In 1997, Gainous started a bidding war between Coke and Pepsi when he asked each soft-drink titan what it would give for exclusive marketing rights at Blair, with an enrollment of 2,900 students. Without the soft-drink profits, none of the school's pricey amenities would have been possible, Gainous says. We don't, unfortunately, have that kind of resource, so this is a way that can help us close the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Blair now has more than 30 vending machines humming away across its campus, and thousands of dollars more in its budget than it had before the Pepsi deal. But while soda sales may help the school's bottom line, health experts are increasingly worried that soft drinks are hurting students' health.
Some recent studies underscore their worries.
The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, just published a study linking soft-drink consumption to obesity. A Harvard University study has recently suggested a connection between cola consumption and bone fractures in adolescent girls. Teens now drink twice as much soda as milk, the Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization reported. The National Soft Drink Association has refuted the Lancet study, citing other research that found no link between obesity and soft drink consumption. If I were an elementary principal, I would be ashamed to do what I'm doing, but in a high school these eating habits have already been established.