An Urban's Rural View

During the last century's last three decades, Americans' consumption of soda soared and their waistlines expanded. Coincidence? Hardly, experts on health and nutrition said.

They were sure the population's increasing fondness for sugary drinks contributed to its growing girth. Frightened by the impact of obesity on health-care costs, they proposed a raft of reforms, from imposing soda taxes to removing sodas from school vending machines.

Knowing this, readers of The Wall Street Journal might have been surprised to read that the big three soda companies -- Coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper -- are struggling to cope with declining soda consumption (http://tinyurl.com/…).

After 30 years of up, up, up, soda sales in stores these last eight years have been down, down, down. The companies kept their revenue rising by raising prices, but this last year even that failed. Revenue, the Journal reported, fell 0.6%, while sales by volume were down 1.8%. In the last 12 weeks of last year the decline accelerated, with sales down 2.5% from a year earlier in dollar terms and 2.8% by volume.

As a newspaper serving shareholders, the Journal focused on what the companies are doing to protect their bottom lines -- developing juices, waters and other drink products; pushing soda sales overseas; devising diet sodas that taste more like their sugary cousins. What I wondered, though, was how a continuation of the downtrend would affect the war against obesity.

Might policymakers conclude they didn't need to discourage soda consumption because the problem is taking care of itself? Or might they change tactics, eschewing taxes and emphasizing education instead, on the assumption that people are imbibing less because they've read that a 12-ounce cola contains the equivalent of nine teaspoons of sugar? Or might they decide to push the trend along and bombard sodas with all the policy weapons at their disposal?

The Journal article shed no light on questions like these, contenting itself with the observation that "Sugary bubbles have become a lightning rod in the U.S. for consumer health concerns." Nor have I seen anti-soda campaigners taking note of the popping of the soda-pop sales bubble. But at some point they will have to.

However they spin it, the numbers suggest that sodas have reached and passed a turning point in their product life history. Sodas may well be the cigarettes of the future, destined for decades of decline until someday only a small percentage of the population uses them. Policymakers may be able to speed up that trend, but forces in society we only imperfectly understand now seem to be pushing us in that direction regardless of what policymakers do.

Urban C. Lehner

urbanize@gmail.com