Buy Walking VideosWhen You Drink A Dr. Pepper, You Drink A Bite To Eat
This photo of a Dr. Pepper advertisement from 1939 surprised me.
The advertisement says:
When you drink a Dr. Pepper
You drink a bite to eat
It’s a surprising bit of honest advertisement. A can of Dr. Pepper is 156 calories, so it’s as much calories as an apple and a bit of cheese. Of course, if you eat the apple and cheese, you won’t be hungry again in two hours, but honestly, Dr. Pepper WANTED you to be hungry again in two hours.
In fact, they built an entire advertising campaign around it. If you notice on that advertisement, there is a clock with the numbers 10, 2 and 4 highlighted. In fact, I own a Dr. Pepper clock with those numbers highlighted as well.
Their marketing campaign suggested that at 10 am, 2 pm and 4pm, you should have a Dr. Pepper. If you were to add three cans of soda to your diet every day, that’s an extra 468 calories a day, meaning an extra 3276 calories a week. That’s a weight gain of almost a pound a week, just from soda.
Back in 1939, most people didn’t need to worry about getting fat. They were too busy trying to get enough calories to maintain weight, but now, that Dr. Pepper slogan is ominous.
Next time you’re tempted to get a Big Gulp, remember the Dr. Pepper slogan:
When you drink a soda, you drink a bite to eat.
Wouldn’t you rather just have a bite to eat?
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May 26th, 2009 at 5:56 am
Hi Laura, Drinking soda is a creeper of weight gain, isn’t it? Mike and I have started drinking 0 cal sodas, which for us helps, since we definitely grew up in the “BigSwig” club. Do you remember those 80’s days, trekking to the Maverick or Rainbo with monstrous drink jugs and filling up with soda? Now, its like, “I need a bottled water,STAT,lets get to Sev…”
Katie
May 26th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Katie,
GOD! I totally remember the Swig Runs. My Mike and I would go on a Swig Run about twice a day. The diet sodas DO make it better, but for me, the caffeine is the real killer.
Ironically, we still go on Swig Runs. I just fill my cup with water and a squirt of lemonade. I loved the ritual of going to a convenience store to get a Swig that we still do it several times a week. We just fill our cups with different stuff.
Great times! Laura
May 26th, 2009 at 8:36 am
You should do your next blog on diet soda, which really isn’t any better than the regular stuff. Research showing that people who drink diet soda are more likely to be overweight.
It’s also scary because I think that’s how restaurants function. They push all these extra calories because the more you eat….well the more you’ll eat.
December 30th, 2009 at 10:14 am
WHOA! thanks for the eye opener!
January 12th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
That’s so weird. Dr. Pepper is my favorite soda that me and my dad love. The company probably try to cover up that slogan nowadays.
April 24th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
A slight correction here. The real source of the 10-2-4 advertising campaign.
“It was in the 1920s that Dr. Walter Eddy at Columbia University studied the body’s metabolism. He discovered that a natural drop in energy occurs about 10:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. But he also discovered that if the people in his research study had something to eat or drink at 10, 2 and 4, the energy slump could be avoided.”
You can read more at http://www.dublindrpepper.com/faq.aspx. The plant also explained that the 10-2-4 was dropped when the switch to HFCs was done in the mid 70s. Turns out the body doesn’t respond the same to corn syrup as it does to sugar. Makes one wonder if we’d still be as fat if the sugar, made more expensive by government subsidies to corn growers, had been left in the drinks.
September 14th, 2015 at 12:37 pm
The reason many people who drink calorie free sodas have weight gain issues is because they tend to overeat in compensation for the stuff they’re not drinking (the “Hey! I’m having a Diet Coke so I’ll have a Big Mac and not a salad!” syndrome).
It’s simple logic, really … you can’t gain weight from calories you’re not getting. So if you’re gaining weight, it’s because you’re eating something else. Otherwise, you’d gain weight from drinking water or any other non-caloric liquid.