The 8% increase in McDonald's corporation's prices in the 1st Quarter of 2022 is 433% greater than the chain's 1.5% average quarterly increase in prices in 2021

Lt. Hicox approaches Stiglitz

LT. HICOX: Stiglitz, right?

STIGLITZ: That’s right, sir.

Stiglitz continues bringing the blade’s edge up, then down on the leather strap

LT. HICOX: I hear you’re pretty good with that? (meaning the blade)

Stiglitz doesn’t answer

LT. HICOX: You know, we’re not looking for trouble right now. We’re simply making contact with our agent. Should be uneventful. However, on the off chance I’m wrong, and things prove eventful, I need to know we can all remain calm.

The renegade Gerry Lieutenant stops his blade’s progress and looks up at the limey lieutenant.

STIGLITZ: I don’t appear calm to you?

From the script of “Inglourious Basterds”, written by Quentin Tarantino, 2008

THE DATA

Drinking one diet soda a day quadruples the risk of ischemic stroke caused by artery blockage (a 296% increase).

Drinking one diet soda a day nearly quadruples Alzheimer’s disease (a 289% increase).

Drinking soda increases obesity in women by 60%.

Drinking soda increases obesity in men by 38%.

Drinking soda increases Metabolic Syndrome in women by 61%.

Drinking one to four diet sodas per week increases the risk of End Stage Renal Disease by 8% .

Drinking five to seven diet sodas per week increases the risk of End Stage Renal Disease by 33% .

Drinking one diet soda per day increases the risk of type 2 diabetes by 35% .

Drinking more than one diet soda per day increases the risk of type 2 diabetes by 70%.

Drinking more than one diet soda per day increases the risk of End Stage Renal Disease by 83%.

Since the 1990s, Coca-Cola has been accused of unethical behavior in a number of areas, including product safety, anti-competitiveness, racial discrimination, channel stuffing, distributor conflicts, intimidation of union workers, pollution, depletion of natural resources, and health concerns.

In 2017, a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court of Northern California said that Coca-Cola knowingly diverted the unhealthy effects of sugary drinks through misinformation and false advertising, engaged in a pattern of deception to mislead and confuse the public and public health agencies about the scientific consensus that soda consumption drives obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

The lawsuit was withdrawn without explanation.

From February 2018 to April 2018, sales of Classic Coke decreased by 26% , from 9 million liters to 6.7 million liters.

From January 2020 to April 2022, in the face of catastrophically decreasing demand, McDonald’s increased their prices by 14%, to juice the dwindling pool of addicts that much harder.

To maintain current programming levels, stop reading immediately, breathe through your mouth and use restaurantdive.com Emma Liem Beckett’s version: “as the war in Ukraine drives up costs across restaurant industry sectors”.

In 2021, Coca-Cola sales decreased by 20%, from 536,040 hectolitres to 431,747 hectolitres.

In 2021, Diet coke sales decreased by 15.3%, from 391,090 hectolitres to 331,213 hectolitres.

That’s data from an article by Gary Lloyd from the U.K.'s Morning Advertiser headlined “Coca-Cola Remains Top Soft Drink By a Large Distance”.

In 2021, McDonald’s increased their prices by 6%. That’s an average quarterly increase of 1.5%.

In April 2021, a Television commercial for Diet Coke commanded "Drink What Your Mama Gave Ya ".

In 2021, the Framingham Heart Study showed that people who drink soda of any kind are more likely to have poorer memory, smaller overall brain volume, and a significantly smaller hippocampus —an area of the brain important for learning and memory.

In her article on the subject, Boston University’s Barbara Moran questioned “Is Soda Bad for Your Brain***?*** (And Is Diet Soda Worse?)”, and used Mil-speak to describe the catastrophic brain damage as “accelerated brain aging”.

In the 1st Quarter of 2022, McDonald’s increased prices by 8%.

The 8% increase in McDonald’s corporation’s prices in the 1st Quarter of 2022 is 433% greater than the chain’s 1.5% average quarterly increase in prices in 2021.

In the 1st Quarter of 2022, McDonald’s transactions decreased by 1%.

THE ARTICLES

In 2014, the European Journal of Nutrition published “Sugar-sweetened beverage and diet soda consumption and the 7-year risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus in middle-aged Japanese men”.

First author M Sakurai said “The participants were 2,037 employees of a factory in Japan. During the study, 170 participants developed diabetes. The crude incidence rates (/1,000 person-years) across participants who were rare/never SSB consumers, <1 serving/week, ≥ 1 serving/week and <1 serving/day, and ≥ 1 serving/day were 15.5, 12.7, 14.9, and 17.4, respectively. The multivariate-adjusted HR compared to rare/never SSB consumers was 1.35 (95 % CI 0.80-2.27) for participants who consumed ≥ 1 serving/day SSB. Diet soda consumption was significantly associated with the incident risk of diabetes (P for trend = 0.013), and multivariate-adjusted HRs compared to rare/never diet soda consumers were 1.05 (0.62-1.78) and 1.70 (1.13-2.55), respectively, for participants who consumed <1 serving/week and ≥ 1 serving/week.”

Drinking one diet soda per day increases the risk of type 2 diabetes by 35%.

Drinking more than one diet soda per day increases the risk of type 2 diabetes by 70%.

In 2015, the Journal of Hepatolog published “Sugar-sweetened beverage, diet soda, and fatty liver disease in the Framingham Heart Study cohorts”.

First author Jiantao Ma said “the odds ratios of fatty liver disease were 1, 1.16 (0.88, 1.54), 1.32 (0.93, 1.86), and 1.61 (1.04, 2.49) across sugar-sweetened beverage consumption categories (p trend = 0.04). Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption was also positively associated with alanine transaminase levels (p trend = 0.007).”

Drinking soda increases non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by 16% to 61%.

In 2017, the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology published “Diet Soda Consumption and Risk of Incident End Stage Renal Disease”.

First author Casey M. Rebholz said “Baseline mean age of participants was 54 years, 55% were female, and 27% were black. The majority of participants (43.5%) consumed <1 glass/wk of diet soda; 17.8% consumed 1-4 glasses/wk; 25.3% consumed 5-7 glasses/wk; and 13.5% consumed >7 glasses/wk. Over a median follow-up of 23 years, 357 incident ESRD cases were observed. Relative to <1 glass/wk of diet soda, consuming 1-4 glasses/wk, 5-7 glasses/wk, and >7 glasses/wk, respectively, was associated with 1.08-times (95% confidence interval [95% CI], 0.75 to 1.55), 1.33-times (95% CI, 1.01 to 1.75), and 1.83-times (95% CI, 1.01 to 2.52) higher risk of ESRD after adjusting for age, sex, race-center, education level, smoking status, physical activity, total caloric intake, eGFR, body mass index category, diabetes, systolic BP, and serum uric acid (P value for trend <0.001).”

Drinking one to four diet sodas per week increases the risk of End Stage Renal Disease by 8%.

Drinking five to seven diet sodas per week increases the risk of End Stage Renal Disease by 33%.

Drinking more than one diet soda per day increases the risk of End Stage Renal Disease by 83%.

In 2017, Auburn University’s Center for Ethical Organizational Cultures said "Since the 1990s Coca-Cola has been accused of unethical behavior in a number of areas, in- cluding product safety, anti-competitiveness, racial discrimination, channel stuffing, dis- tributor conflicts, intimidation of union workers, pollution, depletion of natural resources, and health concerns.

A lawsuit filed in the United States District Court of Northern California said that Coca-Cola, the world’s largest sugar-sweetened beverage maker, knowingly diverted the unhealthy effects of sugary drinks through misinformation and false advertising.

The lawsuit stated that Coca-Cola and an industry trade group, the American Beverage Association (ABA), “engaged in a pattern of deception to mislead and confuse” the public and public health agencies “about the scientific consensus that consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.”

The allegations included secretly funding and publically promoting biased research, working together to promote exercise over the reduction of sugary drink consumption, and running “false and misleading advertising campaigns” while growing scientific evidence linked its products to preventable diseases, stated the lawsuit filed by two nonprofit organizations.

The lawsuit alleged that Coca-Cola engaged in false advertising by paying researchers, medical professionals, and others to contradict independent scientific evidence about the adverse health effects of drinking sugar-sweetened beverages.

This strategy, the lawsuit stated, included heavily advertising to children when the company said it didn’t, establishing front groups to emphasize exercise — not caloric restrictions by eliminating sugary beverages — and suggesting sodas are healthy snacks.

“The lawsuit takes on the soda industry’s claims that physical activity is more important than diet in maintaining a healthy body weight, that sodas are important for hydration, and that soda companies are not advertising to children — all of which are demonstrably false, as the suit documents,” Marion Nestle, a New York University professor, and author of “Soda Politics,” who was not involved in the lawsuit, told Healthline.

Ultimately, the plaintiffs wanted Coca-Cola and the ABA to stop using tactics in violation of California’s Unfair Competition and False Advertising laws."

The lawsuit was withdrawn for an unexplained reason.

In April 2017, Boston University questioned "Is Soda Bad for Your Brain***?*** (And Is Diet Soda Worse***?***)

Where author Barbara Moran questioned the truth that her article documents in the data that, in journalistic parlance, she has “buried” in the body text below.

The subhead reads “Both sugary and diet drinks correlated with accelerated brain aging”.

Wait, what? In the body text below, Barbara says: “Now, new research suggests that excess sugar—especially the fructose in sugary drinks—might damage your brain. Researchers using data from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) found that people who drink sugary beverages frequently are more likely to have poorer memory, smaller overall brain volume, and a significantly smaller hippocampus—an area of the brain important for learning and memory.”

Boston University’s Barbara Moran has brazenly walked “brain damage” back to merely to the Mil-speak “accelerated brain aging”.

In 2018, the journal Nutrients published “Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption in Relation to Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome among Korean Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study from the 2012⁻2016 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES)”.

First author Sangah Shin said “The SSB consumption was positively associated with an increased risk of the prevalence for obesity (Odd ratio (OR): 1.60; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.23⁻2.09; p for trend = 0.0009) and MetS (OR: 1.61; 95% CI: 1.20⁻2.16; p for trend = 0.0003) among women. In men, SSB consumption only contributed to a higher prevalence of obesity (OR: 1.38; 95% CI: 1.11⁻1.72; p for trend = 0.0041). In conclusion, increased consumption of SSBs was closely linked with a higher prevalence of obesity and MetS in the Korean population.”

Drinking soda increases obesity in women by 60%.

Driking soda increases obesity in men by 38%.

Drinking soda increases Metabolic Syndrome in women by 61%.

In July 2018, marketingweek.com’s Molly Fleming said “Classic Coke sales, by comparison, have fallen from 9 million litres at the end of February to a low of 6.7 million litres for the week ending 14 April.”

That’s a long, gymnastic way to avoid plainly stating that, from February 2018 to April 2018, sales of Classic Coke decreased by 26%, from 9 million liters to 6.7 million liters.

In April 2021, a Television commercial for Diet Coke commanded “Drink What Your Mama Gave Ya”.

In December 2021, the U.K.'s Morning Advertiser said “Coca-Cola Remains Top Soft Drink By a Large Distance”.

Author Gary Lloyd goes on to say “Volume and value sales have decreased across the board by about 20% across the top seven brands in the Drinks List - top brands to stock in 2022.”

We’ve just learned that Gary deceptively wrote the headline so that you have no idea that the article is actually about a sudden, exponential decrease in soft drink sales in 2021.

Since sixty to seventy percent of readers only read the headlines, author Gary Lloyd’s propaganda technique goes a long way toward “compartmentalizing” awareness of the great positive change that I’m documenting here.

In journalistic parlance, Gary has “buried” this information in the body text below:

“Coca-Cola saw a 19.5% fall in volume sales from 536,040 hectolitres to 431,747 hectolitres.”

And “Diet Coke saw volume losses of 15.3% (from 391,090 HL to 331,213 HL)”.

Where “saw” walks it back a step from the brands actually experiencing it.

Despite the fact that he writes about soft drinks for a living, and was paid money to write an investigative piece on the subject, here, Gary doesn’t offer any suggestion as to what caused the sudden, across the board decrease in soft drink consumption in 2021. That’s an example of the propaganda technique known as “stonewalling”.

Gary’s made use of it here because the first rule of Politics is “deny, deny, deny”.

In April 2022, statistic.com said “Coca Cola sales in number of unit cases”.

The Coca Cola company sold 31.3 billion unit cases in 2021 compared to 29 billion unit cases in 2020."

In April 2022, restaurantdive.com said “McDonald’s hikes menu prices 8% as visits fall 1%”.

Where author Emma Liem Beckett used the word “fall” because it’s softer than “drop” or “decrease”, and also as an insider-wink reference to the fallen Lord Lucifer.

The article goes on to say “Last year, the chain bumped prices 6%.”

Here we see McDonald’s raising prices to juice the dwindling pool of addicts that much harder.

To maintain current programming levels, stop reading immediately, breathe through your mouth and used Emma’s version: “as the war in Ukraine drives up costs across restaurant industry sectors”.

Jeff Miller, Honolulu, HI, May 20, 2022

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