In other words, im trying to start a revolution with this book. And to use it as a way, as a manual for how to effect social change for food system issues, to promote health and to promote environmental sustainability in the food system. I had a lot of fun writing it. There was an extraordinary amount of literature available, allowing through the number of books that have been written about the soda industry actually turned out to be a pleasure as well because so many of them are extraordinarily outstanding works of scholarship. Histories, biographies of the leaders of the companies, books about the soda industry work in latin america. Its breaking of unions. The most amazing kinds of things, and reading this literature was really instructive. One of the things i didnt do when i was researching the book was to go to cocacola world in atlanta, but i made up for that last week. And i want to say just a few things about cocacola world in a way i wish id gone there while i was writing the book, and as i wish those New York Times articles came up while i was writing the book because cocacola is listening to all of the organizations that it funds, would have made my work much, much easier. I had some of that information but not all. But i came away from cocacola world which starts out where you were required to watch a film about how many of you have been there . Isnt it wonderful . You pay 16 to be marketed to for however long veterans are, and it starts out with a movie that is so touching and so emotionally, so deeply emotional that there isnt a single dry eye in the house, including mine, and the movie issuing moments of happiness in peoples lives. And extraordinarily touching. And then after you watch this and your kind of wiping her eyes, you go out and then see how cocacola has been marketed, go to exhibits about the history of the company, entit and then o up and taste all the products. That was revelatory because i tasted about, i dont know, maybe 5060 different cocacola products from all over the world. And i could see immediately with the companys problem is. Cocacola tasted better than all of them. So thats a big problem. Nowhere in cocacola world is a word about type two diabetes or the very strongly researched link between High Consumption of sugar sweetened beverages and others. You dont see anywhere. You also dont see anything about the Companies Marketing to children, marketing to africanamericans or hispanics, marketing to low income people, marketing overseas to developing countries, or any other ways to which the Companies Work behind the scenes to protect the environment of sales other products. This is what the book is about. The book is about how the soda industry markets to all of those different groups, the history of how it happened, how they are doing it now, and in many ways help advocacy is trying to fight back. And i ended up, i described these marketing techniques in the book into categories, what i call softball techniques and hardball techniques. When i came back from cocacola world i thought no, im really dealing with an industry that is schizophrenic, particularly the Cocacola Company which greatly dominates the industry. Cocacola is a schizophrenic company. On the one hand, its happiness and love and moments of emotional joy accompanied by cocacola. And on the other hand, its a company that is working behind the scenes to make sure that no legislator proposes a regulation thats going to restrict the sales of soda, that nobody does soda taxes, that nobody does caps on soda, something that we in the u. S. Lived through, and that there is nothing that will stop the company from selling its product over and over and over again. And i think of the company now has dr. Jekyll and mr. Heid. Theres the really nice dr. Jekyll who really cares about people and wants people to be happy and then theres mr. Heid who is trying to figure out every possible way in which you can spend millions of dollars to fight soda taxes or defied 16ounce soda cap that mayor bloomberg proposed in new york. For those of us who lived through that it was that stand to watch the soda industry in action. Cocacola, wasnt directly involved but it funds the American Beverage Association, which is the trade association for the soda industry, which is dominated by cocacola, ethical and to lesser extent doctor peppers snapple. But i saw what the industry did. First of all i got mailings to my home. That were labeled American Beverage Association so i knew they came from there. There were tv ads. There were planes flying overhead with banners. There were signs on the back of cocacola and pepsi truck same dont let the mayor tell you what to drink. There was an enormous lobbying effort. There were lawsuits, which interesting enough, the largest africanamerican and Hispanic Organization supported, maybe because the soda industry had been funding those organizations for many, many years. And there were ads in the paper, the famous ad in the newark times the famous blue mayor bloomberg in a blue dress. You dont want a nanny for me. Fortunately, bloomberg had a sense of humor so when he was asked about that and he said, i would never wear a dress like that, so unflattering. But they played tough. I would love to know the amount of money that the soda industry spent to defeat what was to me a pretty trivial measure. I actually thought a 16ounce soda cap was too high. They should have capped it at eight ounces. Nobody was telling people they couldnt buy 10, 16 a sosas 16ounce sodas if they wanted to. They put millions of dollars into fighting soda tax initiatives in places where there were elections, because they were elections had recorded by the money they were spinning so there you would note that in richmond, california, one of the poorest cities in richmond, they spent more than 2 million fighting the soda tax initiative. In berkeley and San Francisco which are richer communities they spent about 11 million altogether. Thats a lot of money, and had to sell a lot of cocacola or pepsi cola to fund those types of things. You also have to sell a lot of cocacola and pepsi to fund the salaries of the chief executives of those companies, which are in the order of 15 20 million a year. So these are corporations that behave like every other corporation, using the playbook of the Cigarette Companies, very, very similar to what the Cigarette Companies did following the playbook exactly. And while soda is not cigarette and then of the nutritionists into should care about and occasional 7. 5 al soda. Its the larger ones that are a problem. It still a corporate behavior that requires much, much more attention that i think it has gotten in the past and that is essentially why i wrote this book. So my point in writing it was advocacy. Because much of the book deals with out advocates have attempted and sometimes succeeded in getting full sugar sodas out of school. In causing Soda Companies did not market to children under 12 on, at least on television and put some restrictions on how the market to Young Children in other ways. And i should say that Young Children drink so much soda in this country that the department of agriculture is able to measure the amount of soda consumed by children aged two to five, after many instances of parents putting soda into baby bottles. This book is beautifully illustrated as oxford was very, very generous about letting me put pictures into. Its got pictures of soda baby bottles in it. One thing that ive learned that i had not known before was only half the population in the country drinks sodas, so the other half drinks lots more. And that the average consumption in the United States is between 1012 ounces a day per capita and that means men, women, and tiny babies. If have the population doesnt think any, then the other half is drink more than that. Thats the segment of the population that is most at risk for bad diets and the diseases that go with it. And the winning part of the subtitle of the book comes from the effectiveness of advocates in getting sodas out of school, and bringing attention to the issues, so much attention to the issues that the New York Times has had over the past couple of months pages, literally pages of the paper devoted to a discussion about cocacola funded researchers in colorado and other universities who are part of an organization devoted to arguing that you dont have to worry about how much soda you drink, all you have to do is be a little more active. I met with the president of cocacola north america last week as part of the fallout from that article in which the president of Cocacola International said that he was assigning the president of cocacola north america to go on a listening tour, to me with advocates and other people were concerned about the Public Health implications and soda consumptions and try to find out why everybody was so upset about it. And i was convinced at the end of our discussion that he is genuinely interested in Public Health. Hes a dr. Jekyll part of the soda company, and i thought he was not very aware of some of the other things that the company was doing, and i dont think he was lying to me. I think he lives in a corporate bubble, as many people in corporate communities to do. So the soda industry is going to have to change, and theres no question about that. Much of its practices have been exposed by advocates who talk to reporters and in other ways are moving these issues forward. And, of course, i very much hope that my book will add to that. He was aware of the book. He had not read it, bu but of te two people who came with them, one had read it and said very politely, it was a very well researched. So i think i will stop now and sort of take questions and comments, but before i do that i want to say one thing about the production of this book. For reasons that are complicated, it was especially difficult and there were many, many bumpy moments when it wasnt clear that oxford was going to take the book, or be able to take the book, get to the legal vetting and so forth. And i want to thank, you know, i want to thank everybody who is here today, the james beard foundation, the National Gourmet cook school, and i think slow food had something to do with this, too. Clark and marvin who of course have been marvelous and all the work weve done here. But i would take like to thank my editor, max. Max, would you mind coming up here, please . [applause] nobody deserves this more than max. I think you open it now. I think you open it right now. You can read the card later but you should open the book right now. Max sort of held my hand through all of this, kept assuring me that the problems that we were running into would be okay, that the book would come out all right, and its a beautiful book and it did come out all right and were both very proud of it. [laughter] this is a wonderful, thank you. [applause] and now i will answer questions. So we need you to speak, let us know who you are so youre kind of buy. Speak briefly and into the microphone. My colleague. In Public Health nutrition. Im wondering if youd comment on a very complicated [inaudible] for countries like mexico and provide ambulances to hospitals, et cetera. I know theres advocacy once a but even the government is very tempted to do nothing about the giant coke problem because its getting yet, the New York Times article about the funding of these researchers was greeted with such shock by the public who read those articles. People have no idea that Cocacola Company acted in that way, that the company decided that it would go public and it would be transparent about the organizations that it was funding. And get published on its website a list of the organizations that it funds, and its a staggering list. First of all the list goes on for pages and pages and pages. You scroll and scroll and scroll down and just to let the rest of the alphabet to go. And various analyses have been done of those organizations, and a great number of them are health organizations, hospitals, the American Academy, the academy for nutrition and dietetics, although that relationship has not been severed as a result of all of the fallout from this. The American Academy of pediatrics, the america americay of family practice. An extraordinary number of organizations. In the Art Community organizations largely devoted to either health, wellness or physical activity, an enormous number of minority organizations, africanamerican, hispanic, asian and so forth. Everyone of those organizations is able to do the kind of work he does because its getting money from cocacola. But at what price . And the price it seems to me as very high and the examples which i list in the book and discuss of organizations that were about to do antisemitic campaigns are drink less soda campaign, were given a gift and dropped the idea antisoda campaign. The Mexican Government is an isn interesting position because it passed a soda tax. In part to address could see groups overcome that are enormously skilled and in addition they had money from bloomberg philanthropy. They used that money very, very wisely and an evaluation of the campaign has just come out. I just got yesterday from Johns Hopkins and it says that soda sales are down. In which you dont know is whether they can because secular trends were because of the tax. But what the Soda Companies did after the tax was passed was to lower the price of soda in rural areas. But sales are still down. So maybe the secular trend will spread to mexico which has the highest per capital consumption. The government which is concerned about these things going to have to pay for a obesity and diabetes and all of these things, and their Health Care System is not prepared for it. So thats what sold them on it, that every Good Research and brilliantly done advocacy. Professor, id like to know your own childhood history with soda. And i also like to note since the advocacy has been effective against this new product, what would you like to see the next food product be, that would be attacked . Well, this one was an easy one. Its lowhanging fruit for a reason. Its sugars and water and nothing else. Everything else is more complicated. If youre going to go after mcdonalds, you can get nutritious food in mcdonalds. They may not be the best food in the world but to have vitamins, minerals. You can even get salads. Its a much more complicated target. I think in general portion size is what i would go after. I come from a very, very poor family that didnt have any money, and so there were no sodas when i was goin growing u. That wouldve been out of the question. We didnt have money to buy. Nobody cares about an occasional, they were 6. 5 announces when i was a kid. That was just so not a problem. It was a rare treat. Maybe a few times a year on kids birthday parties or Something Like that you might have been. It really wasnt until much later when the Company Started promoting much larger sizes that they became a problem. So it was a much later phenomenon so i missed it. The book sounds so exciting. I have a copy an account what to read it but since i havent read it im wondering about all these flavored waters. I think so many people, adults, parents are thinking if often not going to buy soda uncodified flavored waters. How do you feel about that . Is a good substitute . Is it another way of getting sugar in my . It depends on how much sugar they have. If you dont have any sugar theres no problem at all really. Sugar, thats the issue. The amount of sugar that is in soda is staggering. As the role of them its about a teaspoon per ounce. So if you have a 12ounce soda it will have 10 teaspoons of sugar. Thats packets of sugar. You sit there with your 12ounce cup and deport 10 of these things in there. Its a glucose tolerance test. People have no concept of the amount of sugar that center. You cant taste it. You dont realize its like that. And metabolism just is not set up to deal with that amount of sugar come in any form that is absorbed rapidly. There are even studies that say that sugars are absorbed from jellybeans more slowly than the are from sodas so youre better off eating candy. Nobody would let their kid, nobody that i know, would let their kids eat candy all day long, or just many times a day. Candy is to treat the soda is treated as a substitute for water, or as water ought to be a substitute for water. Kids should get used to Drinking Water when they are thirsty. Im a purist. Im going to ask you one. Not long ago a magazine top 10 enemies list and you were right after osama bin laden. [laughter] things worked out better for you than it did for him, but so far. So far. Speak about the Restaurant Industry and how they what respond you expect this to be. Nobody knows who was behind the bloomberg as a nanny advertisement in the near times. It came from the center of freedom which is a Public Relations organization in washington that is very secretive about who funds it, but the leading guess is it was a National Restaurant association. Which is very eager to have sodas. One of the things i talk about in the book is a campaign that the soda industry ran called tap the tap, that may still be going on because when somebody wrote about it over websites on it and all of a sudden the websites are gone. They were going there very quickly. But this was a campaign to try to sell soda to people rather than water at restaurants. The reason for that is because soda is very profitable when theyre not in bottles or cans and i poured out of one of those devices. As they will put some they cost about 2 cents an ounce. So if you buy a 20ounce soda it costs whoever is selling it to you 40 cents and you are paying a lot more than 40 cents. I have tables about what sodas cost atteberrys Movie Theater in new york and its kind of breathtaking, the profits are staggering. So of course restaurants are going to be opposed to any discussion about drinking less of soda. Im a visiting scholar in your department. So were talking to all of these kind of positive and responsible things that cocacola is doing from infrastructure to support all these Health Related organizations. I guess i cant help wonder if thats cheaper and easier than just changing their model in a way that will affect them in the long run speak with i think they are trying to change their the Business Model. They are trying very hard. Sales are down. Let me say it again. They are not only down, they are down to where they were more than 1520 years ago. Seriously down, and we live in a corporate environment in which the buzzword is growth. Corporations have to grow. At the cocacola made money last year, and it made money from selling the small cans because they can charge more for them. So part of their Business Model is to vote the little cans, the adorable once with your names on it. I have one that says marion and ive one that says love the they got at a wedding. I thought that was really cute. But they can charge more for them. They are charging more for them. They putting enormous amount of money advertising to small cans, and if people will pay more for a smaller cans, they are really happy to sell them. They made money last year doing that. They also are looking as hard as they can or an artificial sweetener that will taste good and not get peoples chemicals and tenant going. Right now sails of diet sodas are down also, although not as much as the full sugar sodas. So theyre just desperately looking for something that will be healthier. They are not opposed to Public Health, they just need to sell product, a lot of it. So the question is what you are willing to buy, and that also is there. So it goes with ways, and they are in business to sell product. They are not a social Service Agency, and expecting to be a social Service Agency doesnt really make sense. On the other hand, they cant advertise their cells as well as companies and expect to get away with it, and thats part of the problem, too. Im from nyu school of medicine. What in your perception is the ideal relationship of the industry with positive change . So, a specific are saying they will be more transparent, that they want to help be part of the discussion. Sure they have a seat at the table in terms of policy change, and what you that look like . Its a really tough question to answer, which is why you asked it, thank you very much. I dont have to be at the table with the soda industry. I think the minute, remember this is a dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde company. So are you at the table with dr. Jekyll or are you at the table with mr. Hyde . I think you are at the table with dr. Jekyll into only going to get half the story. In speaking, im in favor of small portions, have one, thats great. And in favor of them promoting Public Health initiatives but then they got to turn off the mr. Hyde park. They have to stop funding antiPublic Health initiatives. Most about most of what i want them to do begins with the word stop and thats not a very attractive would have a conversation with the company i want you to congratulate them on all the good they are doing. So its very hard when you are at the table with dr. Jekyll to keep thinking about whats going on behind the scenes to get a big about whats going on behind the scenes. We have another question here and again please stand up and tell us your name. Lynn ripley. I was wondering whether you would come and view of what you choose it in particular with respect to one intend to go in a better direction, whether he would support prospective where you would go after the stock . We have used that kind of approach where companies divested itself of stocks from companies who didnt behave in a socially responsible way. You are speaking at a cocacola campus your nyu is a cocacola campus. Only cocacola products are sold through. Pepsico has to do with City University of new york were only ethical products are sold. This is a Student Activist kind of program that has to come about, and there has to be a real push for that, i think grassroots bottomup. Its not something that i think can come top down obviously. But those techniques sometimes work. The real question is what you want to companies to do and not do. I wanted to stop marketing to children at all in any way. Not just on childrens cartoon television. I want them to stop fighting Public Health initiatives, and you know, organized a boycott. Thats a difficult thing to do in the current political situation. The student body here tried to get involved with anticocacola initiatives and didnt get, they got it off the campus for some period of time and then its back. Theres a group called killer coke that i talk about in the book. They are based in brooklyn, and the guy who runs it is a guy named ray rogers, and he bought one share of cocacola, and that gives him the option to go to meetings where he causes no end of while. So thats a possibility, by one share of cocacola and use it and do that. But students, if youre here, you could think about these things. I dont think im allowed to push back. We can erase that part spirit is just a thought. Two things. One, the book is on sale by the New York University bookstore right there and marion will be happy to sign it. Also the recession will be in the gallery down at the end of the hall, editing its good to be quite extraordinary. Marion, any less worthy of to give us to march forth speak with yes. Go out and advocates. It works. [applause]