
Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking - bribri
http://time.com/3513875/soda-may-age-you-as-much-as-smoking/
======
mikeyouse
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 between
        consumption of diet sodas or noncarbonated SSBs and 
        telomere length.
    

Shortened telomeres are one way to measure genetic 'age'. 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.

The study was pretty substantial with ~5,300 participants with no history of
cardiovascular disease or diabetes. It's nice to have another datapoint
against some of the bro-sciencey "Fruit juice has as much sugar as soda"
arguments.

 _Late Edit:_

Here's a pretty good summary of telomere aging:

[http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/chromosomes/telomeres...](http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/chromosomes/telomeres/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> 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.

~~~
anigbrowl
There's more than one kind of sugar. Juices have both fructose and glucose;
the former is more likely to be stored by the liver, the latter is deployed
more widely around the body. Soda has much higher levels of fructose than
glucose, thanks to all that high-fructose corn syrup that has become so
popular with food manufacturers. There seems to be mounting evidence that high
fructose intake is correlated with increased obesity. Here's a recent article
on the topic: [http://www.theguardian.com/society/the-shape-we-are-in-
blog/...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/the-shape-we-are-in-
blog/2014/jun/04/obesity-food-and-drink)

If you head to YouTube and look for Dr Robert Lustig, a researcher at UCSF,
there's a 1 or 2 hour lecutre he has delivered on this topic which goes into
great detail ont eh different metabolic pathways different kinds of sugar take
within the body.

~~~
hiou
Oh this thread is going to pull out all the fun ones. Can they program
anything to penalize any diet / food topics? Nothing smart is ever said and
all the studies are always inconclusive and at best hint at new directions for
additional research.

Anyhow, to the above comment:
[http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000011000000000000000.ht...](http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000011000000000000000.html)

Nutritional studies are worse than physiological studies. It's impossible to
control for everything and just gets picked up but one side of the crazies or
the other and like they will here just lead to a bunch of speculative
anecdotal arguments.

~~~
kaybe
Apart from this one:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500)

From _: " "A reduction in salt intake led to a significant fall in blood
pressure, even in the healthy volunteers," explains Jens Titze, from Erlangen-
Nuremberg University." .. "Titze gradually reduced the daily salt intake of
the 'cosmonauts' during the course of the world's longest metabolism study,
while keeping all other nutrients unchanged."

But well, it's not something every study can do.

[_]
[http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10525/873...](http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10525/873_read-753/year-
all/)

------
nilkn
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 office workers in 2000
drank soda _in the office_.

(This is coming from someone who used to drink soda on a daily basis. I
learned to stop when I had to get a crown on a molar in my early 20s.)

~~~
TheSoftwareGuy
>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.

~~~
billmalarky
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.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
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.

------
geoka9
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?

~~~
Afforess
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.

~~~
city41
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.

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

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

------
mbca
Were these sodas sweetened with cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup?

(I did look at the abstract of the actual paper, but it doesn't seem to
specify. The full paper might say, but it's paywalled.)

~~~
johnward
I don't think it matters but chances are it's HFCS.

~~~
stealthlogic
It matters.

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

~~~
MacsHeadroom
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](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

~~~
jjoonathan
Straw-man. The relevant question is whether or not HFCS is significantly worse
than sucrose.

------
Involute
Are there any studies that associate telomere length with actual organism
longevity in primates?

------
bengarvey
Just in case anyone was wondering about diet soda...

"Only the sugary, bubbly stuff showed this effect. Epel didn’t see any
association between telomere length and diet soda intake. "

~~~
stealthlogic
There are studies that link Diet Soda to other vascular risks.
[http://www.miami.edu/index.php/news/releases/study_finds_pos...](http://www.miami.edu/index.php/news/releases/study_finds_possible_link_between_diet_soda_and_vascular_risks/)

There are also studies emerging which link artificial sweeteners to Diabetes.
[http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/17/artificial-
sw...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/17/artificial-sweeteners-
diabetes-saccharin-blood-sugar)

~~~
ep103
I think its generally understood that most artificial sweeteners are seen as
sugar by the body, but don't actually get turned into sugar in the
bloodstream. So it makes sense that it might contribute to diabetes (your body
digests it like sugar), but not aging (which is accelerated by sugar in the
bloodstream). I believe the whole point of coke 0 is that it doesn't use an
artificial sweetener? But don't quote me on that last sentence.

~~~
ssmoot
I could be wrong, but I thought Coke Zero was just the name for Diet Coke with
Sucralose instead of Aspartame.

~~~
pkroll
As the others have said, Coke Zero contains aspartame. However, it also
contains acesulfame potassium which is another sweetener, so it may have a
little less aspartame than Diet Coke. (The effect of multiple sweeteners is
generally greater than an equivalent larger dose of one... or so I have...
read. Maybe. In something somewhere. No promises.)

------
jongraehl
Since she finds a strong shorter-telomere association in neither equally sweet
juices NOR in diet soda, this result probably just unhealthy-lifestyle-
correlation (e.g. drug addicts and undiagnosed diabetics drink more soda).
Also, “The extremely high dose of sugar that we can put into our body within
seconds by drinking sugared beverages is uniquely toxic to metabolism” (from
her Time interview) seems an overreach. A properly functioning metabolism can
handle some sugar, even in a spike.

~~~
pseud0r
Sugar can increase aging, see for example this for starts

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end-
product](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end-product)

------
spikels
Since longer telomere's may give you brain cancer we should all avoid 100%
fruit juice and drink more non-diet soda!

[http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/06/114956/longer-telomeres-
lin...](http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/06/114956/longer-telomeres-linked-risk-
brain-cancer)

Better yet ignore these preliminary and contradictory results until we
actually understand what is actually going on.

------
ck2
Wait is this the smoking gun to corn syrup?

Because "sugar sweetened sodas" don't exist or are rare, at least not in the
USA. They are actually corn-syrup sweetened.

Especially since real sugar filled fruit juices did not have the same effect
nor diet soda with no corn-syrup.

------
menssen
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 and who has been a pack-a-day smoker,
there are orders of magnitude of difference in the effects on general health.)

~~~
pseud0r
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.

------
driverdan
I don't see anyone discussing that this is based on the National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). NHANES is all self-reported data
meaning its accuracy isn't great. It's a decent way of looking for potential
research topics but is in no way definitive.

Any papers coming from NHANES data should be considered pre-research. Real
data on this topic will come from properly controlled studies.

------
e40
What about something like carbonated cranberry juice? I mix 1 part low-carb
Trader Joe's cranberry juice and 4 parts carbonated water, and drink about 20
oz a day. When I first started, it tasted tart and not sweet. I don't think
there's much sugar in it.

If it's as harmful, I'd definitely give it up.

------
digital-rubber
Articles with may, could, etc basically don't say anything else but,

'We want some attention for our article now, but do not shoot us if it turns
out to be completely bogus. But if we were right, we want to be seen as
awesome researchers, bringers of news etc'.

------
waylandsmithers
All I want to know is if I can drink a diet coke a day with impunity.

------
john704944
Is anyone else seeing the website cut off at the bottom? There's no scroll
bar, so I can't read beyond one screenfull.

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Rovanion
What an odd website, does not allow scrolling if javascript isn't turned on.

~~~
igorgue
Then turn it on...

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novaleaf
clickbait title from TIME.

from tfa: > Only the sugary, bubbly stuff showed this effect. Epel didn’t see
any association between telomere length and diet soda intake.

------
squozzer
It's funny but one never hears about the ill effects of carrots. "They" only
study stuff that's already assumed to be bad for you. Ever wonder why?

~~~
brandonl222
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.

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

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

~~~
kaybe
How much of which jam did he eat and what did he look like? (colour/intensity)

~~~
Pxtl
Yam, not jam. As in sweet potatoes.

~~~
hrjet
Yam, jam and sweet potatoes are three different things. See for example:
[http://homecooking.about.com/od/howtocookvegetables/a/sweetp...](http://homecooking.about.com/od/howtocookvegetables/a/sweetpotatodiff.htm)

~~~
aidenn0
In most parts of the US a sweet potato with soft orange insides is correctly
called a "Yam" to differentiate it from the sweet potatoes with firm yellow
insides.

Either name isn't great; it's neither closely related to the african yam, nor
the common potato.

------
anotheryou
aging per drink? per year? on average?

