Made-up advert touting 'soda for babies' misleads online
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 7, 2022 at 03:47
- 1 min read
- By AFP Australia
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"For a better start in life, start cola earlier!" reads a portion of the purported advert shared on Facebook on May 20, 2022.
It touts giving sugary carbonated beverages to babies -- with the advice attributed to "The Soda Pop Board of America" supposedly located at "1515 W. Hart Ave, Chicago, Illinois".
The image was also shared alongside a similar claim on Facebook here and here.
However, the image does not show a genuine advert.
'Fake ad'
AFP performed multiple keyword searches on Google and did not find any official reports about the existence of "The Soda Pop Board of America" or its mentioned location.
Marion Nestle, a professor at New York University who wrote a book on the history of soda, told AFP the purported organisation is "totally made up".
A reverse search of the image led to this post by a blog called The City Desk -- whose URL is also listed on the poster.
The blog says the image shows a "fake ad exhorting parents to give soda to their babies".
"It is very fake. There was never a Soda Pop Board of America. There was never an organization advocating for soda for babies," the blog reads.
The City Desk describes itself as a website "comprised of semi-regular items about a city that does not exist".
The blog states the idea for the advert came from a 2002 post on the social networking site LiveJournal.
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