Instead of sugary drinks, you’ll now find refreshments like water, soy milk, and juice in San Francisco’s public vending machines. It’s all part of the city’s new effort to fight obesity. The policy bans sugary beverages, including non-diet sodas, sports drinks, and artificially sweetened water from vending machines on city property. Juice has to be made of 100 percent fruits or vegetables with no added sweeteners. And diet sodas can be no more than 25 percent of the choices in the vending machines.

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For the fifth year in a row, soft drink sales are down in the U.S. A report in Beverage Digest shows the carbonated soft-drink market slipped 2.1 percent in 2009. The two big brands both fell – Coca-Cola went down 4 percent and Pepsi dropped 5.5 percent. Soft drink sales are also way down in schools.

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Are the efforts of grassroots groups like this one to get junk foods out of schools finally paying off? Pepsi just announced it will remove its full-calorie, sugary drinks from schools around the world over the next two years. The World Heart Federation has been talking with soft drink makers about removing soft drinks from schools to help fight the rise in childhood obesity.

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We’ve heard the talk before about a ‘fat tax’ on sugary beverages in the U.S. as a way to fight the obesity epidemic. Now New York leaders are pushing for it, saying that soft drinks are to blame for the rise in obesity in this country. They want soft drinks to be treated like tobacco so that the government can price people away from their bad habits.

What do you think? Should sugary drinks be taxed?

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With so many reports like this one showing the health problems in children because of obesity, it’s good to see efforts to turn things around. A new study shows a program aimed to sell healthier drinks in U.S. schools has helped cut the amount of full-sugar soft drinks in schools by 95 percent compared to 2004. Many health experts believe non-diet soft drinks are a big source of extra calories and that they are helping to fuel the obesity epidemic.

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Gross, gross, gross! When researchers took 90 samples from soda fountain machines in Virginia, they found nearly half of the drinks (soft drinks and water) tested positive for coliform bacteria – that means they might have fecal bacteria in them. That news is a bit tough to swallow… and I still haven’t gotten over the whole fecal matter on restaurant lemon wedges thing…

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Earlier this month, Coke announced it was going to display larger calorie information on its products. Now, it says it will sell 90-calorie mini cans of its soft drinks to help people manage their calories. The smaller pops will come in the Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta Orange, Cherry Coca-Cola and Barq’s Root Beer brands and will be sold in packages of eight. The new cans will launch in New York and Washington D.C. in December and are expected to hit stores nationwide early next year.

Personally, I don’t drink soft drinks, but I’m glad to see this option for people who do. What do you think of the smaller cans?

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Just how much do city kids eat at corner stores after school? A new study looked at the snacking habits at K-8 Philadelphia schools where half of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Results show children usually buy chips, candy and sweetened drinks, spend an average of $1 each time, and eat 350 calories worth of snacks at each visit. Researchers say 42-percent of the kids went to the corner stores twice a day which adds up to eating more than 3,500 calories – the number of extra calories it takes to gain a pound.

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As the push to tax soft drinks grows stronger, Coca-Cola’s products will list certain nutritional information more prominently. You’ll soon see calories-per-serving and servings-per-container details on the side of almost all of Coke’s products. The company says it hopes this will make it easier to get nutritional information quickly. But some critics say it’s just a way to try to prevent a possible tax on its products.

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