There aren’t billboards for cocaine, heroine and nyaope, which might be less addictive than sugar.But Coca-Cola billboards are everywhere. (Photo by Yoon S. Byun/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
It wasn’t so long ago that beautiful women were smoking cigarettes seductively on yachts floating across billboards. And it wasn’t too long before that, that doctors were endorsing a generous daily dose of Camel cigarettes.
In 1946, in response to growing concerns about lung cancer being associated with smoking, Camel launched an advertisement campaign, “More doctors smoke camels”. They funded the examination of hundreds of smokers’ throats and reported “not one single throat irritation”. Fast forward 77 years and we are dealing with a different advertising and health pandemic — sugar, addiction and a health care crisis.
I drive along the M1 towards Sandton every morning. The billboards are a source of satirical commentary. Buy more shoes, get less complicated insurance, feed a hungry child, eat something unhealthy. Coca-Cola’s snaps of a happy South African family partaking in a late night meal of Coca-Cola and pepperoni pizza takes the cake. They look almost elated, holding the secret to life in processed meat and refined sugar.
The suggestion that we consume these things after dark, when our metabolisms are at their slowest gets me even hotter under the collar. Burger King is not far behind. It’s everywhere. No one is glamorising eating your greens.
According to a 2022 report by the Western Cape government, more than 60% of South African women and 30% of men are obese. Being obese puts you at extremely high risk of diabetes, hypertension, depression and cardiovascular disease. After tuberculosis, these diseases kill more South Africans than any other.
And nearly a third of the global population is obese, with these figures almost tripling between 1975 and 2016.
Karen Hofman, of Wits University’s health department, writes, “Just a single sugary beverage per day increases a child’s chance of being overweight by 55%. Similarly, once they become an overweight teen, there is a 70% chance they will not be able to lose the weight in adulthood.”
The average grade four pupil consumes two sugary drinks a day with about nine teaspoons of sugar in each drink. The recommended daily allowance for children is six teaspoons a day in total, including sugar contained in fruit. Lower socio-economic status and level of education, along with having one obese parent, significantly increases the risk of a child being obese. Pair the current adult statistics with the sugary drink consumption and we are sitting on a time bomb.
(John McCann/M&G)
James Clear, a behavioural psychologist, often reinforces that one’s environment is more powerful than will power. It’s much easier not to drink a fizzy cool drink if you don’t have one. In a school audit done in 2019, nearly a third of schools were found to have Coca-Cola advertising on school grounds. In 2017, Coca-Cola pledged to stop marketing their drinks to children under the age of 12, promising to remove such products from primary schools and replace them with 100% juice and other low kilojoule alternatives.
It must be said that a box of 100% juice contains more sugar than a child’s daily recommended allowance too, often equivalent to a fizzy drink. This juice is not healthy. A Wits University audit in 2019, two years after Coke’s pledge, reflected 54% of schools stocking Coca-Cola and other fizzy cooldrinks on tuckshop shelves. It’s ironic that Coke’s tag line is “Refresh the world. Make a difference.”
The effect of this obesity pandemic on our already broken health care system is a crisis far worse and far more expensive than Covid-19.
It’s hard not to sound evangelical about this, but there are no advertisements on the highway for cocaine, heroin or nyope. We know that if we put rats in a cage and offer them sugar water or cocaine water, they choose the sugar.
Our sweet taste receptors evolved in a time when sources of sweetness were scarce and the exposure of these taste buds to refined, concentrated sugars give rise to a dopaminergic surge in the reward pathway of the brain. Inundation of our blood streams with surges of glucose, lead to dysregulation of our carbohydrate metabolism setting us on a path towards insulin resistance and diabetes. Once a person becomes insulin resistant, without a change in behaviour, they are on a certain and determined path towards becoming diabetic.
The complications of poorly managed diabetes are not limited to amputations, kidney failure, heart attack, depression and stroke.
The cost of obesity annually in this country is R33 billion. This represents 15.38% of government health expenditure. Imagine what we could do if we invested this in sustainable agriculture and education. These costs were calculated for people from the age of 15 and don’t consider childhood obesity.
Life has changed dramatically in the past 50 years. While innovation and technology surge, intuitive and insightful use of and respect for our magnificent human bodies diminishes. Organs bathed in a sugary soup are predictably maladaptive. We can help change this narrative by rehydrating ourselves and our families with water. We can demand more from schools, hospitals and organisations who dish out sugary, fizzy drinks and juices to their pupils, patients and employees daily. We can demand more from government regulations to protect us from harmful advertising.
Join my campaign on the war against sugar. We cannot rely on willpower; we are only human.
Skye Scott is a GP based in Sandton. She has a special interest in patient education, integrative medicine and mental wellbeing.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.