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The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

nytimes.com

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Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#211

Post by TulliusCicero »

agumonkey wrote: post #105
gaius wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soda sales are down but obesity is still up Because it's not just about calories in but calories out too. People spending all day sitting in front of screens replacing all other forms of both work and play...

Modern westerner lifestyle is really damaging. Since I can drive a car I don't walk anymore. My belly reminds it to me everyday.

Biking could help with this, but there's so much cultural momentum against treating bike infrastructure as a first-class citizen, or heck, even a second-class citizen like walking. And without safe bike lanes, very few people will bike.

The amount of subsidies and preferential treatment we give to cars is really astounding, but at this point most people in the US can hardly think of it being any other way.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#212

Post by bootload »

mapt wrote: post #208
bootload wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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…

These are good points. This one I'll have a stab at.

"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."

Environment: more food, less exercise and incidental exercise. There is one intriguing idea, our bio flora (microbiota) is evolving and it's effecting us. ~ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-h...

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#213

Post by _delirium »

baby wrote: post #193
grogenaut wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, as an americano drinker I'd be annoyed as hell by this. I have a 52oz water cup at my desk, for me much of things is about the quantity of liquid so I dilute everything. I get my alcohol drinks heavily cut with mixers so they last longer. If drinks are small I finish them way too fast. So a tumbler of a mixed drink lasts me 8 minutes but the same drink in a pint with little ice and more mixer is more like 40 min…

Coffee in Italy, France and other places in Europe is meant to be drink in small cups. Like a shot. I've asked for Americano in France and people are always making fun of me. But I will never understand why you would drink a shot for pleasure when a drink can last way longer. So yeah totally agree with you.

This varies a lot within Europe. In the Nordic countries, the norm is to drink larger cups of coffee, traditionally brewed filter coffee, but lately also various latte/etc. type drinks (overall, similar to what Americans drink), slowly over a longish period of time. That's embedded in cultural expectations as well: going out "for a coffee" is a popular type of casual socializing, and means sitting at a table and chatting for maybe an hour or so while you sip a coffee. Not the Italian-style 30-second outing, where you drink a shot of espresso at a bar standing up.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#214

Post by digitalengineer »

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.

The Food that makes billions (bbc) is about the rise of water and more. Very good! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w8cll

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#215

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

bootload wrote: post #198
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regard to B), this is well explored and is called 'GI' or 'Glycemic Index'.[1] High GI foods cause an insulin response in an effort to maintain blood glucose at 5.6 (fasting) - 11.1 mmol/l (postprandial), one of insulins roles is to cause cells to remove sugar from blood and store it as muscle and liver glycogen first then body fat. Once the sugar has been removed from general circulation the hungry feeling recu…

@TheSpiceIsLife, do you think hijacking the "Gluconeogenesis" process is what the sugar-water industry is aware of? ie: sugar hit following sugar removal.

I wouldn't like to proclaim any understanding of another's awareness.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#216

Post by [deleted] »

bootload wrote: post #198
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regard to B), this is well explored and is called 'GI' or 'Glycemic Index'.[1] High GI foods cause an insulin response in an effort to maintain blood glucose at 5.6 (fasting) - 11.1 mmol/l (postprandial), one of insulins roles is to cause cells to remove sugar from blood and store it as muscle and liver glycogen first then body fat. Once the sugar has been removed from general circulation the hungry feeling recu…

@TheSpiceIsLife, do you think hijacking the "Gluconeogenesis" process is what the sugar-water industry is aware of? ie: sugar hit following sugar removal.

[deleted]

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#217

Post by grogenaut »

voltagex_ wrote: post #187
grogenaut wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a cold/sore throat and when I do I drink a bunch of OJ. I don't normally drink OJ so I get small windows into it. Every time I get it I notice less and less pulp in it. Today there were tons of "NO PULP" oj out there, even tropicana 50, which is watered and filtered oj. These things are essentially natural koolaid.

It's extra work but I just eat oranges or juice them (manually, screw cleaning out a big juicer). I'll also add that if you drink juice, you can consume a lot more sugar than if you ate the fruit - eating the "whole" fruit you'll feel full quicker.

sure but my use case is to make my throat feel better so the fruit isn't as good.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#218

Post by HappyTypist »

adventured wrote: post #141
hippich wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope people will also lay down sugar amount of apple, bagel, etc food next to these coke/dew/etc bottles of soda drinks. =) Thing is - most of products in US has label stating clearly amount of calories and major contributors. It is SUPER easy to find approximate amount to which you need to stick. But people still over do it two/three/more times. As much as I hate it, I think only high food costs will work. Problem…

Replace 90% of the sugar consumed in America with erythritol or similar, and ban high fructose corn syrup as unsafe for human consumption. Obesity would begin to plunge overnight. It would remove vast amounts of calories from the typical American diet.

Alternatively, tax sugar and hfcs at to be 125% the price of erythritol/xylitol/etc. Will cause manufacturers to generally shift to polyols while still allowing consumers to have a choice and bringing tax revenue in the process.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#219

Post by HappyTypist »

Theodores wrote: post #155
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #4

I would like to see a decline of "Big water". It astonishes me that bottled water is consistently sold for more than sugar water and not one bottler breaks from the pack and sells it for less. That can only happen with industry wide collusion to fix prices and yet no one in the government does anything about it.

If you work in retail then you are interested in profit, not making a good deal for your customers. If the proper branded product gives you a nice 37% margin (with that being 37% of a proper price), what is the incentive for selling something with a lower margin at a lower price? The proper branded products have some distribution arrangements that mean you cannot sell their stuff at a low price, i.e. lower than every…

Oh yes, this can certainly be effectively outlawed. Create a barebones agency that manages a eBay like site for wholesalers. If Coca cola ever declines to sell to someone or offers preferential prices, then that's price collusion.

Re: The Decline of ‘Big Soda’

#220

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

bluecalm wrote: post #86
frenchy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There some much healthier options in there if you know where to look, but unfortunately its not easy to identify them, and even things like granola which are colloquially thought to be healthy are often jam packed with sugar.

Maybe the solution is to require sorting on the shelves by sugar content. This way not only healthier options will be easier to find but you would need to take a few additional steps to get your high sugar option. Those additional steps to get to the end of the shelf may even turn into a walk of shame kind of thing with enough cultural pressure.

Thats the right direction. But why put the burden onto supermarkets? Producers of food should be required to visually indicate the proportional sugar content on the packaging. Imagine a box of cereals, the bottom third of which has to be white in order to indicate that 1/3 of its contents is indeed sugar. No more searching & parsing fine print with unintuitive text.
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