California lawmaker wants warning labels on sugary drinks

Sodas and most other sugar-sweetened drinks sold in California would be required to carry warning labels for obesity, diabetes and tooth decay under a bill introduced in Sacramento on Thursday and backed by several public health advocacy groups.

The first proposal of its kind would put California, which banned sodas and junk food from public schools in 2005, back in the vanguard of a growing national movement to curb the consumption of high-caloric beverages that medical experts say are largely to blame for an epidemic of childhood obesity.

A growing body of research has identified sugary drinks as the biggest contributors to added, empty calories in the American diet, and as a major culprit in a range of costly health problems associated with being overweight.

More than a third of all U.S. adults and nearly 17 percent of children between the ages of 2 and 19 are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Efforts to curtail consumption of sugary drinks through taxes and other efforts have met fierce resistance from the U.S. food and beverage industry, which came out against the California labeling bill on Thursday.

"It is misleading to suggest that soft drink consumption is uniquely responsible for weight gain. In fact, only 4.0 percent of calories in the average American diet are derived directly from soda," CalBev, the California arm of the American Beverage Association, said in a statement on Thursday.

WHAT IS A SUGARY DRINK? In this policy brief, a sugary drink is defined as any beverage that has added calories from sweeteners - referred to as "added caloric sweeteners" or "added sugars." All such sweeteners are considered to be sugar or sugars, regardless of manufacturers' efforts to disguise them with complicated or atypical terms. Common sugary drinks are regular (non-diet) sodas, sports drinks, bottled teas, fruit-flavored drinks, juice cocktails, vitamin-fortified juice drinks, vitamin waters and energy drinks.

(Beverages labeled as "juice drink," "juice beverage" or "juice cocktail" are not 100 percent fruit juice and typically contain added caloric sweeteners.)

Foods other than soda do account for most of the overall calories Americans ingest. But unlike calories from sugary drinks, food calories often are bound to protein, vitamins, fiber and other things of nutritional value, experts said.

State Senator Bill Monning, who sponsored the warning label bill and whose effort to push a state tax on sugary drinks died last year, said the new measure was crafted in such a way as to address criticism leveled at other measures.

During debate over a proposed soda levy, the industry asserted that the public needed education about sugar, not another tax and derided his legislation as an example of California assuming the role of a "nanny-state."