Why the New Coke Ad is More Sad Than Happy

I also like the ad that shows happy kids singing, but there are unhappy truths behind fizzy drinks people should know as well

Before I write any bad things about Coke, Pepsi or any other carbonated beverage company, let me first make an admission. I have had plenty of these drinks in my life and enjoyed them as much as kids still do today.

But then, I was also ignorant like most kids (and though I'm still ignorant to a big extent, I've also learnt a few things along the way).

So, what has changed?

For one, I started drinking fewer fuzzy drinks and began reading more about health issues, water problems and environmental destruction.

But more importantly, I became a father twice over – and began to get worried not only about what I consume but what I allow my kids to have. And when I see my young kids crave for a Pepsi, Fanta or another carbonated drink, and when I relent and let my wife share some with them and see them get aggressive or irritable after that...that's when I realize that a lot has changed, must change, from how things are now.

And that's why when I saw the new Coca-Cola ad in which kids sing a paean of hope while joyous stats are displayed on TV screens, I felt that this is wrong, just so wrong.

It's a great ad and I really like it – I only wish it weren't promoting fizzy drinks in the name of happiness and hope. Not to say it comes from a company that allegedly has double standards and dubious practices in the name of an iconic brand (to throw some light on this, readers may point their browsers to this interview of Michael Blanding, who wrote the book The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink. And if you search “Truth + Coca-Cola” on the Web, you'll be swamped with millions of links, many of them quite revealing).

But unlike me, there are millions of people, many of them impressionable children, who will watch this ad and find happiness in bottles of Coke rather than more health-giving fruits, milk or even water. Few would work for the causes espoused in the Coca-Cola ad; most would just sip a drink and be happier than before. Or at least live in an illusion of happiness. Like I had been doing, for quite a while, unfortunately.

My first eye-opener about our current state of food-and-beverage industry came a few years back when I read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. In this book, Schlosser went deep into the working of McDonald's and revealed the smudges behind the golden arches – all in their gory details (the conditions and manner under which cows are killed and processed at a factory that supplies beef, for instance).

But I wouldn't like to single out Coke, Pepsi or McDonald's for the current sorry state of public health – which is increasingly getting riddled with obesity, hypertension, diabetes and scores of other ills. It has much to do with the entire process of looking at what we eat and drink from the profiteering lenses of giant corporations. Corps that are more concerned about economies of scale and the money they make rather than what ingredients are used and what effects the products have on people's health.

Kids in India (as probably in most places before the assembly-lining of food and beverages) used to enjoy home-cooked snacks and occasional indulgences of treacle toffees or aampapad (a locally made sweet of natural mango). Now they are gorging everywhere and all the time on industrially made 'addictive' wafers, fat-inducing burgers and large doses of carbonated sugar water. These and many similar obnoxious things is what you see all around you – in malls, at the local grocery shops, even at remote hill stations.

So dads like me (and moms, who aren't like me at all :) are forced to buy unhealthy things for their children if they ever want to step out of the house.

Some of us are trying to control and minimize the damage – but our little blogs and tweets get drowned in three-billion-dollars-a-year worth of massive advertising unleashed by the likes of Coke. And our tips and messages and efforts are lost in the sheer availability of “junk stuff” and the irresistible pull of the “convenience factor.”

Will someone please make an ad on that and highlight the real thing?

Let's celebrate and be joyous in the new year, but let's do it for the right reasons and for the real heroes – not for some cunning company.