Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
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Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
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Re: Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
#2Sodas even became ubiquitous in our offices! And Hackathons!
But to be real; offices having free soda available has its own health downsides; A cola at lunch can quickly become a cola for lunch and afternoon snack -- and maybe even a pick-me-up when tired or stressed. Only, it leads to weight gain through its sugars and the full supressing carbonic acid; acids lead to bone, nail, and organ side effects; and sugars, hfcs, and phosphoric acid start leading us to diabetes.
Re: Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
#3Sodas even became ubiquitous in our offices! And Hackathons! But to be real; offices having free soda available has its own health downsides; A cola at lunch can quickly become a cola for lunch and afternoon snack -- and maybe even a pick-me-up when tired or stressed. Only, it leads to weight gain through its sugars and the full supressing carbonic acid; acids lead to bone, nail, and organ side effects; and sugars, h…
I'm mostly with you, but carbonic acid is harmless. If anything it might raise the pH in your stomach.
Re: Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
#4To this day, almost all aluminum cans carrying soda are lined with a resin that inhibits the insulin signaling pathway, and is associated with Type 2 diabetes. Most of the manufacturers make claims that it's harmless.
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/contact-us/faqs
Despite what they say, the scientific consensus is opposite, really, with the vast majority of academic papers suggesting quite harmful effects : https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/diabetes-time-to-resort-to-plas...
Re: Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
#5Sodas even became ubiquitous in our offices! And Hackathons! But to be real; offices having free soda available has its own health downsides; A cola at lunch can quickly become a cola for lunch and afternoon snack -- and maybe even a pick-me-up when tired or stressed. Only, it leads to weight gain through its sugars and the full supressing carbonic acid; acids lead to bone, nail, and organ side effects; and sugars, h…
I'm mostly with you, but carbonic acid is harmless. If anything it might raise the pH in your stomach.
chronically lowered stomach pH is associated with gastrointestinal bleeding
Re: Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
#6A friend of mine pointed out that all the original sodas were herbal beverages. Coca-Kola was made to deliver the beneficial properties of two tropical plants (coca leaf and kola nut [2]), root beers were flavored with various plant root extracts, Dr. Pepper has 21 natural flavors, etc. The plant extracts provided anti-oxidants, caffeine, and other medicinal substances.
"Adaptogens or adaptogenic substances are used in herbal medicine for the claimed stabilization of physiological processes and promotion of homeostasis." [1] - wikipedia goes on to discuss how the term is not considered valid today, where something is only a "medicine" if it's highly purified, entirely isolated from its natural context, and has specific physiological effects that are understood and described.
I think it important to point out that before the modern era, foods and plant-derived substances were humanity's best option for improving our body's function. I've read how civil war soldiers greatly appreciated coffee (entirely imported from tropical countries).
The Coca-Cola company has a monopoly on coca-leaf flavoring [3]. This substance is a good source of anti-oxidants. Coca-Kola allegedly has been found to have more flower extracts than Pepsi-Kola...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptogen [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_nut [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca#United_States
Sodas were originally consumed in small quantities - 8 to 12 ounces was typical. Now we're getting plant-free "sodas" (sugar water with artificial colors and flavors, and without plant ingredients) in 64+ ounce servings.
My poor father buys Coke-zero, not realizing that research has found that people who consume artificially sweetened beverages actually consume more calories in total. I think he's desperate for the caffeine (exhaustion), and doesn't realize the metabolism boost of caffeine is best balanced with a small amount of sugar (caffeine without sugar -> low blood sugar -> cortisol release).
I disagree that "soda pop" was originally toxic. I keep a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Kola around for a small serving (8-ounces) of coca leaf and kola nut in the mid-afternoon period, after lunch & before dinner.
Re: Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
#7To this day, almost all aluminum cans carrying soda are lined with a resin that inhibits the insulin signaling pathway, and is associated with Type 2 diabetes. Most of the manufacturers make claims that it's harmless. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/contact-us/faqs Despite what they say, the scientific consensus is opposite, really, with the vast majority of academic papers suggesting quite harmful effects : https:/…
I was under the impression it's all aluminium cans that need a chemical buffer to prevent aluminium from leeching into the fluids. Long term Aluminium poisoning is probably worse than diabetes since it tends to eat away at your brain.
Either way I'm not particularly fond of the flavor that aluminium cans seem to impart on drinks, and have been starting to avoid them more as I get older.
Re: Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
#8I switched to OpenCola[0]. It tastes pretty close, given that it's based on a reverse-engineered/prototype of the Coca-Cola recipe. I like knowing what goes into it. Plus I put about half the sugar into it that the recipe calls for.
There's a UK vendor that sells the concentrate of oils premade. I keep about a liter of the syrup (concentrate + water + sugar) in my fridge and add a tablespoon of so to 8oz of seltzer/mineral water when I want a soda:
Re: Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
#9Sodas even became ubiquitous in our offices! And Hackathons! But to be real; offices having free soda available has its own health downsides; A cola at lunch can quickly become a cola for lunch and afternoon snack -- and maybe even a pick-me-up when tired or stressed. Only, it leads to weight gain through its sugars and the full supressing carbonic acid; acids lead to bone, nail, and organ side effects; and sugars, h…
I'm mostly with you, but carbonic acid is harmless. If anything it might raise the pH in your stomach.
The acid seems to interact with torn aluminum (from the mouth of the can) to create a specific taste effect that is addictive, or preferred. My skin also would break out reliably, per can consumed (and still does when I test it out).
I switched from consuming soda from cans (and bottles) 2 decades ago. Drinking from soda fountains exclusively is more expensive at times and certainly doesn't taste as good (being a brown sugar suspension with few additives), but my skin stopped breaking out, my diabetes tests are negative, and my weight is consistent. I'm convinced it's not the soda flavor nor only the sugar nor the carbonation, but the containers and solution related to the acid. Bottled soda has all kinds of nasty effects based on how it's stored and for how long, that soured me pretty early on.
Re: Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop (2014)
#10While the dosages were small, they were certainly habit-forming, and soda fountains stood to profit from such consistent customers.
People typically eat breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. You might even say habitually.
Around that time, it became obvious to the medical profession that there weren’t any health benefits to carbonated water on its own, so people started selling it as a treat
With my first pregnancy, I threw up morning, noon and night for eight months. Carbonated water was one of the things I could keep down and it helped make it vastly more bearable.
Keep in mind these fountain drinks with stuff added for "medicinal purposes" existed at a time when, no, you couldn't go to Walmart and select from a wide assortment of reliable OTC drugs without a prescription. If your medicine cabinet at home has multiple different OTC pain killers and cold medicines, my feeling is you really don't have a leg to stand on for scoffing at such practices from a hundred or more years ago.
Coca-Cola absolutely contained ingredients with medicinal properties. It's the one that is probably the best documented. That doesn't mean the others didn't also have real medicinal benefit. It just means we don't necessarily have the records of what went in them and the proof that X ingredient absolutely has medicinal uses.