“This is no joke,” Michael Jacobson, director of Center for Science in the Public Interest, said back in July. “Americans are drowning in soda pop. The average teenage boy is consuming two cans of soda pop a day. The industry spends over $500 million each year promoting the sale of these worthless products.”

Janie Frank, medical assistant at the Family Resource Center in Idaho Falls agrees with Jacobson’s petition. “I personally don’t drink soda pop for health reasons,” Frank said. “I also have a 9 year-old-boy and I discourage him from drinking soda pop because of tooth decay.”
Since filing a petition with the Food and Drug Administration, Jacobson has campaigned to place warning labels on non-diet soft drinks.

In his latest interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, he contended that this “liquid candy” is the largest factor behind the American obesity epidemic.

However, several students on campus don’t feel warning labels would influence their decision. “People who drink pop will continue to drink pop,” Rachelle Miller, a sophomore from Ririe, Idaho, said.

“Warning labels wouldn’t change my mind,” Matt Stanley, a junior from Minnetonka, Minn. said. “I don’t even look, just as long as it says Coke.”

Not all experts believe the warning labels would work. Dietician Keith Ayoob, a professor of pediatric nutrition at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said the labels might even cause a backlash.

“I think they’ve had it with people telling them what they can and can’t do,” he said.

A study in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, undercut claims by the CSPI.

They reported that exercise, rather than eating, was the key.