On July 30, 2013, New York City’s notorious soda ban on servings over sixteen ounces was overturned on appeal. It’s a decision which opponents of the beverages insist is going to be appealed again in just one of the many ongoing battles in our cultural conflict with the carbonated sweet beverages we love so much and 7Up.

Really aggressive attacks on the consumption of soft drinks include recent pointed publications of experimental findings related to general sugar consumption. On August 14, 2013, a series of experiments by University of Utah professors Wayne Potts and James Ruff determined that increasing the amount of sugar in the diets of mice by 25%, the remainder of their lives was cut in half. News outlets seized on the fact that was the equivalent of a human drinking three cans of pop a day and stuck that in their headlines.

Additionally on August 16, it was widely reported by such publications as CNN that Columbia University had conducted an analysis of 3,000 mother-child pairs and found some very interesting only slightly less negative tendencies among children who drank a lot of soft drinks. Five year-old children who drank 4+ soda servings per day were apparently 100% more aggressive on the whole than their peers who didn’t drink any. The American Beverage Association was on hand to point out that the sodas were not marketed to that demographic, and that the publication of the study itself did not determine the link between the consumption of the beverages and the behavioral problems. Furthermore, they mentioned the dubious nature the data was gathered, what with mothers reporting the behavior of their children versus the analysts directly acquiring the data.

Meanwhile, the Coca-Cola corporation is starting a massive ad campaign that heavily emphasizes the fact that aspartame has been found in hundreds of scientific studies to not cause health problems as they attempt to push the consumption of their sugarless beverages. Also, Coca-Cola is apparently taking steps to expand into the alcoholic beverage market, at least in Australia where they will be handling distribution for $11 billion worth of Coors’ beer. Possibly this is a test for alternative products in response to all the heat currently on their soft drinks.

No matter what the courts, studies, or corporation say about this, I have to admit that all this news reporting has made me thirsty for a wild cherry Pepsi. Chilled, no ice. How about you?