Sodas in schools are slowed

Last year, former President Bill Clinton and the American Heart Association got the major players in the soft drink industry to agree to lower calories in drinks supplied to schools and to stop most soda sales by the 2009-2010 academic year.

How are they doing so far?

The American Beverage Association says drinks shipped by Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo and Cadbury Schweppes to U.S. schools last year had 41% fewer calories than in 2004 and soft drink distributors are one-third of the way toward complying.

"All the marketing and sales teams needed to be trained, new container sizes had to be made, drinks were reformulated, vending machines were changed," association president Susan Neely told Bloomberg News. "We hit every marker. We're completely on track to meet our 100% commitment two years from now."

Soda makers have agreed to sell only water, juice, tea and certain drinks with 100 calories or fewer at schools. Soda makers have collectively spent "millions of dollars" to create new 8-ounce and 10-ounce bottles for sweet tea and juice to meet the guidelines, Neely told Bloomberg, without giving more specific figures. They also had to reconfigure vending machines to handle smaller bottles, instead of the 20-ounce containers most machines carry.

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Evian for meals and ... music?

Evian has come up with this new bottle design, aimed primarily at pushing its water in fine-dining establishments. The French company calls it the "palace" bottle.

To help move the idea along, it's being used with the phrase "Your first course just came trickling down the Alps."

I'm not much for bottled water, unless I'm traveling in areas that feature dysentery, but I do like the Evian Web site. Go to this page on it and learn how to score your own music with the click of a mouse. It's fascinating.

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Sprite in ice, rather than on it

The Coca-Cola Co. may be trying something new with its Sprite soft drink in the United Kingdom.

The company is "considering the launch of revolutionary new packaging that will create ice inside a soft drink when it is opened," according to the UK publication Marketing Week.

The magazine, quoting "industry sources," said the bottled drink has to be stored "in a purpose-built, developed vending machine that keeps the drink at a certain temperature. When it is purchased, the consumer twists the bottle, which triggers a mechanism inside that creates ice made from the drink, so it is not diluted."

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Colas not the kings of caffeine

If you're watching your caffeine intake from soft drinks, don't think avoiding colas will help.

A study conducted by food researchers at Auburn University found caffeine content in 12-ounce sodas ranged from 4.9 milligrams for a store brand of cola to 74 milligrams in Vault Zero, a citrus drink.

The federal Food and Drug Administration says a 0.02% caffeine content is generally recognized as safe for cola-type beverages.

"I don't really take a stand on whether caffeine is good or bad, but I do think the consumer has a right to know what they're getting," said Leonard Bell, one of the researchers.

David Schardt, senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the organization first asked the FDA 10 years ago to require that food and drink labels show the caffeine content. He noted:

"People should be able to monitor their intake and to make informed choices because it can affect their sleep and can make some people jittery."

The study analyzed the caffeine contents of 56 national brand and 75 store brand carbonated drinks. It was published in the August issue of the Journal of Food Science.

Caffeine content of well-known national brands include:

• Coca-Cola, 33.9 milligrams
• Diet Pepsi, 36.7 milligrams
• Pepsi-Cola, 38.9 milligrams
• Dr Pepper, 42.6 milligrams
• Diet Dr Pepper, 44.1 milligrams
• Diet Coke, 46.3 milligrams
• Mountain Dew, 54.8 milligrams
• Diet Mountain Dew, 55.2 milligrams

The American Beverage Association says that, by comparison, a 12-ounce cup of coffee has between 156 and 288 milligrams of caffeine, and the same amount of tea has 30-135 milligrams.

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