What “Diabetes Here I Come” Can Teach Us

A recent story caught my attention with the tagline: “Diabetes Here I Come.” A write-up of the story can be found here: ActionJAX. Basically, a customer ordered a drink from Starbucks. Nothing out of the ordinary from a Starbucks menu. But something with traditional Starbucks-type drink order. Not a “coffee” but a “Grande White Mocha.”

It appears that instead of writing the customer’s name on the cup, which is common practice at Starbucks, the employee wrote “Diabetes Here I Come.” Probably not the best approach at treating the world’s diabetes problem. I am not going to discuss how this issue played out, but this incident highlights a few important things.

First, the health issues:

1. Diabetes: There are two types of diabetes.

• Type 1 – your body does not produce insulin on its own; individuals are typically born with this type.
• Type 2 – your body does not process sugar well; is preventable and most cases are a result of lifestlye factors (diet and exercise)

The customer in the news story described that he has two sisters with Type 1 diabetes. Whether the employee at Starbucks knew it or not, but individuals that reguarly consume high-sugary drinks may be more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes.

2. The Amount of Sugar in the Drink.

From the Starbucks website, a Grande White Chocolate Mocha contains 59grams of sugar. The daily allowance of added sugar that is recommended by the American Heart Association is 38 grams for Males and 25 grams for Females. This is one drink is already over 1.5x the daily allowance for males and over 2x for females! When sugar is consumed in the form, it is likely that most will be converted to fat.

Many argue that sugar is poison to the body because of the variety diseases (cancer, diabetes, heart disease) that pop-up after eating large amounts of sugar and carbs. We recognize other toxins to the body and slap warning labels on them. Cigarettes have warning labels on them because of the known side effects. Should sugary drinks be the next known toxin with a warning label?

CrossFit founder, Greg Glassman, has been addressing this same issue in California. On the website, CrushBigSoda, a proposed warning label has been drawn up to address how the message may be given to consumers:

With legislation like this in the works, one may wonder how these messages could make it to your new cup of Starbucks. Maybe for every coffee drink over 30 grams of added sugar, this label will be printed out? What a different world that will be!

With the health issues out of the way, let’s change gears to look at the behavioral focus…

Availability of Sugary Drinks

With this Starbucks example, the opportunity to order the sweet-tasting treat is always available. You know, everytime you go into a Starbucks (which is the beauty of it) which drinks can be made. Unless there is a nation-wide ban on added sugar, then we cannot expect the behavior (of driving to and ordering drinks) to go away anytime soon. Ordering and consuming certain drinks will always be reinforced no matter what. For example, you order a “Grande White Mocha” and get a “Grande White Mocha.” Every time. And you go back for more.

Labels and Motivation

If labels are added to sugary drinks (like soda and coffee) they may reduce consumption like Surgeon General Warnings did for cigarette boxes. We can imagine, but the next time we browse a coffee-shop menu, and read “Consuming high amounts of this drink may contribute to diabetes and obesity,” this may get us to order something else instead. Essentially, the label descreased the value of that menu item (Motivation was previously discuss here)

Individual Behavior

Labels like “Diabetes Here I Come” will more than likely motivate people to do other things than stop ordering and consuming sugary drinks. Specifically, the label does not tell the person what to do instead. Let’s say that the person did not know the drink order was bad for him? What options were provided to him instead? None.

A different context may better explain this. If I told my significant other “Don’t drink that it because it causes diabetes” then an appropriate thing for me to say instead would be “This drink is not good for you, there are other drink options from this menu.” This may sound odd, but when telling someone what not to do, we should always add what they can do instead. You can’t have a Grande White Mocha, but you can have this…

Now I did not touch on the social aspects of the employee’s behavior. This is an important issue, but beyond the scope of this blog. Preventing diabetes is great, but probably not the best strategy selected by the employee. What we can learn from this incident is: how health impacts even the most simple part of day (ordering coffee) and that a behavioral approach can show us ways to navigate and make sense of such issues.