Refined sugar is the ultimate processed food. All empty calories. No nutrients or fiber. The best amount to consume is "zero". The second best amount to consume is "as little as possible".
Also, orange juice, while not laden with HFCS, has even more calories than Coke. (Exception: Tropicana waters down their re-flavored, rehydrated, old, deoxygenated concentrate to the same sugar levels as soda.) Fruit juices are essentially sugar so many of them are also a hard pass.
Aspartame is considered the most studied food additive in existence. Decades of study and decades of consumption and yet nothing conclusive found unless ingested in obscenely large amounts.
Triggers my asthma when consumed in small amounts, but that's just me. (I only realised I was drinking a sugar-free soft drink when that happened, so I don't think it's psychosomatic.)
Other commenter pointed on actual study, and study actually says that sugar soda induced much much higher rate of disease: hazard ratio of 1.21 for sugar soda vs 1.03 for artificial sweetener soda.
Note that when deciding if that is something to worry about you need to consider the base rate for the control group.
For example if I was choosing between an activity that killed 100 out of 400 people that did it and one that killed 121 out of 400 I'd pick the first. Picking the second would raise my death probability from 25% to 30.25%. That's over a 5% increase in my death probability.
On the other hand if I was choosing between something that killed 100 out of 100 million and something that killed 121 out of 100 million, I'd probably not really consider the differences in death probabilities. For the first I've got a death probability of 0.0001% and for the second I've got a death probability of 0.000121%. My death probability is only 0.000021% higher in the second activity.
In both cases the hazard ratio is 1.21, but with the second pair of events the probability of encountering the hazard is so low a 21% increase doesn't actually make enough of a difference for me to worry about it.
Not many. They're flavored water. Randos who lay down the tired bullshit Sodas all the same are morons who don't have a clue what they're talking about. The biggest negatives are likely the acidification due to the presence of carbonation interfering vitamin absorption and enamel erosion. A minor issue is the risks from potentially unsafe food colorings still found in many American beverages.
How well can a study like this control for other factors? For example, could the soda consumption be correlated with other diet choices that trigger the higher rate?
Sometimes even if it's just some correlation, the factors go together. As in, you start just trying to avoid soda, and you tend to eat more healthy too!
I know I eat a lot more with (diet) soda. Somehow makes my stomach fit more :)
Every now and then I'll have a craving for a can of coke to go with some pizza, and every time I'm amazed at just how sugary it is, how bad it makes my teeth feel, and the impact it has on my body
I drink artificially-sweetened sodas, but even then the carbonic acid will slowly eat away at your teeth and give you that "soda teeth" feeling. For that reason I drink them through a straw.
There really is just something about that pizza and soda combination, though- pizza's still great but not quite the same without it for me.
I've been eating quite a lot of sugar all my life and in general I eat when I'm hungry until I'm not hungry. But my BMI is 18.5 and fat 11% (per my scale, probably inaccurate). How could this be possible? Maybe small stomach?
Genes. It's most likely not the stomach but the hypothalamus. It basically controls hunger and some people's hypothalamus is really good at defending against weight gain, and other aren't.
How is this possible? 2 cans is not much. Is it purely because of the sugar? But tons of other things contain sugar, so aren't they just as dangerous?
What about starch and other carbohydrates, like rice, pasta and bread? Inside the body they are converted to glucose. So does that mean that eating two-can-soda-equivalent amount of bread shows the same harmful effects?
Most likely, a person consuming greater than or equal to two cans of sugar-sweetened beverages a day is also consuming other foods that are sugar-sweetened. A retrospective cohort study design like this has no way of preventing that from confounding any conclusions about the impact of just beverages if you're otherwise eating identically.
I think "don't drink soda every day" is about as likely to be good advice for everyone as any diet advice a person gets, but as I ranted about in a very long comment yesterday, this is an inherent limitation of nutrition science. Even what is probably the actual study here that someone linked to says in its conclusion that what they found "supports current recommendations to limit the intake of SSBs even for physically active individuals." They make no claim that they found a concrete causal link and for sure soda will hurt you if it's your only vice.
>Most likely, a person consuming greater than or equal to two cans of sugar-sweetened beverages a day is also consuming other foods that are sugar-sweetened. A retrospective cohort study design like this has no way of preventing that from confounding any conclusions about the impact of just beverages if you're otherwise eating identically.
In other words, "don't eat the kind of diet that people who drink two or more cans of soda per week tend to eat"?
If the message here is supposed to be “if you eat sensible portions of healthy foods and lots of vegetables but you also drink two Dr Peppers a week then you’re going to have measurably worse health outcomes” then I sure want to understand that.
I don't know where you're from so apologies if I'm making an incorrect assumption, but I will always be puzzled with Americans' with pasta being considered unhealthy. I frequently see pasta/bread being lambasted as unhealthy, and cheese being described as "a good source of protein". Admittedly bread=bad is more prevalent in the "carnivore diet" community (they're bonkers for other reasons, like thinking vegetables should be avoided for being unhealthy) but "pasta=bad, cheese=good" is pretty widespread.
In my opinion the devil's in the details. American pastas are more often than not highly processed components that have lost their nutritional value then have been enriched with low quality multi-vitamins. My understanding is that this is less common in say Italy where it is more likely to find things made from scratch.
>American pastas are more often than not highly processed components that have lost their nutritional value then have been enriched with low quality multi-vitamins.
What's the source of that claim? America's most popular pasta brand is Barilla (also probably Italy's most popular brand), and that's made with exactly the same ingredients, process and machinery in the US as it is in Italy.
An unbiased double-blind peer reviewed paid study? I doubt it exists. That said there is no denying that the EU bans food additives that are not scientifically proven to be safe for human consumption whereas the US allows food additives unless they are proven unsafe which runs into its own issues with conflicts of interest in the FDA but that is a discussion in and of itself. Many artificial additives and preservatives are added to US food for the sake of flavor and product shelf life, not nutritional value.
No, I mean, literally "where did you even read that?" or is it just something you assumed to be true - i.e. you made it up?
I have followed health and fitness sites, nutrition sites and discussions by scientists and doctors for the better part of the last couple decades in response to my own medical issues that doctors could not help with. As I state in my profile I do not provide links. If a topic is interesting to you then I would suggest researching it so that you can decide for yourself which sources are bribed and which are legit. All of the information is well within reach. nih.gov, healthline, even youtube have a handful of decent scientists and doctors to follow. If you are suggesting I am not telling the truth then it is not possible for us to have a good faith discussion on this topic.
Look, you made a comment that’s specific to “American pasta” that seems to lack a factual foundation. I’m not saying you’re lying, I’m just saying you’re wrong and that it seems like you over generalized.
A: I think X.
B: Interesting, why do you think that?
A: I have 10 years of thinking about it.
B: I have 10 years of thinking about it and have the opposite opinion.
A: If you're suggesting I'm not telling the truth then it's not possible for us to have a good faith discussion on this topic.
I might've made a fallacy, but this is what popped to mind when I read this comment.
I haven’t heard this about pasta, but I have heard this about bread. Most Americans do not buy ciabatta from a baker, they buy white American sandwich bread from the supermarket, which is very sugary.
american bread is also very, very sugary compared to European bread. A lot of America is not getting regular bread from bakeries but from the supermarket. the typical american bread is white sandwich bread which also does not help.
This is true, and as a recent convert, I would like to recommend that other Americans check out their local farmers market to see if there is a baker that sets up shop. The difference between even "fancy" grocery store packaged bread and actual fresh bread is enough that I now consider grocery store bread to be essentially a different (worse) food
When my wife was pregnant the OB gave her a list of foods to eat during the first trimester nausea and ice cream was listed because it's a good source of protein. So there's definitely some aspect of judging by a single metric. I've busted my butt making semolina pasta before and eaten way less than if I buy a box of barilla because it was a lot more pains-taking.
It's a source of protein. But my issue is that it's not exactly something you should eat a great deal of if your intent is to lead a healthy lifestyle.
I get lectured by my mom if I tell her I made pasta more often than she thinks is healthy. It's kinda hilarious, particularly since like 70% of it ends up being veggies and tomatoes and yet that's obviously fine.
Frankly, pasta itself is almost certainly fine most of the time, but likely a lot of people's experience of pasta is something like Kraft instant mac and there's a thing about portion sizes, too. My recall of something like basic spaghetti and meatballs as a kid is it tends to be a lot and eat all you want, which ends up being a lot. Whereas if you stick to meat and vegetables, it's very hard to overeat even if enough food is available that you could.
I think some of this ends up being the basis of something like the raw food diet, or the way The Rock has said he eats, which is to never eat anything he actually likes except on cheat days. Enjoyable and cooked foods aren't bad, but if you otherwise can't control yourself, one way to do it is only eat stuff you either don't like or is hard to eat. Even that is largely conflating looking like a model with "health" when they aren't the same thing. When The Rock was a pro wrestler and not an actor, he was noticeably fatter but not to the point that I think it was making any difference in terms of health rather than in terms of his ability to land lead roles in action movies that want you to look like a bodybuilder.
What's puzzling is the idea that pasta is treated as if it's some hardcore fat-gainer, and cheese as if it's the cornerstone of a healthy diet. It's additionally puzzling because the USA stands head and shoulders above Europe, where this belief is not prevalent, in rates of obesity.
The food industry has gone to great lengths to make people think that the amount of something is all that matters. Ultra processed foods might contain the same nutrients as fresh fruits or vegetables, but they’re clearly not the same.
The physical structure of the item has an enormous impact on how healthy it is, and the rate of absorption is one of the most important factors for sugar related issues. One big shot of sugar all at once is hugely unhealthy, but when released over time (such as when eating a whole unprocessed fruit) isn’t detrimental at all.
>The physical structure of the item has an enormous impact on how healthy it is, and the rate of absorption is one of the most important factors for sugar related issues.
OK, but the glycemic index of cola is 60, which is roughly identical to fruits like kiwi, banana, mango and watermelon.
EDIT: love the downvoting for literally providing a factual response here, people.
No? There's 25% more sugar in a mango than there is a regular 330ml can of Coca Cola.
As is pointed out elsewhere, what the study actually seems to point out is that the diets of people who drink soda twice a week are likely to be worse-overall than those who eat two mangos a week.
The extent to which "other things going on in the food" affect the rate of absorption is exactly what the GI tells you. I have no idea why the numbers are what they are in this case.
Something to consider in addition to the total glucose your body eventually gets from a food is the impact on your blood sugar and insulin. How fast they change matters.
Also how those carbohydrates eventually become glucose might matter too. Starch gets broken down into glucose in the mouth, stomach and intestines(with varying speed based on structure). Fructose and sucrose(which is made of fructose and glucose) can't be used directly by the body like glucose. Sucrose gets split into glucose and fructose in the intestines. Fructose gets digested in the liver. Some hypothesize that excess fructose metabolization can cause long term issues.
Depending on the processing and cooking. Brown rice and whole grain bread have lower. You'll find plenty of people saying to avoid white rice and bread.
And the glycemic index is just one averaged measurement. Soda probably benefits from its high water content on that metric. Satiety and nutrition play a role. Soda provides no other nutrients and doesn't do much for hunger long term. A person will need to consume something more, which means more overall calories. While there may be better choices, at least rice and bread provide something with the glycemic response.
What is on the title is absurd. Somebody linked to the actual paper, that isn't open, but from the abstract:
- 2 cans a week is the amount it will start to be harmful. Effect size is proportional to the extra consumption.
- It's a correlation detected over a large, but very homogenous population. There is space for all kinds of spurious results. That's reason to look for other studies, not to simply dismiss this one.
- What it actually finds is that exercise benefits do not interfere at all with harm from excessive sugar. You can have either combination of them.
- Non-sugared beverages effects (if any) were indistinguishable from noise. (IMO, that one is very surprising.)
Bread has a much higher glycemic index than cola, though. White bread is the "100" on the GI scale, and cola is 60 - that's roughly the "sourdough" range.
I haven't read much on this recently but I think the relatively lower GI of pasta was supposed to be related to the way the starches were in a fiber matrix or something like that.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00029...