The Decline of ‘Big Soda’ • Hacker News Board

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#201

Post by RevRal » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 4:29 AM UTC

kw71 wrote: post #81

neverartful wrote: post #53

Like many of the posters here, I realize that much of the food and drink sold is unhealthy. On the other hand, I don't think that nanny state regulations are the answer. Plenty of unhealthy things abound (when overused): chips, candy, pizza, fast food, cookies, ice cream, video games, television, etc. Maybe some of the same marketing tactics used to sell the unhealthy things can also be used to counter them with heal…

Under a socialized healthcare regime, every sick person is a problem for the whole society in that we have to pay for it. So, being careless with your health is a crime against the people. If you are in the USA, consider that you have been funding healthcare for some of the worst offenders for decades by paying taxes which fund hospitals. Now with the healthcare reforms in mind, which have itemized your contribution…

Perhaps there can be screenings at some frequency to determine one's health. If a person consistently shows a lack of inclination to take care of themselves and follow advice, that behavior is logged and they automatically get de-prioritized when waiting lists are involved. I would assume that generally healthy people are just more of a positive investment, but if someone makes the motions of good health but encounters some life-changing event then they can be said to have shown an inclination to take care of themselves.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#202

Post by nnd » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 4:31 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #139

caseysoftware wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about that too but since they're sugared and carbonated, I assume they're often classified as soda too? (Not 100% sure there.)

They're not necessarily sugared in the sense of a regular Coke, but I'm not sure if they differentiate for the types. Monster, which has become a rather large company, sells a lot of their zero sugar / zero calorie products. They moved to using erythritol. I drink the products and have yet to find any counter evidence erythritol isn't drastically superior to pretty much every other sweetener. It has been shown to be…

Have you done any research on the side-effects of energy drinks?

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#203

Post by nnd » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 4:36 AM UTC

tdkl wrote: post #71

tim333 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if they just stopped advertising it. In the UK the government tried to ban food advertising to children but there was massive lobbying from Kellogg's and they dropped it.

Regarding Kellogg's , they also started the whole "Breakfast is healthy and most important meal in the morning" BS. Since I've started intermittent fasting 16/8 (from 20.00 to 12.00) I've been loosing fat easily.

I didn't know someone does this on purpose. I just have a low appetite in the late evening and the morning, so I've been doing this for a few years now.

I heard that you you want to lose fat, you need to speed up your metabolism which means eat more often. I wonder how this works with this kind of diet.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#204

Post by icelancer » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 4:40 AM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #169

jimmar wrote: post #32

It's interesting to me that diet soda consumption has dropped from its peak. I would have guessed that sugary soda would have been replaced by diet soda, but it appears that water has replaced sugary soda more frequently. Mind mildly blown.

A lot of people just can't get over the terrible taste of artificial sugar. If someone ever creates an artificial sugar indistinguishable from sugar or corn syrup, it'll be a multibillion dollar invention. I'd give my right arm for zero calories coke, I'd rather have a perrier than diet coke.

I agree. Though Coke Zero is significantly better than Diet Coke.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#205

Post by wpietri » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 4:53 AM UTC

PopeOfNope wrote: post #149

wpietri wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that the advertising industry, which clears north of $200 billion a year in the US, is entirely devoted to manipulating what other people need, right? If those people will stop trying to mind (and control) everybody else's business, there'd be a much smaller problem here.

You realize people are going to do what people are going to do. The only thing you can really control is yourself and your reactions to things. I don't watch TV, read newspapers, watch football games, browse the web without an ad blocker, or live in a city. I haven't seen an ad in years. When I do venture into the city, I recognize that I must have seen ads, but I can't recall what any of them were; I'm too busy thin…

If people were going to do what they were going to do, then advertising wouldn't exist. And you wouldn't be commenting here. Influence matters.

As for your advice to focus on one's self, maybe you should try taking it.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#206

Post by astrange » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 5:04 AM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #196

jrockway wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Fruit is "healthy" because it has fiber in it. Fruit juice removes the fiber, making it basically the same thing as soda.

It doesn't have to for example if you made orange juice from an orange and didn't filter it. Eat the orange or juice it it's pretty close.

Who says eating the orange is healthy? Still lots of fructose, and these days you're not going to get scurvy if you skip it.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#207

Post by astrange » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 5:06 AM UTC

nnd wrote: post #203

tdkl wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Kellogg's , they also started the whole "Breakfast is healthy and most important meal in the morning" BS. Since I've started intermittent fasting 16/8 (from 20.00 to 12.00) I've been loosing fat easily.

I didn't know someone does this on purpose. I just have a low appetite in the late evening and the morning, so I've been doing this for a few years now. I heard that you you want to lose fat, you need to speed up your metabolism which means eat more often. I wonder how this works with this kind of diet.

It's not true; you can activate your metabolism just as well by walking in a circle once an hour.

Some people, particularly women, enter starvation mode quickly and don't lose fat better through fasting, but usually it doesn't hurt.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#208

Post by mapt » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 5:11 AM UTC

bootload wrote: post #197

mapt wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) If a beverage has a certain number of calories from sugar per volume, it doesn't really matter whether it's cola-flavored, orange-flavored, vanilla-flavored, tea-flavored, natural-flavored, artificially-flavored, carbonated, uncarbonated, caffeinated, or uncaffeinated. They're all functionally soft drinks, from a dietary perspective, but the graph that charts the decline in carbonated soda does not show the other…

" A person weighing 300lbs has roughly the same neurochemical hunger/stress response as a person weighing 150lbs," Not sure about this. Will depend on the type of (over) eater. Do they over eat because of psychology (stress reaction), do they over-eat due to some hormonal imbalance (lower gut hormone despite eating) and subject keeps eating. Then there's binge eaters. Each of these three types of over-eating have a d…

You're missing the point: a 300lbs person who stays 300lbs is not over-eating. Over-eating isn't biologically defined against some ideal meal size, it's defined against homeostasis: consuming as many calories N as the body burns. That's what the brain's hunger feedback mechanisms are supposed to care about.

Carrying around extra fat causes N to go up.

"Getting fat people to go on diets that cause them to lose weight" is approximately as difficult, motivation-wise, as "Getting skinny people to go on diets that cause them to lose weight". It's extraordinarily difficult, because their bodies are screaming at them to go back to the refrigerator.

The novel question to answer is why overeating - consuming more calories than you burn, and thus gaining weight steadily over long time periods - is so much more prevalent now than it was in previous decades. Why people who are already fat are inclined to eat more (much more) than skinny people, is the simply metabolic reality of the body's drive for homeostasis.

There is a healthcare problem, of course, with having fat people around, but the scientific question of what is making them all have weight problems at higher rates than before, is somewhat distinct from the practical problem of how we get the existing fat demographic to lose weight. Aggressive funding of bariatric surgery seems to be the least-bad method of the latter for the moment; Almost nothing else can be shown to work effectively at the levels required, since we're effectively fighting the strongest drive the body has after breathing.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#209

Post by mirimir » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 5:19 AM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #60

caseysoftware wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why we haven't had anyone start smoking in decades.. Soda sales are down but obesity is still up, so the calories are coming from somewhere. If you believe the other common stories, we're drinking the calories. I'd wager they come from the rise of coffee-based beverages - which would not be considered soda - but I don't have data to back that up.

For now I think Starbucks et al are benefiting from being culturally identified as more upper/middle-class. Obesity stereotypes seem to have fixated mostly on a "people of Walmart" type image of the fat, slobbish lower classes. So even though a 12-oz Starbucks caramel latte is far worse than a 12-oz Coke, it gets a pass.

Tasting sugar is temperature-dependent. Generally, a given amount of sugar makes hot stuff taste sweeter than cold stuff. That's why warm soda tastes too sweet, and cold coffee tastes too bitter.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#210

Post by chipsy » Sun, Oct 04, 2015, 5:28 AM UTC

Malician wrote: post #150

_delirium wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This suggests a strategy for improving the healthiness of soda: the government should work to make the ice-cream float come back into fashion. "Don't drink your soda plain: add a scoop for your health!"

Maybe? I mean, have you ever tried to eat dinner after icecream? It's just not happening, even if it's delicious dinner. But soda, well, take a 2000 calorie meal and add soda and you have a 3000 calorie meal.

Saturated fats make carbs digest more quickly. For example, if I have oatmeal I can go to bed immediately because it's low GI. But if I add a spoon of peanut butter then my heart will get a little bit contentuous and keep me awake.

As well, adding a new substance introduces the potential of allergens. I have a dairy sensitivity. If I have a grande latte from Starbucks I'll spend the next hour in a haze. I can have it, but it's worse than just sugar in many respects. But the equivalent soy latte leaves me refreshed. For some people the opposite might be true.