Youth Incorporated Magazine

It’s an extremely sunny day and all you want to do is cool down. 

Marketers will suggest an ice-cold bottle of candy. Doesn’t sound appealing? How about we add some carbonation and liquid to it so you can play-pretend that it’s a drink. But well, it’s not! You see, marketers and advertisers have spent decades, followed by billions of company wealth to make you unassuming people out there, slowly but steadily, associate these chilled beverages of fun, with the feeling of refreshment. It is basically syrup. But is there any festivity or holiday replete without a glass topped with ice, and poured to the brim with the fizzy beverage that’s going to rot your teeth, dissolve your stomach lining and what not! Think about it!

And if that’s not enough, can you even fathom the amount of sugar per serving in these drinks? You are so addicted to this glass of poison that you are okay… okay with the concept of gulping down wet sugar and okay with our country paying a celebrity millions of rupees to endorse these futile drinks! I don’t need to. I never needed to. You guys love it.

I am just another adman named Aatish. It’s hot out there, sunny midday. You buy your kid a nice bottle of soft drink. There. Right there! You completely disregard, not just your life, but, your kid’s life as well! You might want to think you will be able to limit it. But wait! We can cut you out of the equation. In some blessed nations, we have interests in your kids’ meal in schools. We serve your kids straight outta the glass bottle!

This acid, a treat to your tummies, is potent enough to ruin your paint job and sparkle your toilets! But what matters to you is the taste. Isn’t it? And you’d pay a lot more than what you should, for a beverage that costs literally spare-change to manufacture! That glass bottle is far more expensive than your flavored soda.

If you had any idea how much sugar can the human body consume (not that much) and how much you do end up consuming (a helluva lot) in that sweet bottle of acid-like goodness, would you dare drink it? We, as ad-men, really want you to drink it. The FSSAIs and the other food administration authorities can be bullied to such an extent that even if you wanted to know, you couldn’t! And the nutritional facts? If you are referring to that sad blob of the sticker on the imprint, on the behinds of our fizzy drinks, you might want to refrain from believing that!

Now, if you are that concerned about your health, maybe we could, somewhere, add the word ‘diet’, replacing all the naturally occurring cane sugar with chemical compositions you know better which are so inharmonious to your bloodstream that your gut can’t even process it! Fortunately, I am pretty sure that these chemical compositions won’t cause any lasting damage, except all sorts of cancers to rats! Well, they are lab animals after all! And aren’t you a human wanting to reconsider drinking my well-marketed drink?

A hell lot of soda was consumed during the writing of this chapter. So long! Gotta get my stomach pumped… Your take?