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There’s no fizz in the Bloomberg administration’s latest assault on sugary drinks.
Building on its war against calorie-laden sodas, the city Health Department yesterday launched a $1.4 million TV and bus ad campaign warning of the dangers of energy drinks and other supposedly healthier alternatives to carbonated beverages such as Coke.
In fact, Health Commissioner Tom Farley said some of the fizz-free drinks are actually worse than equivalent-size sodas.
As an example, officials noted a 20-ounce Coke has 240 calories, 65 grams of sugar and 65 grams of carbohydrates, while a 20-ounce bottle of Minute Maid Lemonade has 260 calories, 67 grams of sugar and 70 grams of carbohydrates.
Farley says manufacturers often imply such drinks are healthier.
“They don’t say these drinks are healthy,” he said.
“But look at the words they use — fruit, antioxidants, energy. These are all terms we associate with health. People still believe they’re healthy. It’s appropriate for the Health Department to warn people.”
Some of the department’s ads are scary, with one listing “amputation, heart attack, vision loss, kidney failure” as consequences of too much sugar.
Carbonated soft drink sales fell 1.2 percent last year, the eighth straight year of decline, Beverage Digest reported.
The energy-drink category, meanwhile, is exploding.
Red Bull sales rose 17 percent.
Jim Rogers, president and CEO of the Food Industry Alliance of New York State, denied any deception, noting every food and drink item in the country has to have nutritional information.
“It’s on the label,” he said. “People see it. They see the sugars. They see the fat content. It’s all there. There’s no effort to conceal anything.”
Christopher Gindelsperger of the American Beverage Association, which won a lower-court suit blocking the city from limiting soda sizes in restaurants, charged the city was playing nanny again.
“Selectively picking out common grocery items like sugar-sweetened beverages as a cause of obesity is misleading,” he said.
But Farley says the proof is in the numbers, with Type2 diabetes now affecting 650,000 city residents, up 200,000 over 10 years.
“It’s really reaching crisis proportions,” he warned.