Posted on 03/17/2010 12:32:18 PM PDT by presidio9
Is soda the new tobacco?
In their critics’ eyes, producers of sugar-sweetened drinks are acting a lot like the tobacco industry of old: marketing heavily to children, claiming their products are healthy or at worst benign, and lobbying to prevent change. The industry says there are critical differences: in moderate quantities soda isn’t harmful, nor is it addictive.
The problem is that at roughly 50 gallons per person per year, our consumption of soda, not to mention other sugar-sweetened beverages, is far from moderate, and appears to be an important factor in the rise in childhood obesity. This increase is at least partly responsible for a rise in what can no longer be called “adult onset” diabetes — because more and more children are now developing it.
Attention is being paid: Last week, the Obama administration announced a plan to ban candy and sweetened beverages from schools. A campaign against childhood obesity will be led by the first lady, Michelle Obama. And a growing number of public health advocates are pushing for even more aggressive actions, urging that soda be treated like tobacco: with taxes, warning labels and a massive public health marketing campaign, all to discourage consumption.
A tax on soda was one option considered to help pay for health care reform (the Joint Committee on Taxation calculated that a 3-cent tax on each 12-ounce sugared soda would raise $51.6 billion over a decade), and President Obama told Men’s Health magazine last fall that such a tax is “an idea that we should be exploring. There’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda.”
But with all the junk food and U.F.O.’s (unidentifiable food-like objects) out there, why soda? Why a tax? And, most important, would it work?
To the beverage industry,
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
But really I don't GAF what you do either, "but thanks for the update all the same."
I'd rather drink warm piss than diet soda.
Sucrose is broken down during digestion into fructose and glucose through hydrolysis by the enzyme sucrase, by which the body regulates the rate of sucrose breakdown. Without this regulation mechanism, the body has less control over the rate of sugar absorption into the bloodstream.
Sugar is sucrose. HFCS is not sucrose.
Coke.....its the real thing
the body responds differently to sucrose than fructose and glucose.
Kosher for Passover Coke is made with real sugar; it's only sold around Passover and, from what I hear, sells out really fast!
Sucrose is broken down in the body into fructose and glucose.
HFCS is not broken down into fructose and glucose by the body.
HFCS is already fructose and glucose, it doesn’t need to be broken down into them.
We should just allow the importing of as much sugar as we want. I don’t really recall exactly all the complicated rules regarding sugar but it’s those rules that put the HFCS into the soda instead of sugar. Almost everywhere else in the world they still use real sugar in the soda.
Another instance of the Federal Government making our day to day lives just a little bit worse.
I don’t advocate policing such things, but I do advocate for informed consumerism to shape the market. IMO, drinking lots of soda pop contributes to eventual health problems. Just sharing some info there, you can do what you will with it.
No, because Atlanta is the headquarters of Coca Cola.
The DemRats aren't going to attack their base....
Huh? Just how slow do you think this process is? Sucrase rapidly breaks down these bonds prior to absorption. As a matter of fact, HFCS and sucrose sport the same GI (55~60). If the rate of absorption is so different between these two products, how can they offer the same GI and satiety profiles? (See Post #58.
You're buying into an argument that cannot withstand scientific scrutiny. You're not alone. There's a lot of confusion out there being fomented by people who hope that creating alarm will generate grants to further support them.
There is some legitimate research being done with respect to HFCS and carbonyls. This could be a legitimate concern if what's being suggested proves to be true. But that's just a theory at this point so let's stick to what we know to be factual. Your body cannot distinguish fructose and glucose from HFCS from glucose and fructose from hydrolyzed sucrose. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong.
Huh x 2?
You realize, don't you, that sucrose is comprised of 50% fructose and 50% glucose? HFCS is also made up of fructose and glucose in almost identical proportions.
Well, the body kicks sucrase into action when sucrose is involved.
The body does not kick sucrase into action when sucrose is not involved.
That’s pretty different to me.
Try putting out a fire with hydrogen gas and oxygen gas.
I’ll take water for that, even though water is merely hydrogen and oxygen.
Much in the same way that water is merely hydrogen and oxygen, sucrose is merely fructose and glucose.
It provides a solid and easily understood overview of human nutrition and can prevent you from buying into much of the nonsense you find on the internet today. It should also (hopefully), in the future, prevent you from attempting to make analogies that are not analogous in any way.
Bootlegging Dr. Peppers! Awwwwwww, yeeeeeahhhh!
“you’ve never been a fan of it so your arguments are irrelevant
to this thread”.
You’re a fan of soda so your arguments for it are irrelevant to this thread.
I never said “it rots your stomach”, I said, (probably incorrectly) that it hinders digestion.
HOWEVER, it provably does wear away enamel on teeth, and THAT whether I stated it or not, was my main point.
But, hey, thanks for educating a biochemical peon like me.
And thanks for monitoring the threads so closely and determing what is relevant to say and what isn’t/
Ain’t free speech great?
I’m not wild about those Mexican cokes, guess I’m too used to HFCS, but I have friends that won’t drink anything else. Being in Texas, Mexican cokes are plentiful.
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