Diet Pepsi is in trouble.

Less than a year after its poorly-received recipe revamp, it looks like PepsiCo is ready to try something new to turn things around.

PepsiCo is discussing an action plan to stabilize the Diet Pepsi business, a person familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal. With reported plans to talk with bottlers about the plan on Thursday, changes to the diet beverage brand could be announced as early as this week.

The changes are urgently necessary, as Diet Pepsi's sales have been continuously plummeting. In 2015, Diet Pepsi consumption dropped 5.8% by volume, according to report from Beverage Digest.

In August, PepsiCo debuted an aspartame-free Diet Pepsi, in response to consumers' complaints about the sweetener. The negative backlash was immediate, and, instead of stopping falling sales, Diet Pepsi's performance only declined after the new recipe's debut.

"Diet Pepsi is awful," one customer wrote on the company's Facebook page soon after the aspartame-free version was released. "I hate the new flavor."

Another wrote, "Got a bunch of the new diet Pepsi. Disgusting. Will have to return. Bring the old one back."

The negativity didn't subside as the new Diet Pepsi became the norm. According to the Wall Street Journal, negative tweets about Diet Pepsi outnumbered positive ones by a two-to-one ratio between October and May, according to data from social media tracker Sysomos.

Pepsi declined to comment on the topic, so it's unclear if the reported "action plan" would involve returning aspartame to the beverage, another recipe revamp, or something completely different.

However, simply returning to the previous iteration of Diet Pepsi seems unlikely to boost the beverage's sales, as diet cola consumption have declined in the US every year for the last five years, according to Beverage Digest data.

Diet sodas once seemed like the future of soda giants, eager to serve consumers who are increasingly interested in health and wellness. However, concerns regarding artificial sweeteners have trumped the desire to cut calories for many consumers. As a result, Pepsi and Coke are currently looking outside of the soda industry to attract health-savvy customers and grow sales.

Less than 25% of PepsiCo's global sales are from soda, with CEO Indra Nooyi saying the company is "future proofing"Pepsi's portfolio by investing in new products related to health and wellness. Coca-Cola is doing the same, with multi-million dollar acquisitions such as soy beverage brand AdeS and Nigerian juice maker Chi Ltd.

PepsiCo needs to turn around the Diet Pepsi business, but, for now, it looks like the company's best option for reaching dieting customers is through snacks and non-carbonated beverages, not diet cola. With a new action plan, the company is likely looking not for growth, but to simply stop Diet Pepsi's continuing decline.

SEE ALSO: Pepsi isn't a soda company anymore

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The world is turning against soda. 

Governments around the world have been trying to convince citizens to drink less soda by making it more difficult — or at least, more expensive — for consumers to get their sugary caffeine fix.  

As a result, soda giants like PepsiCo and Coke are making major changes to soda products and diversifying their offerings outside of sugary drinks. 

Most recently, Philadelphia is on the cusp of becoming the first major American city to begin taxing soda.

On Wednesday, the City Council voted to pass a tax increase of 1.5 cents per ounce of sugar-added and artificially sweetened soft drinks. If the beverage tax is officially passed next week, it's expected to raise approximately $91 million over the next year.

While Philadelphia would be the first major American city to successfully pass an overarching, anti-soda tax, it's far from the first to try. In fact, cities across the US and countries around the world are exploring the option to tax soda to decrease obesity, with the cost falling on both consumers buying sugary drinks as well as companies that sell them. 

Berkeley, California is one of the few American cities with an existing policy, passed in 2014 and going into effect in May 2015.

The city imposed a penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, meaning if a distributor, like a convenience store, bought a 20-ounce bottle of Coke to sell to consumers,the store would pay an extra 20 cents, and presumably, pass that charge on to consumers to make up the cost.

In its first year, the city collected $1.2 million from the tax.

In the US, however, cities' failures to tax soda outnumber the successes. And even when the laws do pass, their effectiveness is debated.

For example, according to a study by the Cornell-University of Iowa, Berkley's tax raised retail prices less than half of the amount expected. Retailers were likely willing to swallow the cost instead of raising the price of soda, which could turn off customers.

As a result, the tax did little to convince consumers to drink less sugary beverages. 

"This is important because the point of the tax was to make sugar-sweetened beverages more expensive so consumers would buy, and drink, less of them," Cornell economist John Cawley said in a statement on the study's findings.

Efforts abroad have seen more success.

Various types of soda taxes have already been passed in countries including France, Hungary, and Mexico. 

A 10% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in Mexico in January 2014, which made soda more expensive for consumers, was associated with a 12% reduction in sales of taxed drinks. While critics have said that the reduction isn't enough to significantly impact consumers' health, it was enough to cause concern for soda giants attempting to grow their sales in the country. 

Increasing prices may convince consumers to cut down on their soda intake slightly but likely not enough to cause a huge change to their health. Cutting into soda makers' sales, however, is already convincing Coke and Pepsi to make some major nutritional changes.  

The UK, for example, is taking the corporation-centric approach more directly with a new policy that taxes soda-makers based on their sugar content that will be introduced in September 2017. By targeting soda giants, not consumers, the tax puts the onus on companies to revamp recipes — not customers to cut soda out of their diet.

Big soda's reaction

Unsurprisingly, the soda industry isn't pleased with efforts to turn customers away from sugary beverages. The American Beverage Association, the industry's main lobby group, has already invested millions of dollarsfighting laws to tax and label sugary beverages.

Per capita soda sales have dropped 25% since 1998, but the number of bottles and cans purchased is still rising. As consumers have become more nutritionally-savvy, many have cut soda consumption without government intervention. Adding soda taxes are simply another step in the battle between the soda business and nutrition advocates. 

So far, soda giants are trying to recoup lost sales in two ways: convincing consumers that sweet sodas are okay to drink, as well as investing outside of traditional sugary drinks.

If soda companies want to convince people to continue to drink soda, they need to cut down on sugar and calories. To start, the American Beverage Association has promised to cut calories by 20% by 2015.

One way to do that is by making serving sizes smaller, essentially making more money by selling less soda — and reducing the impact of taxes in areas taxing sugary drinks by the ounce. 

"The consumer is moving to smaller packages,"Sandy Douglassaid in a Morgan Stanley Global Consumer and Retail Conference in November. "A 12-ounce can traded to a 7-ounce can is a 30% reduction in volume, but it's an increase in revenue." 

Convincing people to buy soda in smaller cans — essentially, paying more for less soda — isn't enough though. Increasingly, soda giants are diversifying and investing in healthier options that won't be affected by sugar taxes.

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said in April that less than 25% of the company's global sales are from soda . Rather, the company is focusing on healthy snacks and non-carbonated beverages — a process the company calls "future-proofing."

Coke is in a similar situation, announcing in April that sales of "still" beverages, including water and Minute Maid, had increased 7% . Its packaged-water volume increased in the double digits in the first quarter of 2016, outpacing increases in other healthier ready-to-drink options, like sports drinks (7%) and tea (2%).

"Over the last 15 years, we've gone from still being a single-digit part of our portfolio to now over 25% of our portfolio," Coca-Cola COO James Quincey said of non-carbonated offerings in an earnings call in April. "We expect to continue to grow faster in stills ... and we'll continue to look for acquisitions to accelerate our growth."

As consumers continue to cut soda out of their diets and governments around the world push to cut sugar even more, expect much of that growth to be in bottled water, sports drinks, and juice— not the sodas that made Coke and Pepsi famous.  

SEE ALSO: Coke and Pepsi are making America healthier with the 'marketing trick of the century'

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As Americans drink less soda, one bubbly beverage is falling much faster than the rest: diet soda.

Since 2005, American consumption of diet soda has fallen by more than 27% — a loss of 834 million cases. In 15 years, the category went from accounting for nearly 30% of all carbonated beverages by volume sold in the US to roughly 25%, according to Beverage Digest data.

And the fall of diet isn't slowing down. Diet brands like Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi have accounted for 94% of all carbonated soft-drink declines since 2010.

"It's a staggering figure," Jonas Feliciano, a market consultant for Beverage Digest, said at the trade publication's Future Smarts conference in New York in June.

The US is turning against sugar-packed sodas, with nutrition advocate rallying against Pepsi and Coke sales of calorie-packed beverages. Diet sodas at first seem like the perfect replacement — a lower-calorie option that people can drink without worrying about their health. But sales are dropping even faster than full-calorie beverages.

If soda giants want their diet business to survive in 2016, then they need to answer one question: Why do customers hate zero-calorie sodas?

The demonization of diet

Diet soda hit its peak in 2005, when more than 3 billion cases were sold in a year. But as diet sodas peaked, concerns regarding aspartame and other artificial sweeteners were gaining momentum.

While the FDA and most nutritionists agree that aspartame is safe to consume, soda giants began to look for other solutions as sales declined. While Coca-Cola remains committed to aspartame, last August PepsiCo announced that it was cutting aspartame from Diet Pepsi, citing not health concerns, but customer demand.

"Diet cola drinkers in the US told us they wanted aspartame-free Diet Pepsi and we're delivering," Seth Kaufman, senior vice president of Pepsi and Flavors Portfolio, said in a statement. "We recognize consumer demand is evolving and we're confident cola-lovers will enjoy the crisp, light taste of this new product."

Consumers didn't respond as Pepsi had hoped.

The negative backlash was immediate, and instead of stopping falling sales, Diet Pepsi's performance declined only after the new recipe's debut.

"Diet Pepsi is awful," one customer wrote on the company's Facebook page soon after the aspartame-free version was released. "I hate the new flavor."

Ultimately, Americans drank less of Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi — the two brands that make up half of all diet-soda sales — in the last year. In 2015, Diet Pepsi consumption dropped by 5.8% by volume, while Diet Coke dropped by 5.6%, according to Beverage Digest data.

Clearly, including or cutting aspartame isn't the only problem in the diet-soda industry. Instead, the issue may be in the inherent nature of diet sodas.

"The focus has largely been on new product formulations that seek to mimic their full sugar counterparts. That, in essence, is where some of the problems lie," Feliciano said of the diet-soda industry. "There's no no-calorie sweetener that is currently on the market that can 100% mimic the taste of sugar or high fructose corn syrup."

Basically, when you want a Coke, you want a Coke, not something that tastes kind of like a Coke. Some customers have become die-hard Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi fans — and, when companies change formulations to fit health trends, they lose those customers.

But new customers seeking lower-calorie options aren't gravitating toward lower-calorie imitations, as the anti-artificial ingredients trend remains strong in the food and beverage business.

While this creates problems for diet-soda brands, it also provides a possible solution for the industry.

What's healthy now

Instead of diet soda, consumers are turning to functional beverages: options like energy drinks, sports drinks, tea, and bottled water that serve a clear purpose for consumers.

In the same 15-year period that the diet sodas declined by 28%, single-serve bottled water sales grew 76% by volume. Sports drinks grew 20%, while bottled, ready-to-drink tea grew a whopping 91%.

"A big part of their success is there is no full-flavor original to compare them to," said Feliciano.

As it's become clear that diet sodas aren't the new, healthy option that consumers are looking for. Soda companies have been scrambling to invest in beverages that Americans are drinking — many of them non-carbonated.

Coke announced in April that sales of non-carbonated "still" beverages, including water and Minute Maid, had increased 7%. Its packaged-water volume increased in the double digits in the first quarter of 2016, as did other healthier ready-to-drink options, like sports drinks (7%) and tea (2%).

"Over the last 15 years, we've gone from still being a single-digit part of our portfolio to now over 25% of our portfolio," Coca-Cola COO James Quincey said of non-carbonated offerings in an earnings call in April. "We expect to continue to grow faster in stills ... and we'll continue to look for acquisitions to accelerate our growth."

Early in June, Coca-Cola announced it is buying the largest soy-beverage brand in Latin America for $575 million. In January, the company bought a 40% stake in Nigeria's largest juice maker, TGI Group's Chi Ltd., in January, with plans to buy the rest within the next three years.

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said in April that less than 25% of the company's global sales are from soda. Instead, the company is focusing on healthy snacks and non-carbonated beverages — a process the company calls "future-proofing."

But when it comes to "future-proofing" the soda business, it's clearly not simply about cutting sugar and calories. If it was, then the diet-soda industry would still be thriving. Instead, it comes down serving a beverage that serves a function for consumers — and doesn't try to imitate the sodas that Americans know so well.

For example, PepsiCo's Mountain Dew Kickstart has been one of the biggest success stories in the beverage industry in recent years. A 12-ounce can contains real juice, 60 calories, and 92 mg of caffeine. It's not a health drink, but it is one that fits a consumer's need for caffeine without the negative stigma associated with soda.

The energy-beverage brand, which launched in 2013, now generates more than $300 million in annual retail sales.

In 2016, when consumers think healthy, they don't think diet. Instead, they think of water and sports and energy drinks, even if these beverages are packed with calories and sugar. It's a major shift for the beverage industry, but it's one that provides an opening for new brands and acquisitions that fit a new definition of health.

SEE ALSO: Governments around the world are taxing soda, and it's forcing Coke and Pepsi to make major changes

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Soda consumption is falling in the US, with the accepted reason being that Americans are turning away from sugary beverages.

But what if the reason isn't nutrition — it's because a new competitor is stealing away business?

"Starbucks has taken the [carbonated soda] occasion," said RBC analyst Nik Modi in June at Beverage Digest's Future Smarts conference, noting that many of the coffee chain's beverages are more caloric and sugar-packed than top soda brands.  

"Twenty years ago, people used to wake up with a Diet Coke or a Diet Pepsi," said Modi. "At around 2 o'clock, they'd have another and take a break. Walk in front of a Starbucks at 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. and tell me how long the lines are."

In 1995, Starbucks served its first Frappuccino — a super-sugary beverage that often has more calories than a can of Coke and that has become a huge part of the coffee chain's business. At the time, the chain had 677 locations. Twenty-one years later, the chain has more than 22,000 locations around the world.

With the rise of Starbucks, the coffee industry in general has seen tremendous growth. In the last four years, coffee has gone from a $7 billion annual industry (for the 52 weeks ending June 2, 2012) to a $9 billion business (for the 52 weeks ending May 28, 2016), according to Nielsen data.

Meanwhile, soda sales in the US per capita have dropped 25% since 1998.

How has Starbucks succeeded while the biggest brands at Coca-Cola and Pepsi have fallen?

According to Modi, the coffee chain has provided customers with something that soda giants forgot — purpose.

"The beverage industry is not about health and wellness — it's about functionality and purpose," he said. "Twenty years ago, the function and purpose for Coke and Pepsi were much more wide than they are today."

Modi says that consumers still love caffeine, bubbles, and sugar. They just aren't going to Coke and Pepsi to fulfill those needs any more.

The most successful brands in the beverage industry in recent years have been able to pinpoint a purpose, and provide a solution, often related to health.

In the past 15 years, single-serve bottled-water sales grew 76% by volume. Sports drinks grew 20%, while bottled, ready-to-drink tea grew a whopping 91%. In the last four years, standouts in the soda industry have been Sprite, Wild Cherry Pepsi, Fanta, and Mello Yello — brands that aren't necessarily healthy, but that avoid the negative PR associated with Pepsi and Coke.  

The success of these beverages, as well as Starbucks' drinks, such as the S'mores Frappuccino and the Pumpkin Spice Latte, prove, in Modi's opinion, that the issue isn't sugar — it's marketing.

Modi says that recent soda advertising, prior to the current Taste the Feeling campaign, cut consumers and their reasons for drinking soda out of the equation, failing the consumer.

Complicating matters is the consolidated effort of health and nutrition groups in the fight against the soda industry.

"Soda follows tobacco's playbook to the letter," Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, told Business Insider.

Taxes and other government regulation, efforts to prevent marketing to children, and education campaigns have focused on Pepsi and Coke to a much greater degree than Starbucks, energy drinks, or even other types of soda.

This negative PR, combined with what Modi considers sub-par marketing, has helped drive consumers to different beverages to fulfill their morning caffeination and mid-afternoon break needs.

Starbucks is a company that is acutely aware of consumer perceptions, carefully balancing its menu with both gourmet, coffee-snob approved beverages and sweet, sugary options to appease all customers. This, combined with the company's famously progressive attitude, has helped the chain avoid much of the backlash associated with other companies selling sweet drinks.

PepsiCo and Coca-Cola seem to be taking notes from the chain when it comes to diversification of beverages.

Coke announced in April that sales of noncarbonated "still" beverages, including water and Minute Maid, had increased 7%. Its packaged-water volume increased in the double digits in the first quarter of 2016, as did other healthier, ready-to-drink options, like sports drinks (7%) and tea (2%).

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said in April that less than 25% of the company's global sales are from soda. Instead, the company is focusing on healthy snacks and noncarbonated beverages — a process the company calls "future-proofing."

Starbucks has exploded in the last 20 years — and is showing no sign of slowing. If PepsiCo and Coca-Cola want to compete, they're going to have to invest in beverages of their own that fulfill customers' needs, like bottled water, energy drinks, and tea.

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Burger King will soon be serving up Mac n' Cheetos — creamy mac n' cheese deep fried into Cheeto-shaped sticks and covered with crispy Cheetos flavoring.

The fast-food chain will begin serving the menu item for a limited time on June 27. Mac n' Cheetos will be offered in packs of five with the recommended price of $2.49.

"No one understands snacking better than Cheetos, and our expertise at Burger King restaurants' is serving guests on the go, so it just made sense that we come together to reinvent this favorite food like it's never been done before," Alex Macedo, president of Burger King North America, said in a statement.

The new snack represents a creative — or, depending on your perspective, absurd — new take on the trend of portable snacks in the fast-food industry. Items such as Burger King's grilled hot dog and KFC's to-go cup are doubling down on busy consumers who want to be able to eat on the go — something that is traditionally a challenge for macaroni-and-cheese lovers.

The mashup snack is also a continuation of PepsiCo snack brands' entrance into the fast-food industry. Doritos have been an industry favorite, with menu mashups such as Taco Bell's Doritos Locos Taco and 7-Eleven's Doritos Loaded.

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You're not supposed to believe everything you read, but tack the word "science" to something and many people will take it as fact — no questions asked.

This is why big food companies have percolated into the world of nutrition science. If food marketers can "uncover" a health benefit to consuming a company's products, then those products will sell better. That's not "science," it's reality.

A 2015 report pulled back the curtain on the close relationships between nutrition scientists and food companies. It found that the American Society for Nutrition accepts sweet sums of cash to produce research that falls in the favor of big food companies. The ASN allows companies like PepsiCo, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and McDonald's to sponsor events and supply researchers from their own boards to see through scientific research.

To put it timidly, these partnerships amount to serious conflicts of interest. The food brands get what they want (their products sold), scientists get what they're after (funding to perform research) and the public is left with misinformation. This is only further fueled by hyperbolic news headlines — like the findings outlined in the list below.

Read on to unwrap just a few real scientific studies that have been manipulated by big food companies in ways that are sometimes hidden so deeply, they're not even in the study's footnotes.

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Finding #1: Drinking cranberry juice will cure a UTI.

For years, people have been told that sitting in a cranberry bog could reduce the agony felt from a urinary tract infection. (OK, maybe not a bog, per se.) But it turns out that all the cash shelled out for cranberry juice is for absolutely nothing.

A recent study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a glass of cranberry juice a day reduced UTI symptoms by close to 40% in women. Ocean Spray, the biggest cranberry juice producer on the planet, funded this study.

To add insult to injury, real Ocean Spray staff scientists co-authored the research, Voxreported. "Not only was the food company involved in nearly every step of the process but its scientists even helped write the manuscript."

This information was not included in the study's press release, Vox said.

Even worse, the science in the Ocean Spray-funded study is all wrong. Real cranberries contain an active ingredient called proanthocyanidins. PACs can keep bacteria from binding to the walls of the bladder, they don't show up in most commercial cranberry juices.

"It takes an extremely large concentration of cranberry to prevent bacterial adhesion," Dr. Timothy Boone, of Texas A&M Health Science Center said in a statement."This amount of concentration is not found in the juices we drink. There's a possibility it was stronger back in our grandparents' day, but definitely not in modern times."

The Ocean Spray masterminds were able to fudge their study by analyzing "symptoms" rather than infections. In other words, the study participants didn't even need to have a UTI to show signs of an improved UTI.

Voxexplained it best:

"Imagine you give cranberry juice to 10 women, and another 10 women act as the control group and get sugar water. Let's say everyone in the sugar water group gets a UTI and no one in the cranberry group does. That would mean you prevent 10 women getting 10 events — and that the cranberry juice is a very effective treatment."

Finding #2: Diet soda is better than water for weight loss.

A study published in the International Journal of Obesity suggested that diet soda could promote weight loss better than than water, the hydrating liquid that comes naturally from the planet and makes up around 60% of the human body.

The study was backed and funded by the International Life Sciences Institute, whose members include both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Even worse, some of the study's co-authors were paid the equivalent of $1,100, the Independent reported.

While more than 5,500 papers were reviewed, the findings were based off a mere three. And of those three, only one of the papers showed any significant weight loss. When scientists are paid by brands, and when funding isn't initially disclosed — which in this study, it was not — the results reek of being rigged.

"To suggest that diet drinks are more healthy that drinking water is laughable unscientific nonsense," cardiologist Aseem Malhotra told theIndependent. "If you want good science you cannot allow corporate sponsorship of research."

Finding #3: Kids who eat candy tend to weigh less.

It would be cute if a fourth grader wrote this study to convince their parents to permit extra Snickers from their Halloween bag.

Instead, it's written by sticky-fingered adults who work for the National Confectioners Association, a trade group that represents candy manufacturers. In this case, the Associated Pressuncovered an email written by a co-author of the study that pretty much stated that the results were calculated for the benefit of a company. "We're hoping they can do something with it — it's thin and clearly padded," the email stated, with the study abstract attached.

PepsiCo Inc reported a better-than-expected profit for the second quarter, helped by lower raw material costs as well as strong demand for Frito-Lay snacks and new beverages in North America.

PepsiCo's shares rose 2.2 percent in premarket trading after the maker of Pepsi, Gatorade and Tropicana also raised its adjusted profit forecast for the year.

New drinks such as Propel flavored water and Naked Cold Pressed juice, and snacks under its "Simply" brand helped drive sales, the company said.

PepsiCo's cost of sales fell 6 percent in the three months ended June 11.

That helped net income attributable to PepsiCo increase 1.3 percent to $2.01 billion, or $1.38 per share.

Excluding items, the company earned $1.35 per share, beating the average analyst estimate of $1.30, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net revenue fell 3.3 percent to $15.395 billion, but inched past the average analyst estimate of $15.37 billion.

Net revenue in the North America Beverages unit, PepsiCo's biggest business, rose 1 percent – the slowest growth since the company started breaking out beverage sales from the region a year ago.

Revenue from the Frito-Lay business, which includes Doritos, Lay's and the Simply line of snacks, rose 3 percent. New snacks launched under the Simply brand included Simply Tostitos black bean chips and organic chunky medium salsa.

PepsiCo said it now expects 2016 adjusted earnings of $4.71 per share, up from its previous forecast of $4.66 per share.

(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza)

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The creator of Crystal Pepsi, the clear cola that had a brief stint in the early 1990s and is about to be relaunched for a nostalgic limited run this summer, told Business Insider recently it was "the best idea I may have ever had in my career."

Its inventor, former Yum Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut) CEO David Novak, had an illustrious career, leaving behind a legacy of 41,000 restaurants across 125 countries and a market capitalization of about $33 billion when he retired as chairman in May. He still thinks, however, that he could have made Crystal Pepsi a hit if he just had been a more experienced leader at the time.

At least, he said, the failed product taught him a lesson: When you're a leader, it is your duty to not only take into account your employees' input, but to explain your final decision, regardless of how it aligns with what your team wants.

Novak became COO of PepsiCo in 1992 after a successful run of marketing jobs. So when he saw the rise of the buzzwords "pure" and "clear" for products ranging from soap to gasoline, he saw an opportunity for Pepsi's flagship product. Thus he pitched Crystal Pepsi, a colorless cola that would appear more refreshing and "good" for you — because even though the non-diet version was still loaded with high fructose corn syrup, it didn't have caffeine.

Pepsi ran a limited run of the soda in a limited market, and it performed well. Novak was stoked, and that's why he didn't want to hear any nitpicking from the team manufacturing the beverage.

"The bottlers told me, 'David, it's a great idea, and we think we can make it great, but it needs to taste more like Pepsi,'" Novak said. "And I didn't want to hear it. I was rolling the thing out nationally and I didn't listen to them."

Crystal Pepsi launched across the United States the next year with a Super Bowl ad featuring flowers, coins flying over the globe, a cyclist against a field of clouds, and the Van Halen anthem "Right Now" that was ridiculous enough even at the time to warrant a "Saturday Night Live" parody. But it did grab attention, and customers initially flocked to the product.

The data service Beverage Digest told the Wall Street Journal that Crystal Pepsi peaked with 0.5% of the American soda market but could not carry momentum past an initial burst of interest, and never met Pepsi's goal of capturing 2% of the market and turning it into a billion-dollar brand. Pepsi stopped producing it by the end of the year, and it was extinct by the end of '94.

There are several factors that contributed to Crystal Pepsi's failure — the end of a marketing fad, the century-old association of cola flavor with a dark brown drink — but Novak continues to be most concerned with analysis that said the flavor, however close, wasn't 100% right. And whether or not the flavor was indeed the main reason the soda flopped, it's the factor that mattered most to Novak and what caused him to rethink his management style.

"I learned there that you have to recognize that when people are bringing up issues, they might be right!" Novak said. The next step is making the effort to find evidence that either proves or disproves these issues and make your decision accordingly. Then, the final and most important step is explaining why the decision was made.

"If you show them that you've listened and addressed their concerns, then you've given them the input opportunity they need to get committed ... [and] then they're going to be more committed to the solution," he said.

The key takeaway concerns the importance of recognition, which is why Novak's latest book "O Great One" is dedicated to teaching leaders how to recognize their employees and why that's so important to a company's success. So even if Crystal Pepsi was destined to fail, Novak is confident that he mishandled its launch.

But he made up for it.

From '94 on, including his highly successful tenure as CEO of Yum from 2002 to 2015, he made employee recognition his No. 1 priority, and ended up with an office covered in framed photographs of him with employees he gave awards to for exceptional performance.

And, for what it's worth, Crystal Pepsi has been embraced by a generation nostalgic for the '90s. It's coming back for a limited time, starting this month in Canada and in August in the US.

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People in Berkeley, California, significantly cut back on soda after the city introduced a tax on sugary beverages.

That's according to a study of low-income neighborhoods that was published in the American Journal of Public Health on Tuesday. The study found that soda consumption dropped 22% after Berkeley imposed a penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

The city's tax passed in 2014 and went into effect in May 2015. The new tax made a 20-ounce bottle of Coke 20 cents more expensive for distributors. This extra cost is passed on to consumers.

Researchers tracked changes in soda consumption after the tax went into effect, comparing surveys of Berkeley residents' reported beverage consumption from April to July 2014 against survey results from April to August 2015.

Researchers also compared soda consumption in low-income Berkeley neighborhoods against neighborhoods with similar demographics in nearby Oakland and San Francisco. In cities where no tax had been implemented, soda consumption actually increased by 4% in the same period.

While higher costs associated with the tax likely played a role in deterring consumers, other factors may have been at play as well.

"The greater-than-predicted reduction in consumption in Berkeley could also reflect effects of the campaign surrounding the tax, which may have shifted social norms," the report says.

Berkeley is one of the few cities in the US to successfully pass a soda tax, though similar laws have been proposed around the country and world. In July, Philadelphia passed a tax increase of 1.5 cents per ounce of sugar-added and artificially sweetened soft drinks — a tax expected to raise approximately $91 million over the next year.

Philadelphia is still the only major US city to pass such a tax. Internationally, however, efforts have had more success — soda taxes have been passed in countries including Britain, France, Hungary, and Mexico.

A 10% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in Mexico in January 2014, which made soda more expensive for consumers, was associated with a 12% reduction in sales of taxed drinks.

While critics have said that the reduction isn't enough to significantly affect consumers' health, it was enough to cause concern for soda giants attempting to grow their sales in the country.

Big soda's reaction

Unsurprisingly, the soda industry isn't pleased with efforts to turn customers away from sugary beverages. The American Beverage Association, the industry's main lobby group, has already invested millions of dollars to fight laws to tax and label sugary beverages.

Per capita soda sales have dropped 25% since 1998, but the number of bottles and cans purchased is still rising. As consumers have become more nutrition savvy, many have cut soda consumption without government intervention. Adding soda taxes is simply another step in the battle between the soda business and nutrition advocates.

So far, soda giants are trying to recoup lost sales in two ways: convincing consumers that sweet sodas are OK to drink, and investing outside of traditional sugary drinks.

If soda companies want to persuade people to continue to drink soda, they need to cut sugar and calories. To start, the American Beverage Association has an initiative to cut calories from beverages consumed per person by 20% by 2025.

One way to do that is by making serving sizes smaller — essentially making more money by selling less soda and reducing the effect of taxes in areas taxing sugary drinks by the ounce.

"In markets like North America, we are moving towards selling smaller packages instead of bigger packages," Coca-Cola President James Quincey said in a Q&A after the company reported second-quarter earnings in July.

Persuading people to buy soda in smaller cans isn't enough, though. Increasingly, soda giants are diversifying and investing in healthier options that won't be affected by sugar taxes.

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said in April that less than 25% of the company's global sales are from soda. Rather, the company is focusing on healthy snacks and noncarbonated beverages — a process the company calls "future-proofing."

Coke said in July that sparkling-beverage sales by volume decreased 1% in the second quarter.

With more governments considering soda taxes on the city, state, and national levels, Coke and Pepsi have reason to believe that soda consumption will continue to fall. However, they may be able to find salvation in less sugary beverages.

The Berkeley soda study found that when people decreased their soda consumption, they replaced it with healthier choices. Water consumption (bottled or tap) increased 63% in Berkeley after the soda tax went into effect.

As consumers continue to cut soda out of their diets and governments around the world push to cut sugar even more, expect much of those companies' growth to be in bottled water, sports drinks, and juice — not the sodas that made Coke and Pepsi famous.

SEE ALSO: Coca-Cola's business shows a bleak future for soda

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NOW WATCH: Here's how much sugar is in your favorite drinks

Indra Nooyi is best known for being the CEO of PepsiCo, where she is both the first woman and first person born outside of the US to hold the title.

She was also twice named the No. 1 most powerful woman in the world by Fortune magazine.

Like many other CEOs and leaders, Nooyi starts her day earlier than everyone else, waking up at 4 a.m. and getting to the office by 7 a.m.

After four weeks of following the morning routines of Jack Dorsey, Arianna Huffington, Barack Obama, and Benjamin Franklin, I was getting accustomed to 5 a.m. starts and exercising before the sun came up.

Waking up at 4 a.m., however, would be a whole new challenge.

It would require going to bed extra early, which meant a radical change in how I structured my day and social commitments.

I didn't manage to wake up at 4 a.m. the entire week. In fact, I only attempted it for three days, and the earliest I managed was 4:15 a.m.

After the experiment, however, I realized that I'd created the perfect morning routine for myself in the process. It just doesn't involve starting at 4 a.m.

SEE ALSO: I followed Jack Dorsey's morning routine for a week and was surprised by the difference it made in my day

DON'T MISS: I followed Barack Obama's morning routine for a week, and it taught me a valuable lesson about mental toughness

The experiment

When I attempted to follow Benjamin Franklin's meticulous schedule while simultaneously trying to live up to his 13 virtues, I struggled with practicing all his habits consistently.

After some analysis and some guidance from a man who spent a year trying to be more productive, I realized that I had made my goals too big, too soon. That opened up plenty of opportunities to fall short of what I was trying to accomplish.

So I decided that instead of waking up at 4 a.m. right off the bat, I would try to build up to it. I would try waking up at 4:30 a.m., and then 5 to 10 minutes earlier the next day, and so on until I got to 4 a.m. The same would go for bedtime, until I reached 9 p.m.

I managed to stick with this for three days, starting at 4:30 a.m. on Monday, 4:20 a.m. on Tuesday, and 4:15 a.m. on Wednesday.

I spent my mornings doing 15 minutes of meditation, reading the news over a cup of tea for 30 to 45 minutes, working out for an hour and a half, and making breakfast and lunch before heading to work. I generally got to work around 8:30 a.m., an hour earlier than my usual time.

I originally aimed to get to work by 7 a.m., like Nooyi does, but in the end, I wasn't prepared to slash an hour and a half of my morning routine.

The results

My productivity levels spiked on Monday, but I noticed them decline on Tuesday and Wednesday as I got up earlier without going to sleep earlier.

On Wednesday night, I went out to dinner with friends and got home at 9:15 p.m. — pretty early, but not early enough for a 4:10 a.m. wake-up without concentration issues the next day.

So I set my alarm for 5:30 a.m., though I ended up waking up at 5. The extra sleep made all the difference, and I felt more productive than I had been all week.

On Thursday night, I didn't finish doing everything I needed to do until after 9 p.m. After playing mind games with myself, I decided that I would get up at 5 a.m. the next day.

Friday morning, I was extremely tired, and I started to feel the lack of sleep in my body, my brain, and my eyes.

Despite the tiredness, I realized that I'd performed a consistent morning routine every morning. As a result, I started strong every day, even if I struggled a bit mid-afternoon.

I concluded that the experiment wasn't a total failure. And if not getting up at 4 a.m. every day is a failure, it was one I was happy to accept.

I learned that my perfect morning routine takes three hours.

Some of my coworkers were amazed that I would choose to try an experiment that required me to be up five hours before work.

However, the extra time in the morning led me to discover that my perfect routine takes three hours.

That time allows me to meditate for 15-30 minutes, read the news over a cup of tea for 30-45 minutes, exercise for an hour to an hour and a half, prepare and eat breakfast, pack my lunch, plan my day, get ready, and go.

It may sound elaborate or excessive to some, but I've found that having a slow morning routine sets me up for a productive day.

If you have kids, you're more likely to buy soda.

That might sound counterintuitive, given all that we know about how bad soda is for people — especially kids.

But according to retail-sales data collected by Nielsen over the last year, families with teenage children spent 27% more per household on soda than the average household.

The difference was even wider for nondiet soda — families with teenagers spent 40% more than the average.

"I definitely do see that households that have teenagers, and children in general but especially teenagers, [spend more] when it comes to soft drinks," Jordan Rost, Nielsen's vice president of consumer insights, told Business Insider. "More so than age, it really does have to do if there are children in the household."

Having children provides an immediate boost in a household's nondiet-soft-drink purchasing. Households with no children spend 9% less on soft drinks than the general population. A family with kids sees soda spending increase, on average, as the kids gets get older.

The higher-than-average consumption doesn't just apply to soda. In fact, households with teenagers drink more than their fair share of beverages across the board.

Households with teens drank 38% more energy drinks, 40% more enhanced water, and 25% more instant tea than could be expected for the group.

"There's so much greater choice that teenagers have," say Rost. "Everything from energy drinks to enhanced waters … all those things [are more popular] among those same households. I think it speaks more to the audience than even the beverage themselves."

Bottled, ready-to-drink beverages provide convenience to busy families with teenage children. Rost says that, increasingly, people are using beverages as substitutes for snacks, something that particularly appeals to parents attempting to keep up with teen appetites.

As soda sales overall continue to fall, the reliance on families with kids are becoming all the more important to giants like Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Per capita soda sales have dropped 25% since 1998, and the total volume of soda consumed in the US dropped 1.2% in 2015. Both Coke and Pepsi are investing in beverages like tea, energy drinks, and juices — all drinks that families with teenagers are eagerly buying.

Households that make more than $100,000 a year are buying the least amount of nondiet soft drinks — only 75% of what could be expected. Households making under $20,000 a year spend 12% more on regular soda sales than the general population, and those making $20,000 to $29,999 spend 21% more.

It is nosecret that the soda industry targets black and Latino communities. But according to Nielsen's data, minority households actually buy less soda than white households. While white households buy 8% more soft drinks than the average expected amount in households across all races, Hispanic households buy 13% less and black households buy 29% less. Asian-American households only purchase about half of what could be expected, falling short by 47%.

SEE ALSO: Millennials reveal 100 brands they love

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Sugar appears in unsuspecting foods and beverages.

According to the World Health Organization, the maximum amount of sugar people should consume in a day is less than 10% of their daily caloric intake, meaning less than 50 grams for a 2,000-calorie diet.

However, the WHO strongly recommends reducing that to 5%, or roughly 25 grams.

We took a look at a few beverages that appear to be healthy to see just how much sugar they actually contain. All of the drinks had more sugar than what the WHO recommends.

SEE ALSO: Surprising fast-food items that contain a shocking amount of hidden sugar

NOW WATCH: We put cheap beer to a blind taste test and were surprised by the results

Vitamin Water XXX

Sugar per serving: 32 grams per 20-fluid-ounce bottle 

Percent of recommended daily intake (25g): 128%

VitaCoco pure coconut water

Sugar per serving: 11 grams per 8 fluid ounces 

Sugar per bottle: 22 grams per 16.9-fluid-ounce bottle  

Percent of recommended daily intake: 44%/88%

Canada Dry tonic water

Sugar per serving: 29 grams per 10-fluid-ounce bottle

Percent of recommended daily intake: 116%

As soda sales fall, Coke and Pepsi are looking to bottled water to boost business.

Bottled-water sales have more than doubled in the US in the last 15 years, with Americans buying 11.7 billion gallons of the beverage in 2015.

However, critics are questioning if the apparently healthy adjustment is as positive as it seems.

"Whereas municipal water utilities must share their treatment methods and contaminant-testing results with consumers annually, bottled water companies are not required to disclose this information," Paul Pestano, Environmental Working Group's senior database analyst, told Men's Journal in August. "So with bottled water, we don’t know what treatment or filtration techniques were used or what residual contaminants are still in the water."

In other words, while bottled water is often marketed as the better, safer option, companies do not have to share the same basic information that all tapped water suppliers do.

In fact, in a 2008 study, the EWG found 38 pollutants in 10 brands of bottled water. Two of the 10 brands tested were chemically indistinguishably from local tap water.

With such strong similarities between the two, why does anyone buy bottled water? The answer: great branding.

"Bottled water is the marketing trick of the century,"John Jewell wrote in The Week in 2014.

Companies selling bottled water, he argues, have managed to convince people that buying water is a healthier choice than sugary soda.

But the truth is the comparison is a case of false equivalence. Bottled water isn’t simply an alternative to soda — it’s an alternative to the much more inexpensive and eco-friendly tap water. By buying bottled water, consumers aim to establish themselves as savvy and health-conscious, even though they could simply drink a glass of tap water that is 2,000 times less expensive. 

This nutrition-minded and independent customer is exactly who soda giants like Pepsi and Coke are currently trying to attract as they grow their bottled-water businesses. And it's working.

Water is one of the hottest beverages in the nonalcoholic-drink market, with consumption of water brands Dasani, Aquafina, and Poland Springs all increasing in volume from 6.5% to 11.4% in 2015. For comparison, the amount of Coca-Cola consumed by Americans dropped 1% by volume, while consumption of Pepsi dropped 3.2%.

As a result, Coca-Cola and Pepsi are looking to drinks outside of their namesake beverages to grow sales.

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said in April that less than 25% of the company's global sales are from soda.Rather, the company is focusing on healthy snacks and noncarbonated beverages — a process the company calls "future-proofing."

Similarly, Coca-Cola's "still" beverages such as tea, juice, and bottled water are growing sales by volume as soda shrinks.

"Since 2000, we've increased our business from about 10% of our volume coming from still beverages to almost 30% today," COO James Quincey said in a Q&A in July.

Bottled water is a $13 billion business that, logically, doesn’t need to exist. It is also an industry that won’t stop growing. As Americans turn away from soda, it is exactly the kind of beverage companies like Pepsi and Coke need in their portfolio.

SEE ALSO: Coca-Cola's future isn't about soda anymore

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NOW WATCH: Here's how much sugar is in your favorite drinks

Dunkin' Donuts is teaming up with Coca-Cola to take on Starbucks in a battle to win the bottled coffee business.

On Thursday, the coffee-and-donut company announced it will launch its first line of ready-to-drink coffee beverages in early 2017. The beverages will be manufactured, distributed, and sold by Coca-Cola and sold in convenience and grocery stores, as well as Dunkin’ Donuts locations

"We're the No. 1 seller of iced coffee. This is in our wheelhouse," Dunkin' Brands CEO Nigel Travis told Business Insider. "We saw this was a category that was growing at an incredibly fast rate."

Last year, Travis says, bottled coffee grew 8% in the US, reaching $2.3 billion in annual sales according to Nielsen data. Sales are estimated to grow another 8% this year. 

Beyond the growing bottled coffee trend, the move was also prompted by concern that Dunkin' Donuts may be losing customers to competitors, such as Starbucks, that already sell bottled coffee. 

"There is no doubt that all our research showed that our customers were drinking Starbucks, and not just Starbucks but other brands. We don't think that's a good thing," says Travis. "The trouble is when people try things, they might like it and become loyal to that brand. So, we want the loyalty to be entirely to Dunkin'."

With the new bottled coffee line, Travis says the company wants customers who are casual Dunkin' drinkers to become true loyalists.

Further, Travis believes that bottled Dunkin' Donuts coffee will convince new customers to visit stores, as well as help potential customers to warm to Dunkin' in areas where the chain is currently expanding. 

"It will stop our customers from buying the competition," says Travis. "There is a lot of evidence to show that people who buy the bottled coffee will also go back and try the product — the original product — in the store." 

Much of Dunkin's bottled coffee plan is still unknown. The company has not revealed any information on the flavors that will hit the market, though Travis says it will maintain the "Dunkin' taste" profile. 

Currently, Starbucks, in partnership with PepsiCo, controls a huge percentage of the bottled coffee market.

Starbucks claims it invented bottled coffee as we know it back in 1996 when it debuted its bottled Frappuccino. In 2015, Starbucks claimed the North American Coffee Partnership, a joint venture between Starbucks and Pepsi, had 97% of the market share in bottled coffee. 

As Dunkin' Donuts attempts to compete with Starbucks in the bottled coffee business, it is worth noting that this is also a move for Coca-Cola to compete with PepsiCo. Earlier in September, Coca-Cola's iced tea brand Gold Peak announced it planned to enter the ready-to-drink coffee business in 2017.

With soft drink sales slumping, beverage companies from coffee chains to soda giants are looking for new drinks to boost sales. Bottled coffee is a $2.3 billion industry — and it's growing. Now, Coca-Cola and Dunkin' Donuts are gearing up to take on Starbucks and PepsiCo for a share of the profits. 

SEE ALSO: Why Starbucks doesn't franchise

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NOW WATCH: This is why coffee bags have a hole in them

PepsiCo's green juice has the company in hot water.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer-advocacy group, said PepsiCo misled consumers by marketing its Naked Juice beverages as healthier than they really are.

CSPI states that Naked Juice can pack more sugar than a can of Pepsi. Its Pomegranate Blueberry juice, for example, accurately advertises that it is a no-sugar-added beverage, but even still a single 15.2-ounce container (the smallest option) contains 61 grams of sugar, about 50% more sugar than a 12-ounce can of Pepsi.

Further, CSPI says Naked Juices mislead customers into believing that beverages are packed with super nutrients when the dominant ingredients are "cheap, nutrient-poor" juices. The Kale Blazer juice, for example, is mostly orange and apple juice, despite packaging and marketing that emphasizes leafy-green imagery.

CSPI's biggest legal problem with Naked Juice isn't that the beverages are unhealthy; it's that the brand is marketed as a healthy option with taglines such as "only the best ingredients" and "just the healthiest fruits and vegetables."

"Consumers are paying higher prices for the healthful and expensive ingredients advertised on Naked labels, such as berries, cherries, kale and other greens, and mango," CSPI litigation director Maia Kats said in a statement. "But consumers are predominantly getting apple juice, or in the case of Kale Blazer, orange and apple juice. They're not getting what they paid for."

PepsiCo described CSPI's lawsuit as baseless and said there is nothing misleading about its Naked Juice products, and that bottles clearly identify what fruit and vegetables are used.

"All products in the Naked portfolio proudly use fruits and/or vegetables with no sugar added, and all Non-GMO claims on label are verified by an independent third party," PepsiCo said in a statement. "Any sugar present in Naked Juice products comes from the fruits and/or vegetables contained within and the sugar content is clearly reflected on label for all consumers to see."

The class-action lawsuit aims to force PepsiCo to award monetary damages to customers who have purchased Naked Juice beverages, as well as adjust its marketing to be more transparent.

In 2013, PepsiCo's Naked Juice paid a $9 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit after plaintiffs accused the company of falsely labeling some of its juices as "all natural." The brand agreed to stop using the term on labels, though it denied that the term was misleading or false.

Less-than-healthy brands appropriating buzzwords such as "no sugar added,""high protein," and "all natural" has been a hot topic in recent months. In 2009, CSPI went after Coca-Cola over health claims made on bottles of Vitaminwater. Coca-Cola agreed to ditch the contested health claims and note that the drink was made "with sweeteners" on labels.

Beverages that customers see as healthy are increasingly important parts of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo's portfolios as soda sales suffer.

SEE ALSO: McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, and Subway are making changes to profit off the shifting definition of 'healthy'

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NOW WATCH: In the battle for nutrition between smoothies and juice there’s one clear winner

PepsiCo is hitting back on a lawsuit filed against the company's Naked Juice brand, saying claims by the consumer-advocacy group Public Interest are "baseless."

"I feel confident that consumers have the clear information on our labels and the way that we've designed them to understand and make the choices that they need to make," Naked Juice's general manager Andrea Theodore told Business Insider. "I do not feel at this time that this lawsuit is causing us to rethink we need to do something different here."

The juice brand is working to send a similar message to consumers — that customers can trust it despite the lawsuit — with a revamped website.

As of Thursday, Naked's website no longer opens with photos of beverages. Instead, the front page is now a statement on a plain green background, with the title "Everything is right there on our bottles." Scrolling down, the website shows images of the labels that CSPI has called "misleading."

The class-action lawsuit takes issue with two major parts of Naked Juices' marketing.

First, Public Interest, or CSPI, argues that while Naked Juice says it is a no-sugar-added beverage, it is also a high-sugar beverage. Its Pomegranate Blueberry juice, for example, accurately advertises that it is a no-sugar-added beverage, but even a single 15.2-ounce container (the smallest option) contains 61 grams of sugar, about 50% more sugar than a 12-ounce can of Pepsi.

Theodore says the higher sugar content of certain Naked beverages shouldn't take away from the fact that the drinks do not contain added sugar.

"We're just trying to call out the competitive advantage that we have — that we're not adding sugar," she said. "We've done a lot of research of what to communicate on our labels and what's important to consumers. And, when we did our research last, the important thing to them was that they've felt duped by some juice brands that do add sugar to their products."

Further, she argued that the fact Naked Juice features calorie counts on the front of bottles, next to the no-sugar-added label, makes a sugar count unnecessary. Customers, she says, have the options to choose options with fewer calories and less sugar.

CSPI's other major argument is that Naked Juice has misled customers into believing that beverages are packed with super nutrients when the dominant ingredients are "cheap, nutrient-poor" juices. The Kale Blazer juice, for example, is mostly orange and apple juice, despite packaging and marketing that emphasizes leafy-green imagery.

Theodore's stance is that the name and label represent the dominant taste, not the dominant ingredient. The Kale Blazer, she says, is designed to taste not like orange juice but a sweeter version of kale.

This isn't the first time Naked Juice has come under fire for its labeling. In 2013, it paid a $9 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit after plaintiffs accused the company of falsely labeling some of its juices as "all natural." The brand agreed to stop using the term on labels, though it denies that the term was misleading or false.

"We made the decision to take the term off our labels," Theodore said, noting that the term "natural" is not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. "If there's any question that comes to light that we feel is really, truly misleading consumers, and they tell us that, then we'll make a change."

Right now, however, Naked Juice says that's simply not happening.

"I feel very good about everything we're doing on our labels," Theodore said. "Where we are right now, I have all the confidence that this lawsuit is baseless, and we're going to keep things the way they are."

SEE ALSO: PepsiCo is being sued over its Naked Juice marketing

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NOW WATCH: In the battle for nutrition between smoothies and juice there’s one clear winner

From 2011 to 2015, PepsiCo and the Coca-Cola company gave money to 96 national health groups, including the American Diabetes Association and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and lobbied against 29 public-health bills aimed at improving nutrition.

That's according to a report published Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, which provides another window into the myriad ways in which members of the US food industry have bankrolled public-health initiatives to try to make their products appear less harmful than they are.

The report is eerily reminiscent of last month's searing New York Times revelation that an American sugar trade group paid Harvard scientists in the 1960s to publish research portraying sugar as less unhealthy than it actually is.

Public-health experts say Pepsi and Coke's strategy harks back to the days of Big Tobacco.

"First, they attack the science. Then, they fund community groups, promote exercise as a solution, and say they're self-regulated and don't need to be regulated by an outside source,"Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of public health and nutrition and the author of the book "Food Politics," told Business Insider. The authors of the most recent report seem to agree.

"Lessons can be learned from the history of tobacco companies, which have long given money to sympathetic organizations that deal with domestic abuse, hunger, and minority advancement," they write. "Now, most organizations refuse tobacco money. Perhaps soda companies should be treated similarly."

Over the past two years, the American Beverage Association, the soda industry's main lobby group, has invested millions of dollars fighting laws to tax and label sugary beverages. Last year, Coca-Cola was accused of pumping money into misleading research that championed exercise over dietary changes for health and weight loss. The nutrition nonprofit it funded that was part of those efforts has since disbanded.

The science is in: Sugary beverages are really, really bad for us

In November of last year, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Americans should eat and drink no more than 50 grams of sugar — less than the amount in a 20-ounce bottle of Coke — each day.

The new proposal has been years in the making: Chatter of the need for a cap on sugar has been circulating among consumers, lawmakers, and public-health advocates since research in the early 2000s first linked our excessive consumption of the stuff with obesity, weight gain, and other health problems— especially in children.

In a systematic review of 50 years of studies published in the American Society for Clinical Nutrition in 2006, researchers found "strong evidence for the independent role of the intake of sugar-sweetened beverages, particularly soda, in the promotion of weight gain and obesity in children and adolescents," they wrote in the paper.

The research demonstrating that sugary beverages are bad for us continues to pile up. Another more recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine made the links between sugary drinks and America's obesity problem more explicit:

"The science base linking the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages to the risk of chronic diseases is clear," the authors — seven experts in public health, nutrition, and economics — wrote.

One of the reasons soda may play such an important role in obesity has to do with how sugar is processed in the body.

All carbohydrates — bread, cereal, or potatoes — are ultimately broken down into glucose, which circulates in our blood and gives us energy. Sugars get broken down quickly and tend to raise blood glucose the most dramatically.

But while many foods that are high in natural sugars (fruit, milk, etc.) also contain other nutrients like protein and fiber that help build strong muscles and keep us feeling full, soda does not.

A traditional 12-ounce can of Coke, for example, has 140 calories and 39 grams of sugar but no protein and no fiber to help round out the impact of the sugar. This is part of the reason sugary drinks, like Coke or Gatorade, are called "empty calories"— they are likely to contribute to weight gain because they don't fill you up.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, roughly one-third of all the calories Americans get from added sugars are from soda and sugary drinks. (We get the other two-thirds from processed foods like snack bars, cakes, breads, and ice cream.)

"The correlations between soda and obesity are extremely strong," Nestle told me.

The American Beverage Association provided Business Insider with the following comment:

"Yes, we may disagree with some in the public health community on discriminatory and regressive taxes and policies on our products. But, we believe our actions in communities and the marketplace are contributing to addressing the complex challenge of obesity. We stand strongly for our need, and right, to partner with organizations that strengthen our communities."

READ MORE: The government just proposed a sea change to American diets — and one industry is furious

SEE ALSO: The healthiest things you can order at 12 fast-food chains

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LONDON (Reuters) — PepsiCo Inc has set a target for reducing the amount of sugar in its soft drinks around the world as part of a suite of goals aimed at tackling problems ranging from obesity to climate change.

The New York-based company will announce on Monday that by 2025 at least two thirds of its drinks will have 100 calories or fewer from added sugar per 12 oz serving, up from about 40% now.

The move, which it plans to achieve by introducing more zero and low-calorie drinks and reformulating existing drinks, comes as PepsiCo and rival Coca-Cola come under increasing pressure from health experts and governments who blame them for fuelling epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

PepsiCo says the new global target is more ambitious than its previous goal of reducing sugar by 25% in certain drinks in certain markets by 2020.

"The science has evolved," Mehmood Khan, PepsiCo's chief scientific officer of research and development, told Reuters.

He gave an example of new flavor ingredients that require less sweetening, saying: "It's not just about sweeteners, it's about understanding the flavor ingredients and having proprietary knowledge and access to them."

The World Health Organization this month recommended taxes on sugary drinks, as France and Mexico have done, to curb consumption and improve health. The soft drinks industry opposes such taxes.

Despite its name, PepsiCo generates only 12% of its $63 billion in annual revenue from its famous cola brand. It makes 25 percent from carbonated soft drinks such as Mountain Dew, with the rest coming from waters and juices including the Tropicana brand, plus snacks and dips such as hummus and guacamole.

Its 2025 goals also include targets for lowering sodium and saturated fat.

Financial progress

"These are good steps. But when we have an obesity crisis, I think there is more that we can be doing," said Mindy Lubber, president of non-profit organization Ceres, which pushes companies and investors to take action on sustainability.

"If a food and beverage company is not looking at nutrition, they are not looking at the direction the world is going in."

Coke has said that by 2020 it would offer low-calorie or no-calorie options in every market as part of its sustainability goals.

PepsiCo is building on goals set out 10 years ago, which targeted nutritional, environmental and social improvements. Khan said there has also been financial progress.

He said the company has saved $600 million over the past five years from reduced water, packaging and energy use, as well as a reduction in waste. He added that, over the past decade, average returns on investments in this area have been better than the cost of capital.

Khan expects similar returns in future, which might be good news for investors, who generally don't base investment decisions on sustainability.

"It might not be the driving factor, but it might a filter," said Morningstar analyst Philip Gorham.

Other targets include a 15% improvement in the water efficiency of PepsiCo's direct agricultural supply chain in water-stressed areas by 2025 and a 20% drop in greenhouse gas emissions across its supply chain by 2030.

(Reporting by Martinne Geller in London; Editing by David Goodman)

SEE ALSO: A fiery new report makes a convincing case that Big Soda is the new Big Tobacco

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Bottled water comes in two varieties. There's purified water, which is water from local sources (a.k.a. tap water) that has been filtered, and there's natural spring water, which is sourced from springs across the United States. So the bottled water that costs you several dollars may be sourced from the earth in Florida or it's just from the local water supply in New York.

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This past week we learned that PepsiCo is finally turning against sugar. But the soda giant's sudden interest in nutrition is not as unexpected as it seems. 

On Monday, PepsiCo announced that by 2025, two thirds of its drinks will have 100 calories or fewer from added sugar, per 12 oz serving. Currently, these types of sugary beverages make up 40% of PepsiCo's drinks.

While the news may seem like a shocking move for a soda company, it's part of a wider trend in the beverage industry, driven in large part by a need to turn around sales as soda consumption declines.

In 2015, the total volume of soda consumed in the US dropped 1.2%, compared to a drop of 0.9% in 2014,according to Beverage Digest's annual report. The amount of Coca-Cola consumed by Americans dropped by 1% by volume, while Pepsi Cola dropped 3.2%.

A big reason for the decline of soda is a growing body of scientific evidence highlighting the harmful impacts of excess sugar consumption. While Americans consume 30% more sugar daily now than three decades ago, according to theObesity Society, nutritional trends are increasingly focusing on the dangers of eating too much sugar.

As a result, Pepsi and Coke are moving to diversify their offerings and grow sales of drinks such as tea, coffee, and bottled water. 

In April, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi announced that less than 25% of the company’s global sales are from soda — the same proportion of sales Pepsi brings in from its "naturally nutritious" category, which includes bottled water and unsweetened drinks. 

Nooyi calls the emphasis on products aimed at nutritionally-savvy customers "future-proofing" Pepsi's portfolio, "reshaping it to capitalize on consumers' increasing interest in health and wellness."

Coca-Cola is attempting a similar make-over. 

"Since 2000, we've increased our business from about 10% of our volume coming from still beverages to almost 30% today," COO James Quincey said in a Q&A in July.

Instead, the company is investing in juice, tea, coffee, and bottled water. 

Even when it comes to selling soda, Pepsi and Coca-Cola are finding ways to cut sugar and calories. 

One way soda companies are combatting the decline in consumption is by shrinking the size of cans and bottles. Smaller cans, for example, contain fewer total calories than large bottles, which may make them more appealing to the consumer. They also generally cost more per ounce.

In 2015, for example, an 8.5-ounce aluminum bottle of Coke generated $1.60 in revenue per purchase, while a two-liter gallon only generates $0.18. That’s nearly nine times the revenue.

Cutting down packaging gets soda companies brownie points with anti-obesity advocates. In fact, at least some Pepsi's sugar cuts will likely be traced to smaller bottles — not less sugary drinks. 

Ultimately, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo will never completely ditch the sodas that serve as their namesakes.

However, sugary two-liter bottles Coke and Pepsi are no longer the backbone of the chains' business. The soda giants need to cut sugar from beverages to survive due to consumer demand — not just out of concern for shoppers' health. 

SEE ALSO: Coca-Cola's future isn't about soda anymore

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