NEW YORK – The New York City Health Department has launched
an extension of its “Pouring on the Pounds” ad campaign, targeting sports
drinks, energy drinks, sweet tea and other sugary beverages, Advertising Age
reports.
The campaign will tap television and print, warning New
Yorkers about so-called health dangers of sugary beverages. Previous versions
of the campaign have targeted soda.
The new ads link sugar-sweetened beverages with type 2
diabetes and complications including
amputation, heart attack, vision loss and kidney failure. Outdoor
ads show a sports drink bottle that’s pouring globs of fat into a glass. The
ads encourage New Yorkers to replace sugary beverages with water, seltzer,
fat-free milk and fresh fruit.
“Sports drinks, energy drinks and fruit-flavored drinks
sometimes sound like they’re good for us, but they are contributing to the
obesity epidemic just as much as sugary soft-drinks,” said Health Commissioner
Dr. Thomas Farley.
The ads are meant to warn New Yorkers who “may mistakenly
believe that non-carbonated sugary drinks are healthy,” said the health
department.
Kevin Keane, a spokesman for the American Beverage
Association, referenced a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention that shows over a 12-year period, U.S. youth and adults lowered
their intake of sugar-sweetened beverages by 68 and 45 calories per day,
respectively. He said the city’s claims connecting sugary beverage consumption
and obesity don’t “add up.”
“This obsession that the New York City Health Department has
for beverages is really unhealthy, because it’s misleading New Yorkers. The
contribution of sugar-sweetened beverages to diets is small and declining, yet
obesity rates are going up,” Keane said. “The facts don’t match their
rhetoric.”