Coca-Cola has been around in New Zealand since the late 1930s. Today Coca-Cola Amatil NZ and Coca-Cola Oceania provide Kiwis with a choice of more than 100 brands and flavours of drinks. Our support for "Go Kids!" is now in it's fifth year and we are privileged to be able to partner with The OSCAR Foundation to deliver this programme to thousands of New Zealand children.

At Coca-Cola we have aligned the sponsorship of "Go Kids!" with one of our products, Keri Juice, as this is more suitable for the age group we are supporting.

For us it provides an opportunity to give something back to the community. We do not brand the materials that the children use and nor do we use "Go Kids!" to advertise our products. We believe in the need for all of us - children and adults - to enjoy regular physical activity and to balance this with what we eat and drink.

There has been a lot of publicity about sweetened drinks and quite a bit of misinformation is spreading. We realise some people may be consuming too many calories, but we think that it's important to consider these facts:

Around 30% of the fizzy drinks we offer are low calorie or sugar free options, including Diet Coke, Sprite Zero, Fanta Lite and Sweet As L&P.

All drinks (including tea, coffee, milk, soft drinks and juices) contribute only 6% of the energy in NZ children's diets* so it is wrong to suggest sweetened drinks cause obesity.

Children do consume 6kg of sugar from sweetened drinks per year*, but this is only 16.5 grams per day or around half a glass - an amount that can easily be burned off by active children.

Coca-Cola voluntarily removed sugar fizzies from Primary Schools at the beginning of 2003. In the secondary schools where we sell our sugar fizzy drinks, on average each student purchases just one and a half drinks per week.

Overweight and obesity among our children is a serious issue and we are hoping to be part of the solution to this problem. Our approach is fairly simple:

We are making a wide range of choices available and encouraging consumers who want less sugar to switch to the sugar free options

We are providing sensible information about our products and their place in people's diets

We support physical activity through projects such as "Go Kids!"

For more information, see our Guide to making healthy beverage choices.


* source: National Children's Nutrition Survey, November 2003.


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