Some people think
that I can be a real smart ass, I always say you should have known me when I
was younger. Growing up in angst can give a person a bitter tongue sometimes.
There was a time in my life, not too long ago, when I would talk to people
about drinking soda, and one of my favorite openings was, "I see you
drinking that Pepsi; how does it feel to pay Pepsi to kill you?" I love to challenge the idea that someone has
the right to do whatever they wish. But
after asking them this question I would usually get this perplexed or
incredulous look, as if they were saying, "Did this guy really just say
that to me?" I would just be standing there grinning at them, and then I
would explain to them how drinking soda was directly harming their body. That
crap is not meant to be inside of a human being. It is no different than
smoking cigarettes really. I have of course, used many other methods in an
effort to get those around me to quit drinking soda, but I have always
preferred to be direct.
It is difficult for
most, or maybe it is better to say that most just don't want to think about it
on a personal level. Most don't want to realize that they really don't like
themselves much if they were to stop and really think about it, because if they
did truly care, they would bend all of their energies to not harming themselves
at all. It is a nice and easy linear line after all, if drinking soda is bad
for you, and you drink soda, then you are harming yourself. From this it follows that you cannot truly
care about yourself and harm yourself at the same time, it doesn't work that
way. One or the other has to be untrue, and no matter how much energy you spend
trying to justify it, soda really is horrible for your mind and body. I am not talking about an occasional soda; I
am talking about the habitual soda consumption of America.
I have found this to
be an excellent way to judge how much a person truly cares about their self. By
how many harmful things they do that directly affects their personal well
being. The fewer harmful things a person has going on in their life, the more that
individual cares about themselves. I know this to be true because I can clearly
see it in myself. This is not a judgment; it is simply a matter of awareness of
one’s self. Of course, one must be able to admit supposedly negative things
about themselves, such as, "maybe I do not care about myself as much as I
would like to think I do or I really wouldn't put this crap in my body."
Most of the people I
have encountered, would say something like "Oh, it's not really hurting me
that badly," or "It's just one can of soda, I only drink one a
day." This is always funny to me, because it's out right denial; I would
see most of these people drinking soda every day, and usually it was two or
three. My personal favorites are the ones who complain about their body weight
while actually drinking a soda. And don't even kid yourself; diet soda is just
as horrible for you. There is not a single thing in a diet soda that your body
wants or needs; it's just a form of self-destruction.
There was a time in
my life when I drank a lot of soda. My favorite was Mountain Dew, the
'breakfast of champions' as I used to call it. First thing in the morning I
would drink a can of Mountain Dew. I would always buy cans because for whatever
reason the stuff tasted better to me out of a can. So I speak from personal
experience when I say that life is so much better without soda. I woke up one
day and realized I could do so much better than I had been doing. I came to
realize that I was harming myself.
There is a problem
here, because no one knows how to measure the negative impact of drinking soda
on our lives? How do we gauge the change in our mental and physical health due
to the fact of quitting drinking soda? I like to think that on a scale of 1 to
10, after giving up soda, it was a two point jump in my overall health. It
might be a little different for you, but I would say that it was at least a two
point jump. It really does make a big difference, to quit drinking soda,
because two points is a lot, and I really do feel that much better after giving
it up. If I were to drink a soda right now it wouldn’t take fifteen minutes and
I would be feeling sick and miserable. I did not need a scientist to tell me
this, or to tell me how much weight I would gain or lose, or how my blood sugar
would go up or down, or any other tidbit from a ‘scientific study’ that they
might have figured out so they can pass it along in a magazine or some book. If
a person has any awareness of their own body whatsoever they will know what I
am talking about. It does help to read about the negative effects of drinking
soda though, if one needs help convincing themselves to give it up.
Now let's adjust the
scale a bit. Change the measuring stick so to speak. Remember I am only one
individual, so let's add it up, let's take any given year that I was drinking
soda, and then compare that year to a year that I was not drinking soda. Collectively
how much better will I have felt in a year that I didn't drink soda, compared
to a year that I did drink soda? In that one year, the fact that it is a whole
two points better feeling on any given day without soda versus with soda; how
much of my 'feeling better' was lost to cans of Mountain Dew? How much money
was I giving to that soda company every year to make me feel bad?
How do I add this up
in order to truly get a sense of it?
I am only one
individual. So let's take it one step further. Can we add this up, this loss of
'feeling better,' in the millions who drink soda? How do you add up all of that
lost energy, and the total effect of that negative impact on our society?
In 2011 PepsiCo had
a gross profit margin of 58.3%, with a gross profit of 35.2 @%#$@*! BILLION!
In 2011 Coca Cola
had a gross profit margin of 67.3%, with a gross profit of 25.64 @%#$@*!
BILLION!
All hail the GDP.
Bow down and worship. From this perspective it seems greed and selfishness
rules the world. Between Pepsi and Coca
Cola a combined 60.84 billion dollars in profit, not sales, pure profit.
And yet not a single true benefit to our culture or lives really. Just feeding peoples sugar additions.
But can you see it?
This IS the measure. This is a direct
measure of how much 'not caring about oneself' is actually going on in the
world. And these are just two companies in a single industry! You see it is not
Pepsi that is the problem, it is the fact that so many people are unaware of
what they are doing, or they simply do not care about themselves enough to not
drink soda, or a combination of both, but really either way it is in ignorance,
the problem is; we buy their products.
What about children?
I do not even want to get started on this really. It is pretty simple to just
tell them "No, you cannot have a soda, that stuff is bad for you." As
if, at the end of your life, you would say, "You know, I am really glad I
drank all that soda, and I am even happier that I let children drink it."
Could it be, that you would be much more likely to say, "Wow, I am glad I
quit drinking soda, I felt so much better after having done that, so much so,
that it improved the quality of my life forever after?"
Add it up.
What about the
affect of this 'soda industry' on our environment? All the cans and bottles,
trucks, semi's, fuel, plastic bottles, cans, soda machines, refrigerators, the
electric usage, all the destruction of land for farming sugar, all the fresh
water ruined and polluted, I can go on and on. I would not even know where to
begin because I would be able to write a book about how this one industry has
ruined nature. For what purpose? So that
we can kill ourselves too? It does not
matter how we justify it, in reality we are harming ourselves and others. It is
like a double whammy! Not only are the people worse off for drinking soda, but
it is also ruining the environment. I cannot think about this too deeply
because I start to feel sick; the hippie in me starts freaking out. All hail
the mighty GDP. The land of where they do anything for a buck, even kill the
people they sell their products to.
Should I even touch
the impact on our health care system? Obesity, diabetes, sugar addiction, etc.
Please do not drink
soda; it is a fact that it harms you mentally and physically, and by not
drinking soda, every day you will be making the world better. You will be
better for it, and the earth will be better for it, literally.
The only way to put
them out of business is to stop purchasing their products.
We are
NOT helpless to
change the world, because it begins with us. Surely you have a mirror in
your house.
The only way to
improve the world is to improve oneself, and then after having done so, to pass
that along to those around you. What more can be asked of one?
It's not just
soda. It is damn near every product in
the store. It is fast food. It is all the restaurants that get their
products from virtually the same corporations.
It is our entire food chain.
For this to change
we are going to have to be proactive.
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