Soft Drinks (page37)

It's the good ol' summertime and you can't blame the Chicago Sun-Times for celebrating the growing array of frosty, frothy coffee drinks now available. Enter the killjoys from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI): "Most of us don't need those extra calories. Plain coffee has virtually no calories. But if you add a little sugar, you're talking 16 to 20 calories per spoonful. And these 32 ounce beverages -- good grief, that's a lot to be consuming."

The war against choice continues in the nation's school system as a hundred of the leading nanny groups call on Congress to invalidate contracts signed between soda and snack food industries and local school districts.

A new study contending that girls who drink soda aren't getting enough milk and are therefore more likely to break bones continues to get press, despite the fact that the study does not specify how much soda or milk girls that break bones drink. The media has also yet to pick up on the fact that the study's author, Grace Wyshak, works with Center for Science in the Public Interest sympathizer and anti-soda activist Walter Willett.

The Sugar Association blasts the anti-choice nannies from the CSPI: "An organization calling itself the 'Center for Science in the Public Interest' cannot repeatedly misuse science and issue misleading statements in its attempts to influence public policy without being held accountable. It's time for CSPI to begin to live by the same standards of accuracy and responsibility that they so vehemently demand of others."

The idea that coffee and caffeine are addictive drugs along the lines of heroin and crack continues to get press, this time at the Pennsylvania State University school paper.

Good Morning America's Charles Gibson introduced a segment yesterday with model Cindy Crawford by telling the audience how Cindy had spent some time with a group of women who want to "kick a habit that has been brewing in every city across the board." What is the evil habit these poor women are trying so hard to break? "Caffeine addiction."

Despite numerous peer-reviewed studies attesting to coffee's safety and benefits, British journalist Jane Clarke goes bonkers over your morning cuppa java. She cites many of CSPI's baseless complaints against caffeine and declares "[C]affeine is capable of completely undermining your body's natural state of well-being." ("Body & mind: a mug's game," The Observer, 4/2/00.)

The Center for Science in the Public Interest's fatally flawed "liquid candy" report on soda pops up once again. This time, it's an article that cites CSPI's junk science on soda at length, making wrongful accusations that school officials promote teenage obesity, caffeine addiction, attention-deficit disorder, anxiety and sleeplessness by accepting soda makers' support for school programs. In 1998, CSPI issued a retraction for the bad data in their attack on carbonated beverages, but the flawed "study" keeps showing up.

ABC's 20/20 news magazine recycled a false CSPI claim that teen boys consume three cans of soda a day. Although CSPI retracted their 100% overstated statistic back in 1998, ABC joined many other media organizations who used the nannies' more dramatic - and utterly false - statistic.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest's (CSPI) media campaign against sugar surfaced once again in a "breaking" story linking sugar and tooth decay. CSPI has been railing against sugar in an attempt to get the Federal government to impose labels on products with added sugar.