I got another one of those Facebook memory reminders today.  This one from four years ago, something I wrote for my Happier, Healthier Me blog.  After taking a look, with all the traveling and fast food stops going on this weekend, not to mention the Big Event tomorrow, I thought it might be a good one to revisit on this day before Thanksgiving.  Here is a slightly edited version from November 21, 2014:

 

When I was a kid I used to bring my lunch to school. To the best of my recollection, for two cents a day or ten cents a week I could buy a little “milk card” that allowed me to get a little container of milk to drink with my lunch every day. For twenty five cents a day I could buy a card that allowed me to get lunch from the cafeteria every day and a little carton of milk. I never got that because it was too expensive. But at every meal we drank milk. Before school we drank milk, when we came home we drank milk, with dinner we drank milk. There was no soda, or as my western Pennsylvanian wife would call it, “POP”, in my house as a rule. Sometimes in the summer, my mother would buy some Acme brand sodas to have for barbecues or special occasions. But if I really wanted something other than milk to drink I needed to sneak over to my aunt and uncle’s house, they lived next door. There I could get Tang and better yet……Coca-Colas!

As I grew older I developed a serious “Coke” problem…..Coca-Cola that is. I consumed mass quantities of it. April 23rd, 1985 was a devastating day for me. My world had suddenly changed. I didn’t know what I was going to do because the Coke people on that day introduced the “New Coke” and later that week discontinued the production of “My Coke” (the original recipe).

I remember being in a little store in a campground somewhere during that time period and finding a shelf full of undiscovered “My Coke.”

I bought it all.

But eventually, the Coca-Cola people realized their mistake and returned to the recipe I had grown to love. But more importantly, eventually I began to reduce my “POP” consumption to what it is now which is just occasional.

In June (2014), the New York State high court struck down New York City’s law banning the sale of super-sized sugary drinks, a very controversial initiative of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. You might have thought that extreme but when I was a kid, a typical bottle of Coke from a vending machine was 6.5 ounces……try to find something that size in a Seven Eleven today. And according to the Harvard School of Public Health:

• Two out of three adults and one out of three children in the United States are overweight or obese.
• The rising consumption of sugary drinks has been a major contributor to the obesity epidemic.
• A typical 20-ounce soda contains 15 to 18 teaspoons of sugar and upwards of 240 calories.
• In the 1970s, sugary drinks made up about 4% of US daily calorie intake; by 2001, that had risen to about 9%.
• From 1989 to 2008, calories from sugary beverages increased by 60% in children ages 6 to 11, from 130 to 209 calories per day, and the percentage of children consuming them rose from 79% to 91%.
• People who consume sugary drinks regularly—1 to 2 cans a day or more—have a 26% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes than people who rarely have such drinks.
• Nearly 30 million children and adults in the United States have diabetes and another 86 million Americans have pre-diabetes and are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes.

 

I remember when my kids were younger and active in sports, we thought we always had to pump them full of Gatorade. I guess kids aren’t the only ones who are influenced by advertising.

Something to think about.

Because November is American Diabetes Month.

 

Okay, so that was it.

Watch your “pop” intake this weekend.

Go run a “Turkey Trot.”

And have a Happy Thanksgiving.

 

If you would like more info about diabetes, visit the American Diabetes Association website.