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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

#131

Post by andor »

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.

That's what we have regulations for ;-) Everything called "fruit juice" in the EU needs to be 100% juice (but it can be made from concentrate).

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#132

Post by Scientist007 »

mikeyouse wrote: post #127
tbrownaw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their confidence intervals include 0 or nearly-0, their P-values are at or near the .05 cutoff, and they tested a bunch of different things and got results on a few that don't really make sense. In related news, green jelly beans cause acne: https://xkcd.com/882/

> Their confidence intervals include 0 or nearly-0, their P-values are at or near the .05 cutoff They ran two different models and found across all cohorts (correcting for age, race, BMI, marital status, smoking, history, physical activity levels, and education) that those who regularly consumed sugar-sweetened soda had statistically shorter telomeres -- and that this affect is correlated with the amount of consumpti…

The "joke" points out an important flaw.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#133

Post by mikeyouse »

tsotha wrote: post #117
hughes wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at the workplace, many offices offer unlimited free soda as a perk. I almost never touch the stuff and would love to have access to healthier options. I haven't seen a single job posting featuring regularly stocked fresh fruit as an incentive.

>Even at the workplace, many offices offer unlimited free soda as a perk. Is that still true? I know Microsoft did it in the early years, but that was a long time ago.

It's definitely true in the SFBay Area.. They might not advertise it explicitly, but most offices I've visited have free soda. The more progressive (or better funded?) ones have other better options too like Odwalla or Naked Juice.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#134

Post by ddispaltro »

orclev wrote: post #30
brandonl222 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because mass consumption of carrots isn't a top public health issue? If consumption of carrots rivaled that of soda I'd be willing to bet there would be more studies on it just the same as there are studies on various other foods such as red meat, egg cholesterol, fish oil, etc.

Actually mass consumption of carrots can cause your skin to develop an orange tint (seriously, not joking here).

Same with yams. It happened to my brother when we were kids.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#135

Post by pacaro »

hughes wrote: post #88
tjr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people, it seems to be. I suspect part of the issue is how abundantly available it is. For example, you go to the theater, and you can either buy a single bottle of water, or a cup of soda with free refills. Many restaurants offer only local tap water as a water choice, which varies in good taste. Lots of vending machines offer only soda, no water, again leaving the water-drinkers to search for a hopefully-c…

Even at the workplace, many offices offer unlimited free soda as a perk. I almost never touch the stuff and would love to have access to healthier options. I haven't seen a single job posting featuring regularly stocked fresh fruit as an incentive.

I can't speak for other places, but certainly Dropbox has fresh squeezed juice available, in addition to smoothies, agua fresca etc.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#136

Post by anigbrowl »

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?

1. Neither am I. I used Google to find a copy on the author's academic website which took all of 20 seconds. You can find full-text versions of most scientific papers by searching on the journal article title and appending 'filetype:pdf'.

2. Yes, the answer to the question is complicated. As I mentioned, it occupies a full page of the study. I could have summarized this in a few words, but the authors had already done that in the abstract and the poster didn't consider that good enough.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#137

Post by novalis78 »

codyb wrote: post #95
novalis78 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the other weird thing is how hard it is to find carbonated seltzer in America... in Western Europe you basically trip over container loads of the stuff at every supermarket's entrance. Makes you wonder if carbonated seltzer is what might help change North American soda consumption habits

Really? Where in America? In New York I've never had any problem finding seltzer. My parents buy it every time they go to the supermarket in upstate New York. I'm trying to think of how common it is in corner stores. I can't say I've ever looked particularly hard for it. I used to keep my refrigerator in Buffalo stocked with the stuff though. It sure is refreshing. Thankfully my work provides free cans of seltzer whi…

Florida...but maybe I am just surprised not to see 10 varieties at the entrance of each supermarket...it was just so prevalent and easy to find in Germany/Austria.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#138

Post by MacsHeadroom »

johnward wrote: post #78
stealthlogic wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters.

I guess it matters because it might actually prove our bodies handle HFCS and Sugar differently. I have never seen that proven anywhere else.

Of course our bodies handle HFCS and "sugar" differently. There are about a dozen types of common simple sugars and all of them are handled differently because they are different molecules.

Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#139

Post by anigbrowl »

Scientist007 wrote: post #128
mikeyouse wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

Given that most published medical research findings are false, their scepticism is well founded. Your confidence, to the contrary, may be borne of ignorance. http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...

It's not skepticism, it's rejectionism. Skepticism would have been to look up the paper and then argue that it's deficient in some manner - sample size too small, errors in the methodology, whatever it may be. I'm well aware that many, many published studies are scientifically deficient or overstated in some way, and have no problem with such deficiencies being pointed out.

Asking 'did the researchers consider X' without bothering to even look at the paper is just posturing. It's on the same level as saying 'this looks shopped - I can tell by some of the pixels and from having seen quite a few shop jobs in my time.' It may be an attempt to signal hard-headedness and intellectual rigor, but absent any specific target for the criticism, it's worthless.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#140

Post by anigbrowl »

maxerickson wrote: post #125
anigbrowl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that high fructose corn syrup is not in fact high in fructose? Perhaps you could address the linked study from the article, which found fructose:glucose proportions in sweetened beverages to the be in a ~60:40 ratio rather than ~50:50. The full paper is available at the link with no paywall, so feel free to point out how you consider it deficient. Also, I can see for myself that Lustig is not obese.…

The etymology of the "high" in HFCS is from a comparison to plain corn syrup, which has little or no fructose (it's processed to make HFCS, glucose is enzymatically converted to fructose).

True, that was a cheap shot - but my argument rests on the numbers.
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