美国的食品政策

How to wage war against “Big Soda”

如何发动对“软饮料”的战争

Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning). By Marion Nestle. Oxford University Press; 508 pages; $29.95 and £19.99.

软饮料策略：对付软饮料（然后取得胜利）。作者马里昂•奈斯特。牛津大学出版社。508页。29.95美元，19.99英镑。

    MARION NESTLE’S heavyweight polemic against Coca-Cola and PepsiCo comes at an odd moment for the industry. Americans are drinking fewer sugary sodas—in 2012 production was 23% below what it had been a decade earlier. Even sales of diet drinks are losing their fizz, as consumers question the merits of artificial sweeteners. From one angle, it would seem that health advocates such as Ms Nestle have won. Yet in America companies still produce 30 gallons of regular (not diet) fizzy drinks per person per year. In many countries, particularly developing ones, consumption is on the rise.

    软饮料工业正处不尴不尬之际，马里昂•奈斯特对口可口可乐以及百事可乐的抨击颇具影响力。越来越少的美国人选择饮用含糖碳酸饮料—-与十年前相比，2012年含糖碳酸饮料的生产减少了23%。人们甚至也失去了对膳食饮料的亲睐，因为消费者们对饮料中是否添加人工甜味剂提出了质疑。从某个角度来看，像奈斯特女士这样的健康倡导者似乎赢得了胜利。然而，美国软饮料公司每年生产的常规碳酸饮料（而非膳食饮料）人均多达30加仑。在许多国家，尤其是发展中国家，常规碳酸饮料的消费仍呈上涨趋势。

    Ms Nestle, a professor at New York University, is both heartened by recent progress and dissatisfied with it. That is no surprise. Her first book, “Food Politics” (2002), remains a bible for those who bewail the power of food companies. In her new book she attacks the industry’s most widely consumed, least healthy product. “Soda Politics”, she says, is a book “to inspire readers to action”. As a rallying cry, it is verbose. When readers learn on page 238 that she will pick up a particular subject in chapter 25, it is with no little dismay that they realise they are only on chapter 17. But what the author wants most is to craft a meticulous guide to the producers’ alleged transgressions, and how to stop them.

    对于最近取得的进展，奈斯特女士，这位纽约大学的教授颇受鼓舞，但并不满足于此。这也不足为奇。她的第一本书“粮食政策”依旧被那些哀叹食品企业权势的人们奉为经典。在新书中，奈斯特女士对软饮料行业消费最广，最有害健康的产品进行了抨击。《软饮料策略》这本书旨在激励人们采取行动，奈斯特说到。然而作为战斗口号，却显得颇为繁冗。读者们在第238页了解到奈斯特将在第25章讲述一个特别的主题，却意识到自己才看到第17章，但他们并没有因此而沮丧。作者最想做的是拟定一份详细的指南，指出生产商曾经的过失，并想方设法阻止他们的这种行为。

    Ms Nestle says she would have no quibbles with sweet fizzy drinks if they were sipped occasionally, as a treat. However, for millions of people in many countries, they are not. In Mexico companies sold 372 cans of fizzy drinks per person in 2012. About half of Americans do not drink them regularly, but those who do are disproportionately poor, less educated, male, Hispanic or black. Ten per cent of Americans down more than four cans a day.

    奈斯特说如果人们只是在吃饭招待的时候偶尔饮用加了甜味剂的碳酸饮料，她不会提出异议。但实际上许多国家，成千上万的人们都在喝这种饮料。2012年，仅墨西哥人均消费的碳酸饮料就高达372罐。大约一半的美国人不会经常性地饮用碳酸饮料，但是那些选择碳酸饮料的人多半是些穷困潦倒，未接受良好教育的西班牙或者黑人男性。百分之十的美国人平均每天要喝掉至少4罐碳酸饮料。

    Drinking a lot of sweet fizzy drinks is plainly unhealthy. Unlike a Big Mac, they have no nutritional value; nor do their calories satisfy hunger. One large study found that for each can added to a person’s daily diet, the risk of diabetes jumped by 22%. There are also links between sugar and heart disease, stroke and cancer. Drinking lots of sodas imposes clear costs on individuals, Ms Nestle argues, but it has a broader cost, too. American taxpayers subsidise corn production (and thereby corn syrup) and let the poor use government food vouchers to buy fizzy drinks. More important, taxpayers foot the health bill for those who develop chronic disease.

    很显然，过度饮用碳酸饮料对身体健康是有害的。与巨无霸不同的是，这些碳酸饮料毫无营养价值，它们产生的热量也无法抵抗饥饿。一项大型研究表明，如果在日常饮食中加入碳酸饮料，那么人们罹患糖尿病的风险就会增加22%。心脏病，中风以及癌症与过多的糖分摄入不无关系。奈斯特说，大量饮用碳酸饮料会增加个人开支，但实际上个人花费要远大于此。美国的纳税人为玉米生产做出了贡献（也就是为玉米糖浆的生产做出了贡献），同时，他们让穷人用政府提供的食品券来购买碳酸饮料。更重要的是，纳税人为那些罹患慢性疾病的人支付医疗帐单。

    Encouraging people to drink fewer fizzy drinks, however, is fiendishly difficult. Soda companies spend billions on marketing; it is a tribute to the admen that Coca-Cola is one of the world’s best-loved brands, despite selling what is essentially fattening sugar-water. (Think of Coca-Cola’s encouragements to “open happiness” and PepsiCo’s exuberant spokeswoman, Beyoncé Knowles.) Once people get used to consuming sugary drinks, they are loth to give them up. There is evidence suggesting that sugar is addictive—some laboratory animals prefer sugar to cocaine.

    然而，鼓励人们尽量少喝碳酸饮料却出奇的难。碳酸饮料企业在营销上花费巨资。尽管可口可乐售卖的实际上是令人增肥的糖水饮料，但可口可乐无疑是世界上最受消费者青睐的品牌之一。而这对于广告人而言，是件可喜可贺的事情。（想想可口可乐颇具鼓动性的广告语“开启幸福”，百事可乐活力四射的代言人碧昂丝•诺利斯。）人们一旦习惯了消费含糖饮料，便很难戒掉。有证据表明食糖是会上瘾的—-与可卡因相比，实验室的动物们更喜欢食糖。

    Most interesting, fizzy-drink companies are skilled at swatting away attempts at regulation. Ms Nestle describes an extraordinarily broad team of allies. That includes obvious friends, such as employees, bottlers and distributors, as well as the restaurants, cinemas, shops and sports stadiums that sell their products. But the companies are also astute philanthropists. When Michael Bloomberg, then mayor of New York, tried to block the use of government vouchers to buy sodas in 2010, the congressional black caucus was among those to lobby against it. The caucus’s foundation has received money from both Coke and Pepsi. In 2011 Philadelphia was considering a soda tax. After the soda lobby offered a big donation to the city’s children’s hospital, the idea fizzled out.

    更有趣的是，碳酸饮料企业对规避规范化的尝试颇有一套。奈斯特将其描述为一个非比寻常的庞大联盟。很显然，这个联盟包括了这些企业的盟友们，比如雇员，瓶装工，经销商，那些出售他们商品的饭店，电影院，商店以及体育场。但这些碳酸饮料企业同时也是非常精明的慈善家。2010年，当时的纽约市市长迈克尔•布隆伯格试图阻止人们用政府代金券购买碳酸饮料，但却遭到了包括美国国会黑人同盟在内的多数人的反对。2011年，费城考虑是否要征收碳酸饮料税，但在碳酸饮料游说集团出资捐助了一家当地的儿童医院之后，这项提议未能实施。

    Coca-Cola and PepsiCo do have a few notable adversaries. Mr Bloomberg, a billionaire, remains their single biggest foe. It is telling that in two rare instances when a soda tax has been passed—in Berkeley, California and in Mexico—it was with the help of cash from Mr Bloomberg. Drinks companies must also reckon with a small army of health advocates, among which Ms Nestle is a major-general.

    可口可乐和百事可乐确实有一些颇为出名的对手。布隆伯格，这位亿万富翁是他们最大的对手。据说在两个颇为罕见的通过征收碳酸饮料税的例子中—-一个是加利福尼亚的伯克利市，另一个是墨西哥—-都是在布隆伯格的资金帮助下通过了碳酸饮料税法案。饮料公司还得去对付那些以奈斯特为首的健康军团。

    With the slow decline of soda in America, she and her allies are advancing. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are peddling healthier drinks, such as bottled water. However, as they try to face down a long-term threat while maintaining near-term profits, they are still pushing their syrupy fare.

    随着美国人慢慢地拒绝碳酸饮料，奈斯特和她的盟友们正向成功一步步迈进。可口可乐和百事可乐正忙于推销更健康的饮料，如瓶装水。然而，他们仍旧努力推动碳酸饮料事业的发展，试图在维持短期利润的同时，努力克服长期以来的威胁。

    Ms Nestle is impatient. To the casual reader, her suggestions can seem extreme. She writes enthusiastically about adorning soda cans with warning labels, such as pictures of a diabetic’s foot ulcer. She suggests that parents should teach their children about fizzy drinks by gently boiling down a Coke or a Pepsi into sludge, which sounds rather fun, and asking them to calculate the precise length of grocery shelves bearing sodas, which sounds less so. This zeal threatens to overshadow her stronger points: fizzy drinks offer no nutritional benefit and impose clear costs—on individuals’ health and on society.

    奈斯特女士可没那么好的耐心。对于一般的读者，她给的建议似乎很极端。在书中她强烈建议碳酸饮料瓶上面必须贴有糖尿病患者脚部溃烂诸如此类的警示标志。她建议父母们在向孩子们介绍碳酸饮料时，将可口可乐和百事可乐说成是垃圾，这看上去颇为有趣，并要求孩子们去算算杂货店摆满碳酸饮料的货架究竟有多长，这听上去似乎没那么好笑了。这份热情让斯耐特关于碳酸饮料的观点显得不那么重要了：碳酸饮料没有任何营养价值，对个人的健康没有好处，而且还增加了社会的负担。