Balance Calories

Our industry has a longstanding commitment to being part of the solution to reducing obesity in America.  Now, with our Balance Calories Initiative, we are transforming the beverage landscape in communities nationwide.  This initiative will take our efforts to provide consumers with more choices, smaller portions and fewer calories to an ambitious new level.

The Balance Calories Initiative is the single-largest voluntary effort by an industry to help fight obesity.  Working with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, America’s leading beverage companies have set a goal to reduce beverage calories consumed per person nationally by 20 percent by 2025.  To help achieve this goal, the beverage companies will engage in national and community efforts.

Nationally, the beverage companies will:

• Leverage their marketing, innovation and distribution strengths to increase and sustain consumer interest in and access to smaller portion sizes, water and no- and lower-calorie beverages.
• Provide calorie counts, and promote calorie awareness on all beverage company-controlled point-of-sale equipment nationwide.
• Launch a first-of-its kind national consumer awareness and engagement program – Mixify™ – encouraging teens and their families to balance their calories by moderating what they consume, including beverages, and getting more active.

Locally, the beverage companies will:

• Focus efforts in communities where there has been less interest in and/or access to options that help consumers reduce their calories with a goal of achieving a 20 percent per person reduction of calories consumed from beverages in those communities within ten years.
• The companies will begin this community initiative in Los Angeles, Calif., and Little Rock, Ark., to help bring communities more in line with what’s happening nationally.
• Local market efforts will include promoting water and no- and lower-calorie beverage consumption as well as other strategies such as merchandising, product placement and couponing to drive interest in and improve access to these choices.

You can learn more about this initiative by visiting DeliveringChoices.org.  And don’t forget to check out MyMixify.com.