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

Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 218 posts

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#71

Post by DannoHung »

jzwinck wrote: post #59
Smaug123 wrote: post #12

I'm fairly anecdotally sure there would be a market for much less sweet fizzy drinks. I know I'm a weird outlier, because I dilute fruit juice with water to make it more palatable, but I think I'd really like sugary soft drinks if they had the same flavour but heroically less sweetness. My favourite soft drink is two parts orange juice from concentrate, to one part carbonated water; perhaps that's not sweet enough fo…

I thought the same thing about yogurt. The flavored ones have a lot of sugar and people I know say they want a less sweet version. Then last week I met a man in the supermarket. We were both staring at various yogurts. I was comparison shopping; he was "spying" on the competition and the store. You see, he worked for a yogurt maker. He asked me what I considered important and I asked him about reduced sugar variants.…

Yeah. It's because we've been given sugary shit en masse for decades. It's like asking someone addicted to heroin if they would like to stop doing heroin.

Anyway, the rise of Greek yogurt at least shows that this isn't 100% true. It does need a little sugar for me to find it palatable as breakfast, but like, we're talking 2 or 3 sliced strawberries or a handful of blueberries.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#72

Post by tomp »

lisivka wrote: post #52
tomp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't destroy water, but you can most definitely destroy fresh water. Or else you could have the same argument for just about anything ("I didn't really break your cup, all the pieces are still lying on the floor.")

Our planet is getting hot, so we will have lot of vapor -> rains -> fresh water. Just collect it instead of dumping it into river or ocean.

I'm not so sure about this. Water -> vapor -> water loop only works if there's a temperature gradient - you need heat to vaporize water and coldness to condense vapor into water again. If the whole planet is getting hotter, the atmosphere could simply get more humid, with no more rain/fresh water.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#73

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

johnloeber wrote: post #14

Here's what I'm curious about: how much water is used for every liter of drinking water ? It seems clear that a "liter of water", which could be all kinds of polluted, is NOT the same as a liter of bottled or tap water. A liter of drinkable water has to undergo some filtration process, etc. and I'd be extremely interested in seeing how much water is used in that process. That would help put the headline's figure in c…

You'd have to distinguish between potable water and just any water too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water mentions that Christchurch, NZ has a sufficient supply of pure enough water that no treatment is required. So you could probably build a passive filtration system for a one time cost. It just may not be fast enough to treat enough water if your population is too big.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#74

Post by neppo »

pitchka wrote: post #33
morsch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per volume of the end product, coffee is worse, black tea is better. Coffee: ~1100 liters of water per liter of coffee. Black tea: ~270 liters of water per liter of tea. Source: The water footprint of coffee and tea consumption in the Netherlands , http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/ChapagainHoekstra2...

Another nice comparison: Milk: ~1000 liters of water per liter Chocolate: ~17000 liters of water per kg Beef: ~15000 liters of water per kg Sheep Meat: ~10000 liters of water per kg Pork: ~6000 liters of water per kg Butter: ~5500 liters of water per kg Chicken meat: ~4500 liters of water per kg Wine: ~400 liters of water per liter Beer: ~300 liters of water per liter source: http://www.imeche.org/policy-and-press/re…

as if I needed more reasons to stick with beer

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#75

Post by ioquatix »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #73
johnloeber wrote: post #14

Here's what I'm curious about: how much water is used for every liter of drinking water ? It seems clear that a "liter of water", which could be all kinds of polluted, is NOT the same as a liter of bottled or tap water. A liter of drinkable water has to undergo some filtration process, etc. and I'd be extremely interested in seeing how much water is used in that process. That would help put the headline's figure in c…

You'd have to distinguish between potable water and just any water too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water mentions that Christchurch, NZ has a sufficient supply of pure enough water that no treatment is required. So you could probably build a passive filtration system for a one time cost. It just may not be fast enough to treat enough water if your population is too big.

I live in Christchurch and I can confirm our water is AWESOME.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#76

Post by XorNot »

tomp wrote: post #23
evgen wrote: post #5

You keep using this word "used", I do not think it means what you think it means... Fresh water is one of those strange things, where consumption is not necessarily destruction. You 'used' a glass of water that you drank this morning, then excreted it over the rest of the day as urine and water vapor where it became an input for another part of the cycle. The water did not go away when you consumed it, and in this ca…

You can't destroy water, but you can most definitely destroy fresh water. Or else you could have the same argument for just about anything ("I didn't really break your cup, all the pieces are still lying on the floor.")

The problem is absolute quantities mean nothing: water is a resource which depends on production capacity. So long as it is in sustainable excess there are no problems.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#77

Post by nxzero »

sanxiyn wrote: post #47
johnloeber wrote: post #14

Here's what I'm curious about: how much water is used for every liter of drinking water ? It seems clear that a "liter of water", which could be all kinds of polluted, is NOT the same as a liter of bottled or tap water. A liter of drinkable water has to undergo some filtration process, etc. and I'd be extremely interested in seeing how much water is used in that process. That would help put the headline's figure in c…

Quick search gives http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/10/28/241419373/how... which is not very easy to interpret.

That's bottled water, not tap water.

My guess is it varies greatly to due the source of the water. At the extreme, I would guess that desalination of saltwater to make it usable for drinking water would likely consume huge amount of water per drink unit of water.

Given that it's a pretty obvious question, find it interesting that it is not addressed; reason likely is most reporters do not do investigative journalism, but many will publish as is a story forwarded to them.

Lastly, it's very likely some water used was not drinkable to start, reused, etc. - which is to say, it's a complex topic and without a clear question and an understanding of why it is being ask, you'll always get an answer that appears to answer something.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#78

Post by ThomPete »

PepeGomez wrote: post #69
ThomPete wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-califo...

It's much less than other crops and the description says it's assuming irrigation is the only source of water, that's not usually the case. It's probably not the case with almonds at all, unless you aim for rotten roots. It's a desert tree.

You should tell that to California last summer who ended up with that exact problem.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#79

Post by dexterdog »

josu wrote: post #65
akerro wrote: post #62

340literes of water is used to produce a pound of meat. ( https://news.vice.com/article/meat-is-murder-on-the-climate-... ) Water will be the new oil.

Desalinization technology is already pretty advanced [1], and the oceans are big. I really doubt it. [1] The wikipedia article is a good place to start if you are interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination

But is it over of those things like solar and shale oil that is too expensive at current rates, but just sits in the background and enforces a price ceiling on the cheaper methods?

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#80

Post by PepeGomez »

jzwinck wrote: post #59
Smaug123 wrote: post #12

I'm fairly anecdotally sure there would be a market for much less sweet fizzy drinks. I know I'm a weird outlier, because I dilute fruit juice with water to make it more palatable, but I think I'd really like sugary soft drinks if they had the same flavour but heroically less sweetness. My favourite soft drink is two parts orange juice from concentrate, to one part carbonated water; perhaps that's not sweet enough fo…

I thought the same thing about yogurt. The flavored ones have a lot of sugar and people I know say they want a less sweet version. Then last week I met a man in the supermarket. We were both staring at various yogurts. I was comparison shopping; he was "spying" on the competition and the store. You see, he worked for a yogurt maker. He asked me what I considered important and I asked him about reduced sugar variants.…

"People" isn't one person. Maybe most people choose sweeter yogurt, but that doesn't mean there isn't a substantial minority of people who would prefer less sweet yogurt.

Who knows if these tests even accurately measure what people would actually buy? I remember that Coca-Cola did such tests too once...

Post reply on HN