How confident are you? Do you feel like you’re on top of the world today? Maybe you feel like you’re a little off your game. After all, it’s Monday.

As a country, Americans are losing confidence – not in themselves - necessarily, but in institutions. Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions poll is out, and only three out of 16 institutions they’ve been tracking since 1973 ranked above 50 percent this year.

Seventy-five percent of adults have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military. Sixty-three percent have confidence in small business, and 56 percent have confidence in the police. All others fall short of 50 percent, including the church or organized religion (44 percent), the presidency (37%), public schools (29 percent) and Congress, which is barely hanging on to double digits at 13 percent.

Considering the tremendous impact churches, schools and politicians on our lives, these are discouraging numbers. Equally discouraging is the level of confidence adults have in the media. People have less confidence in newspapers (25 percent) and television news (21 percent) than in the criminal justice system (29 percent) and only slightly more than HMOs (19 percent).

It’s important to the beverage industry to earn and maintain your confidence. On a daily basis, the media report inaccuracies about sugar-sweetened beverages, the efficacy of soda taxes and the research on obesity.

One myth frequently repeated is that a majority of added sugars in the diets of American children come from sugar-sweetened beverages. Let’s clear it up – according to the Centers for Disease Control, food is the number one source of added sugars.

That’s why we developed Let’s Clear it Up – a website where we clear things up about the products we make and dispel the myths that some institutions perpetuate about soft drinks.

We’re confident you’ll get the facts about obesity research, taxes and many other topics when you visit www.LetsClearitUp.org.