"The Real Bears" Takes a Jab at the Coca-Cola Bears

By Ando Muneno Thu., Oct. 18 2012 at 6:00 AM

Categories: Wake Up Call

Screen Cap: CSPITV

Dr. Arctic Fox has a prescription for Mr. Polar Bear's diabetic complications. Unfortunately, it's not more cowbell.

Preempting Coca-Cola's polar bear themed holiday advertising campaign, the healthy eating advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest has launched a campaign aimed squarely at the lovable ambassadors of sugary delight. Their campaign called "The Real Bears," plays on the cute imagery of polar bears living an idyllic carbonated beverage filled life but with a dark twist.

Spoilers: The bears drink too much soda, get fat, develop bear diabetes and one of them ends up losing a foot over the matter. All this lovely stories are interspersed with information pertaining to how bad sugar and sugary beverages are for us.

Now the Center for Science in the Public Interest has been accused of being "the food police." They are strongly supportive of the New York City's soda ban so they have an obvious bone to pick with the soda industry.

But to be fair, science and common sense are on their side when it comes to the matter of "soda is probably bad for you." Their own fact sheet does a fair job summarizing the salient points. The point that sugar consumption directly causes type 2 diabetes is somewhat disputed but what isn't disputed is that if you suck down a bunch of calories you're going to get fat and if you get fat you're very likely going to develop diabetes. It doesn't matter if the calories come from soda, fried chicken, or triple bacon corn dog. That said, common sense would indicate that it's easy drink soda and we tend not to think of the calories in each can. If the average required calorie intake over an entire day is around 2,000 calories, it's easy to see how a couple 140 calorie sodas a day could really start to pack on the pounds.

Of course we've previously discussed that there is research showing that exposure to sodas, particularly the high fructose syrup they contain, could have some serious negative health consequences.

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