Much attention is given, perhaps rightly so, to the dramatic moments of 21st century life when people are rescued from certain death. A police officer nabs a shooter, a firefighter pulls a victim from a fire, a Coast Guard helicopter pulls up passengers from a capsized boat in stormy seas. They can be stirring scenes captured on video. And then there are the “miracles” of modern medicine when lives are saved — or at least greatly enhanced — by everything from new vaccines and therapies to miracle drugs and futuristic prosthetics. Kudos to the scientists. Even politicians get into the act when they pass legislation that addresses some clear public danger, such as taking illegal guns off the street or extending health insurance to the disadvantaged or simply authorizing new hospitals or schools. The benefits of such choices can last for decades. All these efforts to save lives are welcome, and they are tangible.
But what if saving lives weren’t just about dramatic rescues, exciting discoveries or major shifts in public policy? What if you could greatly improve and extend the lives of hundreds, if not millions of people, with much smaller and less obvious interventions — things as simple as offering good advice, a bit of education or maybe even changing how you stocked vending machines? Do such modest efforts really make a difference, or is it just feel-good stuff? In Howard County, Maryland, there’s been a nearly decadelong drive to accomplish one simple thing — to get county residents to buy and consume fewer sugary drinks. Recently, researchers did a little scorekeeping to find out whether it made a difference or not.
The result? It made a difference. A big one.
According to a study published earlier this summer in AJPM Focus (the journal of the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research and the American College of Preventive Medicine), a community-led campaign to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks in just six years significantly reduced sales of sugar-sweetened drinks in Howard County supermarkets. In the case of soft drinks by 29.7%. Meanwhile, the same study found sales of water increased. That means it’s reasonable to assume a lot of folks simply switched their beverage choice from sweetened to plain. The study isn’t perfect. It only looked at groceries, not convenience stores, but it carefully compared the results in Howard County to a similarly sized region in Pennsylvania that was used as a control group. This wasn’t the economy or fickle tastes at work, it was something else.
In Howard County, the strategy under the “Howard County Unsweetened” campaign was this: Make such drinks less easily accessible (in Howard County’s public schools, for example, student-accessible soda vending machines were removed from elementary and middle schools, and their high school selections were restricted) and better educate the public about the dangers of consuming a lot of sugary drinks. Pediatricians were advised to raise the subject with their patients. So were Medicaid providers. Ads ran on local cable stations, digital platforms and social media.
So, what good does it do to switch people, especially kids, away from full-strength Coke or Pepsi and to a bottle of water, sparkling or otherwise? As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health experts have observed, consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, including fruit juices, are associated with weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart and kidney disease, tooth decay and gout. Studies have suggested nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults consume at least one such drink each day. Such behavior doesn’t generally pose an immediate health threat (although it might for certain diabetics), but the consequences over time are serious. Does a healthier lifestyle cause people to live longer? Almost certainly. Exactly how long isn’t so obvious, but at least one long-term study suggested that drinking two or more such drinks per day raises the likelihood of a premature death by 21%.
The lesson here is not that sugary drinks are the root of all evil. They aren’t. But they are a major source of excess sugar, which poses a serious health risk. Sometimes saving lives requires dramatic action, and sometimes it requires taking little, sensible steps. Not all of us are fully aware of the risks involved, so educating the public and encouraging everyone to make better decisions about such things as food and drink, exercise and sleep, and other lifestyle choices pays off big in the long run.
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Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. They operate separately from the newsroom.
