The New York Board of Health versus McDonald’s and Coca-Cola

According to Beverage Digest, foun­tain sales (ver­sus pack­aged) make up about 24 per­cent of the 9.3 bil­lion cases of soda sold each year, or $18 bil­lion in a total mar­ket worth $75.7 billion.

Coca-Cola will be espe­cially impacted by cup size lim­its, as that com­pany con­trols 70 per­cent of U.S. foun­tain sales, fol­lowed by Pepsi with 19 per­cent and Dr Pepper Snapple with 11 percent.

While it’s obvi­ous that the soda indus­try would be on the defense, largely miss­ing from the debate so far has been the role of the fast food and restau­rant indus­try as a sig­nif­i­cant dri­ver of soft drink sales. (Due to legal con­straints, the city’s soda pro­posal would only apply to food ser­vice estab­lish­ments and not retailers.)

The fast food indus­try has got­ten plenty of flak for push­ing a diet of cheese­burg­ers, French fries, and other highly processed pseudo-foods, but they should also be rec­og­nized as a major pur­veyor of sug­ary beverages.

For exam­ple, McDonald’s should be held account­able for its role in allow­ing the creep­ing up of cup sizes from a rea­son­able 7 ounces in 1955, to the cur­rent large of 32 ounces (310 calo­ries for Coke), a more than 4-fold increase. Even a child size at 12 ounces is almost twice as large as the original.

The fast food king has already expressed its dis­plea­sure with cup size lim­its, sug­gest­ing instead “a more col­lab­o­ra­tive and com­pre­hen­sive approach.”

No won­der, since Edward Jones esti­mates that five per­cent of McDonald’s rev­enue comes from soft drinks. Last year, McDonald’s rev­enue reached a record $27 bil­lion; there­fore at least $1.35 bil­lion came from beverages.

That fig­ure may be an under­es­ti­mate because accord­ing to the research firm Technomic, car­bon­ated soft drinks account for about 10 per­cent of fast-food and fast-casual restau­rants sales in the U.S.

Factor in the profit mar­gins on such beverages—estimated to top 90 percent—and as Ad Age noted, “the poten­tial impact on the bot­tom line becomes clear.”

Whatever the fig­ures, the money at stake here is huge—for both the bev­er­age indus­try and the fast food industry.

This explains why among those listed as alleged “New Yorkers for Beverage Choices” are not only the major soft drink com­pa­nies but numer­ous restau­rant chains, includ­ing: Carls’ Jr, Chick-Fil-A, Domino’s Pizza, Hardee’s, and of course, the National Restaurant Association, whose mem­bers include McDonald’s.

That trade group, along with its net­work of state restau­rant asso­ci­a­tions, boasts more than 200 national, state, and local lob­by­ists. The restau­rant indus­try has fought against every com­mon sense nutri­tion pol­icy over the decades, includ­ing menu label­ing and reg­u­lat­ing mar­ket­ing to children.

Speaking of chil­dren, the down­siz­ing of soft drinks will have an impor­tant impact on them as well. Children learn accept­able stan­dards by what appears nor­mal. McDonald’s has been teach­ing kids that super­sized fries, Big Macs, and large sodas are A-OK. By bring cups down to size, chil­dren get a bet­ter message.

And that’s another rea­son McDonald’s and the rest of the fast food indus­try is team­ing up with the soft drink lobby to stop this pro­posal. They don’t want kids to grow up think­ing 16 ounces is nor­mal, because that means set­ting kids up for a life­time of saner (and health­ier) drink­ing habits.

Industry also knows that if lim­its are enacted in New York City, it’s only a mat­ter of time before other cities around the nation fol­low Mayor Bloomberg’s lead.

Get ready for the next front group to pop up in your area, but don’t fall for it. Instead, let’s tell McDonald’s and Coca-Cola that enough is enough.

Michele Simon

Michele is a pub­lic health lawyer who has been research­ing and writ­ing about the food indus­try and food pol­i­tics since 1996. Visit her site at www.EatDrinkPolitics.com/