Re: It's just a soda?

If you think that I can be a smart ass now, you should have known me when I was younger. If you were unfortunate enough to know me when I was younger then you know exactly what I am talking about. Growing up in angst can give a person a bitter tongue. There was a time in my life, not too long ago, when I would talk openly to people about drinking soda, right to their face. One of my favorite openings was, "I see you drinking that Pepsi; how does it feel to pay Pepsi to kill you?" After saying this 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 explain to them how drinking soda was directly harming their body and mind. That crap is not meant to be inside of a human being. It is poison. It is no different than smoking cigarettes. Of course, I have 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, so they never really go there. It can be terribly painful for most people to admit the truth about themselves. Most don't want to realize that they really don't like themselves much. If they were truly stop and really think about it, if they did truly care about themselves, wouldn't they make sure to not harm themselves? It is a nice and easy linear line after all, if drinking soda is bad for you, and you drink soda, then you are intentionally 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. There is no duality regarding love. 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 body and mind.

I have found this to be an excellent way to judge how much a person truly cares about their self. By measuring how many harmful things they do to themselves 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. It is a direct correlation. 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. It could be true to say, it is looking at one's Self with no judgment. This is why it is so painful for some to look at themselves truly; they have an emotional bond with the judgment. This means 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 don't drink them that much." This was always funny to me, because it's out right denial; I would see most of these people drinking soda every day, sometimes two or three a day. 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 still nothing but poison that kills you slowly.

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 always drink a can of Mountain Dew. My favorite was the cans because for whatever reason the stuff tasted better to me out of a can. So I speak from personal experience when I speak about the nastiness of soda. I woke up one day and realized I could do so much better than I had been doing. I woke up and realized that I was harming myself, and had been doing so for a long time.

How can we measure the negative impact of drinking soda on our lives? I mean, how do I gauge the change in my mental and physical health due to the fact that I quit drinking soda? I like to think that on a scale of 1 to 10, after giving up soda, it was a two point jump. It might be a little different for you, but I would say that it was at least a two point jump, possibly three. It really does make a difference 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 is true, or to tell me how much weight I would gain or lose, or how much my blood sugar would go up or down, or any other tidbit from a ‘scientific study’ that they might have figured out. The problem with all of this is, our bodies adjust over time, so we don't notice how much the soda brings us down if we are always drinking soda. I use the word we here to speak for our culture and society. 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 did not 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 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 almighty GDP. Bow down and worship. From this perspective it seems greed, selfishness, and in this case, self loathing rules the world.

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 actually 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.

What about children? I do not even want to get started on this. It really 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, soda machines, refrigeration, 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 slowly too? It does not matter how you justify it, in reality you are harming yourself and others by purchasing and ingesting these products. 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 almighty GDP. The land of where they do anything for a buck, even kill the people they sell their products to.

Please do not drink soda, and please encourage others not to drink it, at the very least your loved ones. It is a fact that it harms you mentally and physically. Everyone would be better for it, and the earth will be better for it, literally. Shun those you care about for drinking soda, don't be rude, and don’t be mean, just kindly point out to them that they are killing themselves and their environment by drinking soda. Don't expect them to just throw the thing away and never drink a soda again. Change is hard for us, it takes time, and it also takes persistence.

The only way to put them out of business is to stop purchasing their products. If you are one of those who justifies buying soda because, “you don’t drink it that much.” Please consider that your life will be just fine without it, and it does matter even if you only do it once a week; it really does add up.

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?