Beverage industry launches transparency initiative

By HPN Staff

Want to know what’s in your soft drink? America’s beverage industry is taking the initiative on ingredient transparency by launching a new website they say will enable consumers to easily access information about what is in their favorite drinks. 

The American Beverage Association (ABA), a trade group representing hundreds of businesses in the nation’s non-alcoholic beverage industry, recently launched the new website GoodtoKnowFacts.org, in response to both consumer demand and to align with the Trump Administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) initiative being spearheaded by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The site will allow users to look up more than 140 beverage ingredients and obtain information on them, including what foods and drinks they are found in, what other names they may go by, government safety assessments, and regulatory status. 

Why it matters

The effort is part of a larger response by the nation’s beverage industry to address and mitigate concerns on the part of both consumers and governments over the potential health risks of certain ingredients found in non-alcoholic beverages, such as sugar, caffeine and food additives. 

In 2017, Praxis, a group critical of the industry, filed a lawsuit against Coca-Cola and the ABE, alleging the industry engaged in "deceptive marketing" of sugary drinks. Praxis withdrew its lawsuit in 2021, after the majority of its claims were dismissed in 2019.

With the new website, the ABA said it intends to offer consumers greater control over their beverage choices by providing factual data on beverage ingredients in a readily accessible, single location. 

“We created GoodtoKnowFacts.org to provide straightforward information about our ingredients and deliver facts,” ABA President and CEO Kevin Keane said in the association’s announcement of the new venture. “This site is intended to be a reliable first stop for consumers so they can decide what’s right for them.” 

ABA says that the new online resource is not intended to provide any recommendations, opinions, or industry/business information, but rather serve as a publicly accessible ingredient database. The association says that it will be strictly fact-based, compiling publicly available data from several government food safety organizations — primarily the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the European Food Safety Authority, and Health Canada. 

The bigger picture

The initiative is finding support among free-market advocates, who tout the industry-led, market-based approach as preferable to government-enforced bans, mandates or other regulations. They say that efforts such as GoodtoKnowFacts preserve consumer choice and empower individuals to make their own decisions regarding their health. They also suggest that private industry alignment with the federal government's MAHA priorities could stave off what they see as unhealthy government intervention.

While the effort is primarily a response to consumer demand for information and transparency, as well as an effort to comply with administration policy, it could also benefit the nation’s beverage industry, as the data from analysis of site usage could be used to identify which specific products are of most concern to consumers, enabling the industry to be more responsive. 

As part of their launch, the ABA also announced support for what they say is consumer-centric regulatory reform, in particular, modernizing the FDA’s Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) framework by requiring notice to the FDA for all new or alternative uses of ingredients.

The ABA says this comes on the heels of several other industry-led initiatives, including the advent and promotion of zero-sugar beverage options, and product labeling.