Save Your Calories — Save Yourself

Last month Business Week posted an article with lots of quotes from the CEO of Coca-Cola. Sandy Douglas has been in senior management at the company for decades, including the era in which soda companies put vastly more refined sugar into the market in the form of larger and larger bottles of soda, an active participation in the “serving size inflation” we’ve seen throughout the restaurant industry.

Does Douglas drink Coca-Cola? Yes, of course. He has a whole strategy around it:

Sandy Douglas drinks one Coca-Cola every day. He likes it early, before noon, sometimes accompanied by a cup of coffee. “You get an espresso, you get your caffeine and have this for lunch, and you’re ahead,” he says between sips from Coke’s old-fashioned 8-ounce glass bottle. When it’s over, he doesn’t allow himself a second. “I will probably have a Coke Zero in the afternoon at some point,” he concedes, but not another regular one because it has too many calories. “That’s approximately my daily regimen.”

Are you drinking a lot of calories? Whether in the form of soda, sugary noncarbonated drinks like Snapple, or sugar-loaded tea or coffee? Take it from the CEO of Coca-Cola: the best way to enjoy liquid sugar is sparingly, thoughtfully. (And Coca-Cola’s re-imagining of its sales strategy includes more distribution of smaller packaging, like the 8-packs of 7.5-oz cans that are common in supermarkets now.)