved' regular guy 2k a day calories, weight falls off like an amputation until it's back at the genetically mandated, underweight normal. So I've had to keep working to maintain above that. I'm sick to death of gyms these days, but I haven't yet quite lost the habit.
Ageing never brought the much threatened easy weight gain, neither did quitting smoking. My 50s finally gave me the ability to gain a little fat (not much - even that still seems severely limited to only 2") around the waist, but it still falls off easily, just a little slower, and I am still built like a marathon runner. My general fitness is way better than it would have been though.
Despite the long ramblings, I'm not sure there's too much useful actionable advice in there.
Without weight lifting or forcing yourself to eat way more than you should do you retain more fat, you may just have a slim build.
Once, I couldn't imagine drinking coffee without sugar. Now I couldn't imagine drinking coffee with it.
Judging by the recycling bin in the office, one or two of my colleagues drink around one can put week, but the rest drink no soda at work.
I drink perhaps two or three a month, when I fancy a gin and tonic or rum and cola.
In your case, maybe the answer is brewing your own iced tea with a milder sweetener maybe steep a tangerine in the jug like they do with sangria?
I haven't tried squeezing my own fruit into tea. Maybe I'll give that a shot.
You are right though, it's no different than how smoking was. It does cause some amount of desire before you do it, and then satisfaction afterwards. Textbook addiction loop.
> Truthfully, I found quitting smoking pretty easy because deep down I wanted to quit.
Sugar isn't more addictive than tobacco; but it is less regulated so there are more nudges and its easier to access.
I always think this to myself but these things get stuck in your head forever and the cravings keep coming back after years.
I long ago quit soda, and in fact recently (and with no drama) basically quit a pint-of-cold-brew/4-6 shots/day espresso habit. Pretty much the only beverage with any taste I drink these days contains alcohol (that's a story for another day).
Mostly I only drink plain flat water. But I can't stomach that fizzy, bitter junk.
Funniest thing about my soda addiction is the only thing that makes me crave it is ice cream. Which is so funny; try drinking a coke after ice cream. It tastes terrible because you can't taste the sugar in the soda anymore, after the sugar rush of the ice cream. But I still crave it. All I can figure is my brain has associated the sugar rush with a caffeine hit, and my brain isn't happy when it gets sugar but no caffeine.
I find waters have quite a variety of tastes, my favourite by far is San Pellegrino. It also works well with a good few shakes of Angostura bitters.
This Is Why You Should Stop Drinking LaCroix https://www.eatthis.com/la-croix-healthy/
Why Your LaCroix Obsession Isn't So Healthy https://www.health.com/food/why-your-lacroix-obsession-isnt-...
"Due to their acidic pH, flavored sparkling waters can be nearly as corrosive as orange juice when exposed to human teeth for just 30 minutes, according to researchers at the University of Birmingham and Birmingham Dental Hospital."
"BPA-based plastics are used to line food and drink cans to protect against metal contamination, but these endocrine disruptors bring on a host of health problems on their own. ... FWIW, the state of California, for example, includes BPA in its Proposition 65 list of toxic chemicals that are 'known to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm.'"
"One study published in the journal Obesity Research and Clinical Practicethis link opens in a new tab found that rats that had carbonated drinks ate more and gained more weight over a six-month period than those that drank flat drinks or plain water. The bubbly-bev rats also had more of the appetite-increasing hormone ghrelin, which signals your body to eat more, which can explain the weight gain."
I suspect that i'm not unique in my sugar taste - at least whenever i see how people put sugar in their teas, coffees, etc i don't see much difference - and if tomorrow Coke gets produced with 4x less sugar i don't think most people would really notice taste-wise.
8 oz of that same green tea contains 17 g of sugar: https://www.drinkarizona.com/product/green-tea-with-ginseng-...
For comparison, a double espresso shot has 80 mg of caffeine: https://www.kickinghorsecoffee.com/en/blog/caffeine-myths-es...
The addictive potential of the scant caffeine in Arizona iced "tea" is negligible compared to the very high sugar content.
Contradicts the 50s, 60s and 70s before that when General Foods marketed Kool-Aid to children using the same cartoon characters and bright colors, some of which are actually shown and dated in the article.
They do mention a shift in the language used buy this after 1985, from 'for your family' directed at moms (with brightly colored cartoon characters though) to direct appeals to teens. But the 1940s ad example shows a boy perhaps 8 years old buying Kool-Aid for his girlfriend and notes that this is possible because it is so inexpensive even children can afford it. This 1940s ad thus is directed at child initiated purchases. Furthermore, the shift from mom-to-child definitely started before the acquisition as General Foods produced numerous commercials targeted at children which ran in frequent rotation during Saturday morning cartoons.
The case with RJ Reynolds and Hawaiian Punch seems significantly more compelling. Before they buy the company it is said to be a drink mix for cocktails marketed to adults. Reynolds then upon acquisition redesigns the drink and markets it to children, and uses the same flavor R&D to develop new additives to be added both to new exotic cigarette flavors and to Hawaiian Punch whose advertising targets children.
People have weaknesses and people try to exploit weaknesses. Philosophically you have to decide how your society manages these two things pitting personal responsibility against business regulation. Pieces like this do not do enough to keep that balance, instead blaming problems on big bad X.
How do you pick that balance? When do you say something is exploitation and when do you say something is personal responsibility or choice?
One logical extreme is only being able to eat government approved meals. Obviously that is ridiculous but you have to know the extremes to pick a reasonable moderate choice.
My position involves maximizing personal choice as long as the truth is accurately represented.
This is not difficult. When one group is disproportionately impacted by a net-negative outcome due to a product’s overuse, it’s obvious there is exploitation.
We can measure health outcomes. We can model when children’s brains have developed sufficiently to make choices. We can look at the documents the companies themselves drew up and understand very clearly their intentions to exploit people and leave them to die.
Accurately representing the truth is not enough. Humans are a mess of impulses and biases, not logical thinkers who act out of reason at every step.
You can't legislate what's obvious and ignore the middle.
That is done successfully all the time. It's nice to have the legal boundary match the line exactly all the time, but if the line isn't known then there's no harm in placing the legal boundary on the conservative side as an interim solution while you work the details out.
So what is? Even if not conned into it by advertising, people still might buy stuff that's contrary to their interest. This is backed by your own statement that humans are "not logical thinkers who act out of reason at every step." Witness narcotics as an example: the sinaloas have never run a prime-time tv ad, but sell plenty.
And in the case of tobacco, sugary drinks, and many other products and shady business practices, that belief is absolutely correct.
This is why cigarette companies didn't really mind the television advertising ban. If their competitors didn't advertise on TV, they wouldn't need to either and they could save money. People will still want to smoke.
Sugar and nicotine hardly need ads at all! But yes, the combination of natural addictivity + marketing can be rugged.
What's missing from the equation is caffeine + taurine combinations, i.e. energy drinks. The ill effects are subversive because it's not at all obvious but I think elevated, consistent consumption can wear on one's endocrine system. I'll admit this is not entirely scientifically backed but it's also a hard thing to suss out of data, and hard to prove, and of course in limited quantities there's no problem.
Not too hard to subversive for some people; you're absolutely right about the wear: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24986632
I imagine some people are more sensitive, but it's still a concern. Of course, coffee is still supposed to be really good for you (especially black). Caffeine is also not very addictive, especially compared to tobacco or to sugar. The problem is sugar is in everything (or almost), meaning it's really hard to get away from. It's hard to give a concentrated form of something up when you are constantly exposed to dilute quantities.
I would challenge anyone who reads this to stop eating foods with lots of added sugar for a while. If you resume, you will be amazed at how ludicrously sweet things taste. Just something to think on.
> An interview revealed a 2- to 3-week history of daily ingestion of 100 to 120 oz of Red Bull energy drink
That's between 3 and 3.5L of Red Bull each day. Every day! I can't even imagine buying enough to have it available to drink like that.
The physical cravings of nicotine leave after 3 days.
Of course they can!
Chocolate!
Doughnuts!
Candy!
The list goes on.
If there were no ads for chocolate, we'd still buy it en masse ...
http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main/images.php?token2=f...
"Tobacco companies know as much as anybody that sex sells, and they have no qualms with making use of phallic symbols or with objectifying women to sell their products."
"Perhaps the most recognizable recent campaign to use such techniques is the Joe Camel campaign, which lasted up until 1999; Joe Camel s face is drawn to resemble a scrotum."
Here's a practical example of an inefficiency that advertising could have solved: I was taught Java in 7th grade, and used Eclipse as the IDE from then to 12th grade. In 12th grade, a friend used IntelliJ and I asked him about it and tried it out. Turns out it was much better than Eclipse, and I stuck with it. Jeff Atwood's blog https://blog.codinghorror.com has a little unobtrusive and non-evil ad in the corner. In the past it advertised for Rider (the JetBrains .NET IDE), but he seems to have added other products since then. If there was an IntelliJ ad there, I would have looked into it and it would have been a win-win situation: JetBrains gets a customer and eventually $$$, I get a better IDE.
One idea I had is to limit advertising to (for example) 3 ads a day per person. Obviously this would have to be enforced by the government/etc. by removing all non-sanctioned ad delivery channels as well as all public ads, but it would allow relevant and useful ads to be useful while reducing the garbage of companies putting their name everywhere in a mind-control attempt.
My argument is that customers do not get to make informed decisions when they are shown ads. Customers are manipulated to make the decisions that are profitable for Bob's Bait Shop.
The only way for the ad to benefit the customer, is when the customer intentionally seeks out the ad. Classifieds in a newspaper exist as such solution. Important part is identical formatting, without any ads standing out visually, sorted by category. Any other form of ads IMO is unethical and immoral.
Modern ads usually do their best to associate feelings with products or brands. They rarely have any basis in reality. They mostly try to use neuroscience to trick you into wanting products or loving brands you would otherwise ignore.
Never liked Kool-Aid that much, either, except when my mom would freeze it in icecube trays for homemade popsicles.
I wonder what it'll be like if/when marijuana is legal. And how tightly marketing will be regulated.
But actually, flavor syrups have traditionally been used as both toppings (for ice cream, yogurt, etc) and concentrate for drinks. Tamarindo, for example. It's great on vanilla ice cream, and also diluted with carbonated water. Or even the old standard, chocolate syrup.
Overhead on health care and even the environment that is all on taxpayers (smokers and non-smokers)
I don't think that's true. The maker of my favourite cigarette (I haven't smoked a cigarette in years, but I have nothing against smoking a cigarette every once in awhile) doesn't even distribute in this country anymore, due to massive lawsuit expenses.
> They have a huge influence on media, so many indirect advertising everywhere.
I believe that a single cigarette will get a movie an R rating (and that movies nowadays prefer larger audiences to more sophisticated ones, and hence avoid R ratings), and that cigarettes are completely forbidden on prime-time TV. Perhaps I'm wrong?
> Overhead on health care and even the environment that is all on taxpayers (smokers and non-smokers)
Last I heard the health costs were dwarfed by the Social Security savings due to regular smokers dying younger.
You don't hear as much about cigarettes now as twenty years ago because the anti-tobacco forces won. Smokers are nigh-universally looked down upon. The only people who will smoke publicly are the poor. It's just not worth the social cost to smoke tobacco any more.
There was an article recently about how science can regain its reputation. I think that the issue of smoking is a prime example of how things should have gone differently: the role of science & scientists was simply to point out that smoking causes cancer (and other diseases) & reduces quality of life. That's it: no recommendations to quit smoking, and certainly no recommendations for laws against it. Science is capable of making predictions based on data; it's not capable of deciding what should be done based on those predictions (that's a matter for ethics or philosophy or religion or morality or whatever).
In the case of smoking, the debate should have been: given that smoking is bad for people, is it reasonable to use State violence to prevent them from smoking? I argue that the answer is clearly no, but certainly others would argue otherwise. The key thing here is that science has no input into that argument.
They are more inclined to allow smoking if it's used to make smoking look bad (the smoker is slovenly, coughs a lot, etc) or if the smoker has smoking-related consequences (lung cancer, being made fun of, etc).
Television is a bit more nuanced. The TV ratings (TV-MA, TV-PG, etc) are self-assigned by the network showing the show according to their own guidelines, or a collection of amorphous industry "best practices".
There is also a difference between Broadcast Network television and cable television. Cable television doesn't seem to feel a restriction on showing smoking characters, but a show on Network television that wants to have a character smoke has to work really hard to get approval. Here is an example from the NBC series "The Mick" [2] where they state:
"When the Chernin brothers first mentioned to the writing staff that they wanted to do an episode about Mickey (Kaitlin Olson) and Sabrina (Sofia Black-D’Elia) smoking, we knew it would be a challenge. On cable, the characters can smoke themselves into oblivion, but on network television — let’s just say Mom and Dad don’t approve.
So, how did we get the network to agree to a smoking episode? And why?
Simply put, we were all excited about telling a story where Mickey and Sabrina’s bad habit and selfishness would affect the family, specifically Ben (Jack Stanton). We just had to convince the network that this wasn’t an episode glorifying smoking; it was an episode condemning it. Thankfully, Fox is like the cool parent of the network world and believed in our take enough to let us push the boundaries and show the characters actually smoking."
So, it seems that television is more under the pressure of either wanting to "do the right thing" or not upsetting anti-smoking advocates that could perhaps start a campaign to get a show canceled.
[1] https://www.thoughtco.com/mpaa-ratings-and-tobacco-use-in-mo...
[2] https://ew.com/tv/2017/01/17/the-mick-recap-season-1-episode...
You could add it to temporary tattoos or face paint or something. But that would be borderline evil.