A Dietary Dilemma

by Alex J Allen

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Ever since companies in the food and drink industry have been told they must include accurate dietary information on their products, they're having to come up with better and better ways to make their death trap food seem healthy to shoppers. I bought a bottle of Dr Pepper the other day that contained '132 calories per portion, each bottle contains two portions'. Per portion? It's one bottle! It's no great secret that a bottle of Coke is just one fat person's portion. In no way do I believe that two people will huddle together drinking one bottle of Coke between them, any more than I believe that people actually eat one half of those Duo bars and save the other instead of sitting in front of the TV gorging themselves. By Coca Cola's logic, Moses' feeding of the five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish seems like a dietary overdose. Maybe there are people who have had a 2 litre bottle sitting in the fridge for the last year and found that to be more than enough because they've been sticking to the consumption guidelines, but I doubt it.

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Let's be clear here, even one can contains 26% percent of your daily sugar content, this isn't something you can just incorporate in to your day to day eating, it's grossly unhealthy! Look at the evidence! You can't just keep dividing it in to smaller and smaller portions until you can justify consuming it. 'Well, we recommend a thimble full a day, but if you want to drink five litres then we really can't stop you. We won't actually endorse doing it, and giant bottles are available in all good supermarkets, but we can't actually stop you. In Iceland, you can by three litre bottles, honestly, you can feel your teeth eroding just looking at them. Fair play, it isn't unreasonable to expect food and drink companies to not be keen on parting with the secrets of their products, most of them make grim reading. But the current system doesn't seem to work for anyone. Fatties that don't care what they eat or drink are going to continue regardless of the labels. People who actually calorie count can't work out what the hell is in what they're eating or drinking without a calculator. I've seen the future! The way to combat the healthy eating boom? Confusion! Spin a web of intriguing half truths! It can't fail.