Will Watching These Sad Bears Get Fat Finally Make You Put Down The Soda?

Everyone loves a heartwarming Coke ad with polar bears . Look at them frolic in the Arctic with their sodas. Life seems so fancy free up in the frozen tundra when you introduce some soda.


Fast Company













Share on Tumblr

Will Watching These Sad Bears Get Fat Finally Make You Put Down The Soda?

Will Watching These Sad Bears Get Fat Finally Make You Put Down The Soda? Image:

By Morgan Clendaniel,Morgan Clendaniel

Everyone loves a heartwarming Coke ad with polar bears. Look at them frolic in the Arctic with their sodas. Life seems so fancy free up in the frozen tundra when you introduce some soda.

But a new video from the Center for Science in the Public Interest asks what might happen to those bears if they were actually drinking soda. The results are a lot less adorable; they're downright depressing. It's all part of an anti-soda campaign by the organization The Real Bears.

The ad, made by Alex Bogusky's Common along with the Butler Brothers (who made these infographics about the dangers of smoking), shows the polar bears slowly start seeing the effects of drinking so much sugar. The bears, at first sleek and lithe, become fat and sluggish. It's hard to survive in the wild when you can't fit through your hole in the ice to go fishing. They can't have sex. And eventually, once diabetes sets in, the polar bear patriarch is forced to have his leg amputated.

Anthropomorphic polar bears might not be real, but the symptoms of excessive sugar consumption depicted are. Soda consumption is already falling, but it's . Will subverting the soda's industry cutest mascots be any help in changing that number. People haven't responded to facts; maybe they'll respond to bears.




Fast Company Copyright 2012 by Fast Company. Reprinted with permission.


Comments

Add Comment
Leave this field empty

Add a Comment

You must sign in or register as a ScientificAmerican.com member to submit a comment.
Click one of the buttons below to register using an existing Social Account.

More from Scientific American

See what we're tweeting about

Scientific American Editors

Tweets could not be retrieved at this time

Free Newsletters


Get the best from Scientific American in your inbox

Solve Innovation Challenges

Powered By: Innocentive

  SA Digital
  SA Digital

Science Jobs of the Week

Email this Article

Will Watching These Sad Bears Get Fat Finally Make You Put Down The Soda?

X
Scientific American MIND iPad

Tap into your MIND

Get Both Print & Tablet Editions for one low price!

Subscribe Now >>

X

Please Log In

Forgot: Password

X

Account Linking

Welcome, . Do you have an existing ScientificAmerican.com account?

Yes, please link my existing account with for quick, secure access.



Forgot Password?

No, I would like to create a new account with my profile information.

Create Account
X

Report Abuse

Are you sure?

X

Institutional Access

It has been identified that the institution you are trying to access this article from has institutional site license access to Scientific American on nature.com. To access this article in its entirety through site license access, click below.

Site license access
X

Error

X

Share this Article

X