I would agree with banning any ads for children under 18 years old, b/c they get bombarded with ads for junk food on all media channels. Plus I would agree with media campaigns teaching people that sugary drinks are a leading cause of obesity.
But I disagree with banning ads on sugary drinks specifically because I am increasingly concerned about recommending, taxing or banning foods based on weak scientific evidence and politicians are too quick to pull the trigger in favor of industries that donate money for their political campaigns.
First of all the evidence that sugar directly causes T2 diabetes is weak [1], even if there is an association between sugary drinks and metabolic syndrome, see for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646581
You can associate sugar or fat or meat consumption with an increased risk for T2 diabetes, but fact of the matter is that it all comes down to calories, T2 diabetes having an _energy excess_ as the cause and the available evidence for that is pretty solid [3]. When energy excess happens, all markers will start indicating problems, your blood glucose, triglycerides, LDL, etc, all of them going up.
People like to focus on one macro-nutrient, or another and it is true that they aren't the same ... for example fructose might give you non-alcoholic fatty liver disease before glucose or saturated fat are able to. But only when consumed in excess, only when it's not burned for energy and the liver's glycogen stores are full, only then fructose starts to become a problem. And if you eat a lot in excess, it doesn't really matter what you eat, as you will get a non-alcoholic fatty liver.
Going back to sugary drinks ... the reason for why I agree with banning ads for children and teaching people that sugary drinks are toxic is because it has been shown in studies that sugary drinks are not satiating at all and will make people overeat. This has been seen in other foods as well, what researchers have called the "cafeteria diet" [2]. The more processed a food is, the less proteins or nutrients it has, the less satiating it is. And sugary drinks are among the worst.
But this isn't related to sugar, but to foods high in calories, low in nutrients and that make people overeat. Unfortunately because the "calories in, calories out" model appears to introduce "personal responsibility" into the mix, people are too eager to embrace other models, like the carbohydrate-insulin theory (CIM), which for now is a work of fiction [3].
The "calories in, calories out" model doesn't have to blame the victim however. The modern food environment is indeed more obesogenic and this can be explained with the effect of highly caloric, ultra-processed foods on our satiety signals, i.e. the main problem is in the brain, the more processed a food is, the more it induces drug-seeking behavior.
So why stop at sugary drinks? What about ice cream or donuts? What about white bread? What about deep fried stuff? Plenty of foods are super high in sugars or fat or a combination, with near zero nutrients.
Demand for food is not infinite (maybe the word you were looking for was inelastic?). And even if you don’t need ads to create demand for “food” that is a broad category with many competing products from many competing providers.
Interestingly the food industry has perverse incentives ... because humans have a maximum limit of food eaten during the day, big companies like Coca Cola can only grow by encouraging people to eat more.
Since the more people eat, the more they spend on food, the more revenue generated.
Therefore food companies are incentivized to produce highly palatable food that trick the brain into overeating. One common strategy is to combine sugar with fat (think donuts), bonus points if it has caffeine too (chocolate with milk). Such combinations are not very natural. You won't find in nature foods that are high in both sugar and fat. And this kind of processing matters. Think of the difference between cocoa leaves and crack cocaine.
And now that we have an obesity problem, the same companies also sell products for diabetics, or diet products with "zero calories" that are highly processed and may contain substances that are damaging to our gut or general health. It's very profitable to create a problem and then to provide the solution too.
And unfortunately you won't see ads for whole foods.
But you will see whole foods vilified periodically (e.g. starchy plants, meat, etc), with ingenuous food companies jumping to the rescue with highly processed stuff. The ongoing race for "fake meat" makes me cringe.
Demand is not infinite. The demand is distributing among a wide range of available choices, advertising aims to change that distribution towards the advertisers products.
But I disagree with banning ads on sugary drinks specifically because I am increasingly concerned about recommending, taxing or banning foods based on weak scientific evidence and politicians are too quick to pull the trigger in favor of industries that donate money for their political campaigns.
First of all the evidence that sugar directly causes T2 diabetes is weak [1], even if there is an association between sugary drinks and metabolic syndrome, see for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646581
You can associate sugar or fat or meat consumption with an increased risk for T2 diabetes, but fact of the matter is that it all comes down to calories, T2 diabetes having an _energy excess_ as the cause and the available evidence for that is pretty solid [3]. When energy excess happens, all markers will start indicating problems, your blood glucose, triglycerides, LDL, etc, all of them going up.
People like to focus on one macro-nutrient, or another and it is true that they aren't the same ... for example fructose might give you non-alcoholic fatty liver disease before glucose or saturated fat are able to. But only when consumed in excess, only when it's not burned for energy and the liver's glycogen stores are full, only then fructose starts to become a problem. And if you eat a lot in excess, it doesn't really matter what you eat, as you will get a non-alcoholic fatty liver.
Going back to sugary drinks ... the reason for why I agree with banning ads for children and teaching people that sugary drinks are toxic is because it has been shown in studies that sugary drinks are not satiating at all and will make people overeat. This has been seen in other foods as well, what researchers have called the "cafeteria diet" [2]. The more processed a food is, the less proteins or nutrients it has, the less satiating it is. And sugary drinks are among the worst.
But this isn't related to sugar, but to foods high in calories, low in nutrients and that make people overeat. Unfortunately because the "calories in, calories out" model appears to introduce "personal responsibility" into the mix, people are too eager to embrace other models, like the carbohydrate-insulin theory (CIM), which for now is a work of fiction [3].
The "calories in, calories out" model doesn't have to blame the victim however. The modern food environment is indeed more obesogenic and this can be explained with the effect of highly caloric, ultra-processed foods on our satiety signals, i.e. the main problem is in the brain, the more processed a food is, the more it induces drug-seeking behavior.
So why stop at sugary drinks? What about ice cream or donuts? What about white bread? What about deep fried stuff? Plenty of foods are super high in sugars or fat or a combination, with near zero nutrients.
[1] https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2593601/scientific-basis-...
[2] https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/09/humans-on-caf...
[3] http://www.stephanguyenet.com/references-for-my-debate-with-...