Reason #6,514 Why it's Easy to Gain Weight

Because our biggest, most powerful corporations keep telling us that really bad foods are actually really good for us. Latest case in point: Coca-Cola's VitaminWater. Coke has been assuring consumers that VitaminWater is, just as its name implies, "a vitamin-enhanced water beverage," and has used the phrase "vitamins + water = all you need" to promote it--when in truth it has nearly the sugar content of Coke itself.

If you go to VitaminWater's website, all you see are healthy young people skateboarding, surfing, modeling hip clothes, downloading playlists, and doing all those other energetic things you do when you're pumped up on vitamins. In fact, Coca-Cola--in this its 125th-anniversary year of peddling sugar-water--is desperately fighting off a class-action suit claiming that the company has been misleading consumers in suggesting that VitaminWater is anything other than sugar-water (with a few supplements mixed in as window-dressing).

Just today the company agreed to go to mediation (translation: they may be ready to settle just the get the damn thing out of the news). They've already lost one court battle: they tried to get the suit dismissed last year, protesting that their nutrition facts are there on the bottle for anyone to see--courtesy of FDA laws that even one of the most omnipotent companies on the globe can't get around. A judge last year ruled that, regardless of the small print, all the large print on the bottle violates what is known as the jelly-bean rule--a guideline that prohibits companies from claiming their nutritionally empty junk food is "healthy" because they've thrown in a little Vitamin C or calcium.

It's hard enough to keep one's waistline while navigating the obvious calorie calossi--the cheese-stuffed-crust pizzas, the hauntingly fragrant cinnabons that wreathe every airport and mall. The lies of the unscrupulous jelly-bean peddlers of the world make it well-nigh impossible. But then, why expect anything else from a corporation that fought long and hard to install soda machines in schools across the country? Hey, the kids can always opt for the "healthy" option: VitaminWater.