One million servings of Coca Cola products are consumed every minute and other sobering facts about sugary drinks

Public health officials, doctors, teachers, children's health advocates and parents are up against stiff competition to get Americans addicted to liquid sugar to rethink what they drink. Here is an insight into how one soda company, at least, thinks and their goals for your health.

Wendy Clark, Coca Cola's head of integrated marketing and communications, recently spoke at a Digital Conference sponsored by Ad Age. She proudly reported the following stats:

• Coca Cola sells 1.7 billion servings of its products every day which computes to 1 million servings a minute
• Even though it took 124 years years for the company to build to these sales figures, their goal is to double sales to 3 billion servings a day by 2020
• Coke is in 200 countries around the world, more than the United Nations
• Everything -- from the can to the delivery truck -- is an ad for Coke products
• The company's global fleet of vehicles is double the size of FedEx and UPS combined
• The world's most valuable brand knows how to use social media; there are 24 million fans on Coke's FaceBook who are networked to 585 million FaceBook fans
• The world's fourth largest employer has 700,000 "system associates" charged to be ambassadors for the brand; of them 2,700 people work in marketing

Some loud factions scream about the sanctity of preserving personal choice and that everything else -- removing sodas from schools, God forbid introducing a soda tax -- is "nannygate" government.

I believe in personal choice too if the playing field were even. However, when it comes to the sugary drinks, the playing field is drastically lopsided in favor of the soda companies. I think I'll get a glass of water now.

~ Paula