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Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

time.com

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Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#101

Post by shawabawa3 »

boydjd wrote: post #75
novalis78 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question - in and by itself - gives you away as an American. As a central European who grew up on water, fruit juice (80-60% water thinned) and tea (green, herb and on and off black) it made me chuckle. I have never seen so much soda consumption anywhere on this planet before coming to the US.

A lot of the "fruit juice" (in America, at least) contains just as much HFCS as soda. I don't know if this is the case in the rest of the world or in this study though.

I'm fairly sure in the UK you can't legally call fruit juice with added sugar/sweeteners "juice" - it would have to be fruit drink or something

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#102

Post by weinzierl »

mikeyouse wrote: post #3

The key results from the paper: After adjustment for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, sugar-sweetened soda consumption was associated with shorter telomeres (b = –0.010; 95% confidence interval [CI] = −0.020, −0.001; P = .04). Consumption of 100% fruit juice was marginally associated with longer telomeres (b = 0.016; 95% CI = −0.000, 0.033; P = .05). No significant associations were observed betwe…

    No significant associations were observed between
    consumption of diet sodas or noncarbonated SSBs and 
    telomere length.
I don't understand how the carbonation can have an effect. It's just CO2 and a little bit of H2CO3, neither of which is metabolized.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#103

Post by chadscira »

Gracana wrote: post #56
aaron-lebo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) Soda is very refreshing. This is important in warmer climates. If it is 98 degrees outside (37C), an orange Fanta does a much better job of making me feel better than just water This is entirely psychological, right? What about soda would make it more refreshing physically than water?

I think it's the carbonation. When I realized that's the part I really enjoyed, I started drinking seltzer water (and a lot of it, because I didn't get the uncomfortable feeling that sugary soda gave me.)

I was addicted to Diet Coke in the US (it was the only soft drink i enjoyed). Recently I moved to Thailand, and they do not carry Diet Coke but it turns out the satisfying feeling i was having was directly related to the high level of carbonation. I now have switched to drinking carbonated water.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#104

Post by spikels »

wiredfool wrote: post #20
mikeyouse wrote: post #3

The key results from the paper: After adjustment for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, sugar-sweetened soda consumption was associated with shorter telomeres (b = –0.010; 95% confidence interval [CI] = −0.020, −0.001; P = .04). Consumption of 100% fruit juice was marginally associated with longer telomeres (b = 0.016; 95% CI = −0.000, 0.033; P = .05). No significant associations were observed betwe…

I wonder what would happen with half fruit juice, half carbonated water.

You are proposing an experiment that would be almost impossible to run.

Little if any nutrition research is actually run like a traditional science experiment (i.e. do something specific and observe results). Unfortunately outside of the prison camps on North Korea it is impossible to control the diet (or behaviors) of enough people for long enough to get useful results.

Instead we observe people uncontrolled behavior (almost never directly but through questionnaires) then observe health outcomes (usually not directly) or in this case something (telomere length) believed to be associated with health outcomes. Attempts are then made to adjust for all these potential problems using additional data (usually questionnaires) - usually difficult to say how effective.

These neccesary compromises introduces a whole host of potential problems that have contributed to all the confusion over what is good/bad nutrition. I've given up on having much confidence in medical research until it is repeatedly confirmed in additional studies - which may never happen.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#105

Post by jhallenworld »

awakeasleep wrote: post #65
toomuchtodo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So they saw 'aging' with sugar-sweetened soda, the opposite with fruit juice, and no significant difference with diet sodas or non-carbonated sugary sodas. What compounds in soda are most likely causing this? If they're not seeing the results in fruit juice, its not sugar causing the damage.

Nutrition doesn't work like that- there are too many variables. It could be something that fruit juice has and soda doesn't, it could be a confluence of factors that require lateral thinking.

Many fruit juices have potassium, which should help with heart health by counteracting the too much sodium we eat. Not sure why it would have any effect on telomeres though.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#107

Post by mikeyouse »

Arnor wrote: post #91
anigbrowl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Time article is actually a very dry summary of the study's key finding, written in colloquial but not sensational language. It also has a link to the study in the very first sentence. I found the full text very easily: http://www.chc.ucsf.edu/ame_lab/pdfs/Leung%20et%20al%202014a... The poster above could easily have satisfied his/her own curiosity on this point. 'Did researchers control for [extremely obvious thi…

1. Some of us aren't subscribers to APHA or aren't interested in spending $22 on the article. 2. Why so confrontational? If you know the answer to the question, why not summarize it? Is the answer to the question so complicated that it would take more time and energy than the two paragraphs you composed in derision?

I can address #2;

> If you know the answer to the question, why not summarize it? Is the answer to the question so complicated that it would take more time and energy than the two paragraphs you composed in derision?

Every science article posted on HN gets the exact same treatment where well-intentioned but scientifically ignorant posters fill the comment section with drive-by posts saying "Correlation != Causation" or "Did they correct for [obvious variable]".

It's exhausting and completely unproductive.

If they would take 30 seconds and actually read the source information, they would answer their questions and the comment threads wouldn't devolve into this annoying meta conversation.

Take the post that prompted this whole thing;

> Did they describe how they controlled for behavioral habits? It seems like, as a group, the type of people who would drink large amounts of sugary soda would be less likely to make healthy behavioral choices in other aspects of their life, compared to people who drink fruit juice or diet soda. This could also explain the disparity between soda and non-carbonated sugar-sweetened beverages

> This study doesn't seem to show that soda ages you (as the article states), but instead that sugary soda consumption indicates a tendency towards other activities/habits that may prematurely age you.

So a poster, that later admits he didn't read the article, not only discounts the research that a half dozen PhDs in public health performed, but then provides his own summary of their research that is completely at odds with their results and experience.

How is this helpful?

If one were trying to troll a comment section to waste everyone's time, that's literally the best tactic since anything more obvious would be flagged or ignored.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#108

Post by rquantz »

copperx wrote: post #87
rquantz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3) Soda is available everywhere and is the de-facto drink with most meals. I don't remember the last meal I ate with adults where people ordered soda. It may be that every once in a while I'll be around a recovering alcoholic who orders a soda, but usually it seems they order something like sparkling water. It's probably a regional/class thing, since I live in NYC. Maybe in the middle of the country or in a working c…

It is definitely a class thing. You must be hanging out with the upper class, my friend.

Haha, working musicians are hardly upper class. Intelligentsia, maybe.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#109

Post by chadzawistowski »

valarauca1 wrote: post #28
johnchristopher wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [..] In many (most?) restaurants, your beverage choices comprise soda and water. This reminds me that in Belgium there's a fast food chain with menus for which the cashier can't swap the soda for water.

This is true for a lot of US resturants (especially fast food) they don't have a button for water, instead they just ring up a soda, and fill it with water.

My understanding was that restaurants in the US are required to provide free tap water. It may be a very small cup, but it should be available.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#110

Post by mikeyouse »

weinzierl wrote: post #102
mikeyouse wrote: post #3

The key results from the paper: After adjustment for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, sugar-sweetened soda consumption was associated with shorter telomeres (b = –0.010; 95% confidence interval [CI] = −0.020, −0.001; P = .04). Consumption of 100% fruit juice was marginally associated with longer telomeres (b = 0.016; 95% CI = −0.000, 0.033; P = .05). No significant associations were observed betwe…

No significant associations were observed between consumption of diet sodas or noncarbonated SSBs and telomere length. I don't understand how the carbonation can have an effect. It's just CO2 and a little bit of H2CO3, neither of which is metabolized.

The results probably vary due to the different classes of beverages, it's not like they make a Coke Zero-Carbonation.

I'm actually having a hard time coming up with non-carbonated sugar-sweetened beverages as I don't drink any, but I'm picturing stuff like Honest Tea or those Starbucks Frappuccino things.

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