People buy more soda when offered packs of smaller sizes than if buying single large drink

Restricting soda servings may induce people to buy more soda than when offered larger sized drinks

2013-04-11

(Press-News.org) People buy larger amounts of soda when purchasing packs of smaller drinks than when offered single servings of different sized drinks, according to research published April 10 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Brent M. Wilson and colleagues from the University of California, San Diego.

The researchers tested the effects of limiting sugary drink sizes on people's soda consumption by offering them three kinds of menus. One menu offered 16 , 24 or 32 ounce sized individual drinks, a second gave them the choices of a 16 oz. drink, or bundles of two 12 ounce drinks or two 16 ounce drinks, and a third menu offered only individual 16 oz. drinks for sale. When participants made choices from these menus as they would in a fast food restaurant, people bought more soda from the menu with packs of 12 oz. or 16 oz. drinks than they did when offered individual sodas of different sizes. Based on the choices participants made, total business revenues were also higher when menus included packs of drinks rather than only small sized drinks.

The study concludes that when drink sizes are limited, businesses may have a strong incentive to offer packs of several small drinks rather than only individual servings. The authors suggest that restricting larger servings of sugary drinks in efforts to moderate may thus have the unintended outcome of increasing soda consumption rather than reducing it.

"Our research shows the New York City ban on large-sized drinks may have unintended consequences that policy makers need to consider. Sugary drinks are a major source of business revenue, and businesses will adjust their menus in order to maximize profits," says Wilson.

### Citation: Wilson BM, Stolarz-Fantino S, Fantino E (2013) Regulating the Way to Obesity: Unintended Consequences of Limiting Sugary Drink Sizes. PLOS ONE 8(4): e61081. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0061081

Financial Disclosure: These authors have no support or funding to report.

Competing Interest Statement: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

PLEASE LINK TO THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT (URL goes live after the embargo ends): http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0061081

Disclaimer: This press release refers to upcoming articles in PLOS ONE. The releases have been provided by the article authors and/or journal staff. Any opinions expressed in these are the personal views of the contributors, and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of PLOS. PLOS expressly disclaims any and all warranties and liability in connection with the information found in the release and article and your use of such information. About PLOS ONE: PLOS ONE is the first journal of primary research from all areas of science to employ a combination of peer review and post-publication rating and commenting, to maximize the impact of every report it publishes. PLOS ONE is published by the Public Library of Science (PLOS), the open-access publisher whose goal is to make the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource.

All works published in PLOS ONE are Open Access. Everything is immediately available—to read, download, redistribute, include in databases and otherwise use—without cost to anyone, anywhere, subject only to the condition that the original authors and source are properly attributed. For more information about PLOS ONE relevant to journalists, bloggers and press officers, including details of our press release process and our embargo policy, see the everyONE blog at http://everyone.plos.org/media. END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

World's oldest dinosaur embryo bonebed yields organic remains

2013-04-11

The great age of the embryos is unusual because almost all known dinosaur embryos are from the Cretaceous Period. The Cretaceous ended some 125 million years after the bones at the Lufeng site were buried and fossilized. Led by University of Toronto Mississauga paleontologist Robert Reisz, an international team of scientists from Canada, Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, Australia, and Germany excavated and analyzed over 200 bones from individuals at different stages of embryonic development. "We are opening a new window into the lives of dinosaurs," says Reisz. ...

Exciting breakthrough in search for neurodegenerative disease treatments

2013-04-11

A significant breakthrough has been made by scientists at The University of Manchester towards developing an effective treatment for neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Researchers at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology have detailed how an enzyme in the brain interacts with an exciting drug-like lead compound for Huntington's Disease to inhibit its activity. Their findings demonstrate that it can be developed as an effective treatment for neurodegenerative diseases. The research is published in the journal Nature. Working ...

Need your appendix out? How about scarless surgery through the navel

2013-04-11

A new study suggests that surgery for appendicitis that uses a pinhole incision through the navel may be a feasible alternative to traditional appendectomies. Published early online in the British Journal of Surgery, the findings indicate that larger studies to test the potential of the procedure are warranted. An experimental, minimally invasive, and scarless surgical procedure for appendicitis called transgastric appendicectomy avoids the use of external incisions and causes less pain than traditional appendectomies. Through the insertion of a needle, an endoscope is ...

Fat-free see-through brain bares all

2013-04-11

VIDEO: CLARITY provided this 3D view showing a thick slice of a mouse brain's memory hub, or hippocampus. It reveals a few different types of cells: Projecting neurons (green), connecting interneurons... Click here for more information. Slicing optional. Scientists can now study the brain's finer workings, while preserving its 3-D structure and integrity of its circuitry and other biological machinery. A breakthrough method, called CLARITY, developed by National Institutes ...

Getting CLARITY: Hydrogel process developed at Stanford creates transparent brain

2013-04-11

STANFORD, Calif. — Combining neuroscience and chemical engineering, researchers at Stanford University have developed a process that renders a mouse brain transparent. The postmortem brain remains whole — not sliced or sectioned in any way — with its three-dimensional complexity of fine wiring and molecular structures completely intact and able to be measured and probed at will with visible light and chemicals. The process, called CLARITY, ushers in an entirely new era of whole-organ imaging that stands to fundamentally change our scientific understanding of the most-important-but-least-understood ...

Stanford study shows different brains have similar responses to music

2013-04-11

STANFORD, Calif. — Do the brains of different people listening to the same piece of music actually respond in the same way? An imaging study by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists says the answer is yes, which may in part explain why music plays such a big role in our social existence. The investigators used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify a distributed network of several brain structures whose activity levels waxed and waned in a strikingly similar pattern among study participants as they listened to classical music they'd never heard ...

Pottery reveals Ice Age hunter-gatherers' taste for fish

2013-04-11

Hunter-gatherers living in glacial conditions produced pots for cooking fish, according to the findings of a pioneering new study led by the University of York which reports the earliest direct evidence for the use of ceramic vessels. Scientists from the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden and Japan carried out chemical analysis of food residues in pottery up to 15,000 years old from the late glacial period, the oldest pottery so far investigated. It is the first study to directly address the often posed question "why humans made pots?" The research is published in Nature. The ...

Mining information contained in clinical notes could yield early signs of harmful drug reactions

2013-04-11

STANFORD, Calif. — Mining the records of routine interactions between patients and their care providers can detect drug side effects a couple of years before an official alert from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a Stanford University School of Medicine study has found. The study, led by Nigam Shah, MBBS, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, will be published online April 10 in Nature Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. This approach is a step forward in mining patient-based information, as opposed to coded insurance reports or drug-specific databases, to ...

Half of all patient complaints in Australia are about 3 percent of doctors

2013-04-11

Half of all formal patient complaints made in Australia to health ombudsmen concern just 3% of the country's doctors, with 1% accounting for a quarter of all complaints, finds research published online in BMJ Quality & Safety. Doctors complained about more than three times are highly likely to be the subject of a further complaint - and often within a couple of years - the findings show. The problem is unlikely to be confined to Australia, warn commentators, who point out that while regulators often know about these problem doctors, patients usually don't. The researchers ...

Rates of childhood squint surgery have plummeted over past 50 years

2013-04-11

Rates of surgery to correct childhood squint in England have tumbled over the past 50 years, finds research published online in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. But there's still a fivefold difference between the areas with the lowest and highest rates of the procedure, similar to the wide variations in tonsil removal, and it's not clear why, say the authors. Squint (strabismus) is one of the most common eye problems in children, with a prevalence of between 2% and 5%. Risk factors include family history, low birthweight, premature birth, being born to an older ...

People buy more soda when offered packs of smaller sizes than if buying single large drink

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: