Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

time.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 259 posts

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#221

Post by leoc »

mikeyouse wrote: post #170
gwern wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's exhausting and completely unproductive. And completely accurate. You know what's more exhausting than seeing someone point out that correlation!=causation? Being whiplashed by a dozen different studies, or correlation after correlation failing when subjected to a randomized test. In this case, all you have to do is look at how they tried to defend against the universal healthy user bias (you know, the same thi…

> In this case, all you have to do is look at how they tried to defend against the universal healthy user bias (you know, the same thing that led to such epic fails as hormone therapy?), and see that all they did was adjust for weight and some self-reports. Bzzt. They actually adjusted for age, smoking (never, former, current), pack-years of smoking, energy intake using the USDA's HEI, alcohol intake, physical activi…

> energy intake using the USDA's HEI

Based on self-reports, though, yes?

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#222

Post by thaumasiotes »

xrange wrote: post #122
crusso wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breast-fed infants don't typically have exposed teeth subject to tooth decay, do they?

Sure they do. Not when they are first born, but later on. Source: Father of four kids who were still nursing when they had teeth.

On the other hand, it's not really a problem if a kid's milk teeth go bad. They quickly get replaced.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#223

Post by thaumasiotes »

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 worked for a company that offered regularly stocked (every day) fresh fruit. Food of pretty much any kind was available if you made the request. It wasn't advertised in job listings, though.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#224

Post by thaumasiotes »

city41 wrote: post #179
Afforess wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drink (diet) soda because I need caffeine in the mornings. I am not a morning person and never have been. Without caffeine, I will not be mentally alert before 11am. I hate the taste of coffee, so soda it is.

Coffee is an acquired taste, not sure anyone likes it at first. Diet soda is just as bad for you as regular soda and has also been linked to diabetes and obesity.

> Coffee is an acquired taste, not sure anyone likes it at first.

If that were true, coffee would never have become a beverage anywhere.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#225

Post by blisterpeanuts »

rsl7 wrote: post #174
nilkn wrote: post #14

Not to mention it can cause diabetes and it's horrible for your teeth. For me, it also caused acne. Soda's really, really bad for you, and I think at this point it would be viewed the same way that smoking is viewed if it weren't for the fact that soda affects only the consumer whereas cigarettes produce second-hand smoke and a suffocating odor that fills the room. Maybe 2050's Mad Men will shock its viewers with how…

I had a serious dental incident about 20 years ago due to both massive soda/sugar intake and not taking care of my teeth. I bit into a candybar and almost passed out due to the pain. Trip to the dentist: 12 cavities which I got filled in three long and painful visits. Eating candy was actually pretty unusual for me already, but I never drank soda again... or those damn Lance crackers I ate all the time.

Wow, rsl7, you gave your dentist a new yacht! Tough break there. Fortunately, research is proceeding on modeling new teeth from stem cells that eventually may help us all have natural, whole teeth again. They'll probably still do fillings for the small stuff, though.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#226

Post by blisterpeanuts »

billmalarky wrote: post #165
TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think at this point it would be viewed the same way that smoking is viewed if it weren't for the fact that soda affects only the consumer whereas cigarettes produce second-hand smoke and a suffocating odor that fills the room. And the addiction, don't forget that horrible, crippling addiction.

Soda has addictive properties. Caffeine being one but I would argue there's carb/sugar addiction potential in there too (look up carb withdrawal). Now I'm NOT saying it's even close to being as addictive as nicotine, but you get my point.

Probably we're programmed to love sweet stuff, because of the symbiotic relationship between plants and seed eaters. We eat the fruit and spread the seeds.

Unfortunately, sugary drinks trigger the instinct but have no beneficial effects, and they lack the phytonutrients of fruit and honey. We should just never drink or eat anything that is sweetened with either sugar or non-sugar alternatives. Easy to say and hard to do, though; I love sweet coffee, cake, and ice cream.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#227

Post by pseud0r »

menssen wrote: post #194

This is not a criticism of this study, but I do want to observe that "aging" has a very specific meaning here, and it does not really just mean "harmful." Aging causes things in your body to fail. Smoking, also, causes things in your body to fail, regardless of and unrelated to whether it causes "aging." (Anecdotally, as a person who has gone both through periods of heavy soda [here in the midwest, "pop"] consumption…

aging = rate of damage / rate of repair

Some damage is intrinsic, caused by free radicals, wrongly transcribed DNA, misfolded proteins etc.

Some damage is caused by external factors like sunlight (skin damage), sugar, smoking, pollution, radiation etc.

Things that increases damage increases aging and things that decreases rate of repair also increases aging.

Exercise increases rate of repair and slows aging in that way, while sitting still all day decreases the rate of repair and thus increases aging.

You seem to think that aging is only the intrinsic damage, but in many cases the type of damage that happens can be the same and external factors can increase the intrinsic damage that happens continuously. Some of this damage will decrease cellular repair mechanisms and thus decrease the rate of repair and you get a vicious cycle, external damage like having a hand chopped of doesn't really influence cellular repair, but smoking and sugar intake do influence cellular repair in a negative way and can thus be said to accelerate aging.

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#229

Post by jongraehl »

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…

Poor people do prison time and hard drugs more often (both of which might shorten a telomere). I also expect that physically measurable psychological stress is worse for poor (than for type-A work-stress junkies - probably that's more eustress due to control).

Re: Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

#230

Post by npsimons »

squiguy7 wrote: post #29
geoka9 wrote: post #9

It's hard for me to understand the whole soda phenomenon in Canada and the US. Is it as addictive as cigarettes? Does it make you crave for more? Or it simply tastes so good that you can't get enough of it? Why not eat a bunch of apples instead (if you don't care about the amount of sugar you consume)? Wouldn't they taste better?

Given that some of the drinks are also caffeinated, many people drink them as an alternative to coffee or tea. In this sense they can become addictive.

I've never really gotten this - it's like smoking crack as an alternative to cigarettes. Tea and coffee actually have other things in them that are good for you, and you don't have to add sugar or cream to them, so there is no reason to drink soda for the caffeine.
Post reply on HN