Press Clips: MiO Gets Super Bowl Spot; Sweetened Drinks Linked to Depression; NYTimes Explains Oddity of Beyonce’s Pepsi Deal

Kraft Foods Group is backing its faith in MiO, the liquid water enhancer, by placing a 30-second advertisement of the brand in the third quarter of the Super Bowl, according to Ad Age.

“Nearly two years since we launched, MiO has already proven to be a huge hit with millions of fans,” said Doug Weekes, the vice president of beverages for Kraft. “So it’s only fitting that our game changing liquid water enhancer will lead the new Kraft onto the world’s largest advertising stage during this year’s Super Bowl.”

Another component of this year’s Super Bowl is pop singer Beyoncé Knowles, who’s slated to perform in the halftime show. However, in a recent op-ed in The New York Times, food guru Mark Bittman accused Knowles of somewhat paradoxical decision-making. Bittman, who is the food columnist for The New York Times Magazinewondered how Beyoncé Knowles could be so politically conscious and endorse Pepsi at the same time, saying that Knowles is promoting herself alongside a category that could one day be ranked as deadly as cigarettes.

“Beyoncé Knowles would presumably refuse to take part in an ad campaign that showed her carrying a semiautomatic rifle,”  Bitmman writes. “But she’s eager, evidently, to have the Pepsi logo painted on her lips and have a limited-edition Pepsi can bearing her likeness.”

Bittman would argue that his concerns about the consumption of sugary drinks are not without merit, and in a timely article for the food writer, Bloomberg.com reported on a new study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health revealing that drinking more than four sweetened beverages, especially diet soda, could lead to a greater risk of depression. Researchers studied 263,925 American adults aged 50 to 71 and the drinks they consumed from 1995 to 1996. About 10 years later, the subjects were asked if they had been diagnosed with depression. The results show that those who drank more than four cans of soda per day had a 30 percent greater risk of depression than those who consumed no soda.