NEW YORK – The New York City Health Department has launched an extension of its “Pouring on the Pounds” ad campaign, targeting sports drinks, energy drinks, sweet tea and other sugary beverages, Advertising Age reports.

The campaign will tap television and print, warning New Yorkers about so-called health dangers of sugary beverages. Previous versions of the campaign have targeted soda. 

The new ads link sugar-sweetened beverages with type 2 diabetes and complications including

amputation, heart attack, vision loss and kidney failure. Outdoor ads show a sports drink bottle that’s pouring globs of fat into a glass. The ads encourage New Yorkers to replace sugary beverages with water, seltzer, fat-free milk and fresh fruit.

“Sports drinks, energy drinks and fruit-flavored drinks sometimes sound like they’re good for us, but they are contributing to the obesity epidemic just as much as sugary soft-drinks,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley.

The ads are meant to warn New Yorkers who “may mistakenly believe that non-carbonated sugary drinks are healthy,” said the health department.

Kevin Keane, a spokesman for the American Beverage Association, referenced a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that shows over a 12-year period, U.S. youth and adults lowered their intake of sugar-sweetened beverages by 68 and 45 calories per day, respectively. He said the city’s claims connecting sugary beverage consumption and obesity don’t “add up.”

“This obsession that the New York City Health Department has for beverages is really unhealthy, because it’s misleading New Yorkers. The contribution of sugar-sweetened beverages to diets is small and declining, yet obesity rates are going up,” Keane said. “The facts don’t match their rhetoric.”