By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ignited a firestorm on this blog and elsewhere for his proposal to ban all but 16 ounce containers of sodas, energy drinks, sweetened iced teas and other sugary beverages in restaurants, movie theaters, sports arenas and food carts (they will still be available in supermarkets and bodegas). Wondering why he’d make a proposal that could not possibly help him politically and was likely to draw the ire of Big Soda, I did a little research. Here is the abbreviated case against cola:
- Weight Increase. Using high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener, a 20 oz can of soda contains the equivalent of anywhere between 17 (Coke) and 20 (Pepsi) teaspoons of sugar per can. Drinking just one regular 20 oz soda per day adds about 225 calories to our daily diet or about 7000 calories a month which, without concomitant exercise, translates to 2 pounds a month of 24 pounds of weight gain per year. And that’s just one per day. Many American teens average 3 per day. Since 1978, the consumption of sugary drinks has skyrocketed. Back then we soda was a puny 3% of our caloric intake and milk chimed in at 8%. The numbers are now almost reversed with soda making up about 7% of our daily caloric intake. If you’re interested, here’s the sugar content of many popular drinks.
- Insulin Blaster. Americans with type 2 diabetes has tripled from 6.6 million in 1980 to 20.8 million today. Why? One major reason might be soda. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School analyzed the data from the Nurses Heath Study II. They concluded that “women who drank one or more sugary drinks a day gained more weight and were 83% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who imbibed less than once a month.” The researchers also noted that, “rapidly absorbed carbohydrates like high fructose corn syrup put more strain on insulin-producing cells than other foods.” When sugar enters the bloodstream quickly, the pancreas has to secrete large amounts of insulin for the body to process it. Some scientists believe that the unceasing demands that a soda habit places on the pancreas may ultimately leave it unable to keep up with the body’s need for insulin.
- Tooth Dissolver. Soda is a known enemy of tooth enamel due to its high acidity. In a series of studies, Professor Poonam Jain, director of community dentistry at Southern Illinois University School of Dental Medicine, tested various sodas by measuring their pH–an indication of acidity. Battery acid, for example, has a pH of 1; water scores a 7. Jain found that sugar-sweetened sodas came in at about 2.5, while diet sodas scored 3.2. “The acidity can dissolve the mineral content of the enamel, making the teeth weaker, more sensitive, and more susceptible to decay,” he contends.
- Bone Dissolver. In the 1950s we drank 3 cups of milk for every one cup of soda. Now those numbers are reversed and we’ve seen an increase in osteoporosis as a result. In 2000, research at the Harvard School of Public Health disclosed that brittle bones were a particular problem for soda drinking adolescent girls. The study of 460 high schoolers found that girls who drank carbonated soft drinks were three times as likely to break their arms and legs as those who consumed other drinks. And the problem continues into advanced age. Grace Wyshak, PhD, a biostatistician and the study’s lead researcher, believes something in colas is interfering with the body’s ability to use calcium. This is a big problem, she says, “because girls will be more susceptible to fractures later in life if they don’t acquire optimal bone mass in adolescence.”
- Caffeine Addiction. Many in the medical community consider caffeine a psychoactive substance. In fact, almost 90% of Americans consume it daily. It reacts with the central nervous system and stimulates the body. The caffeine in just one can of sugar-free diet soda ” is associated with a 48 percent increased risk of ‘metabolic syndrome,’ which plays a major role in heart disease and diabetes.”
Diet soda fairs no better with new research indicating its sugar less formula may well trigger food cravings and thus leads to weigh gain. It contains equal or more amounts of acid and caffeine and provides little in the way of nutritional benefits.
Bloomberg’s proposal then makes sense both from a public health perspective and from the point of view of logic. Why then all the resistance? Are we like spoiled children refusing to “eat our vegetables” because we just don’t want to eat them? Are we afraid of government depriving us of the products we take for granted and really, really like? Or are we just rationalizing our own indulgences under the banner of freedom of choice?
Basically, are we endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right to harm ourselves for our own pleasure and increase the costs to our fellows and our future generations as they are forced to pay for all the bad health choices we make?
What do you think?
Sources: Prevention Magazine; ABC News; Healthy Resources
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
The people of the State of New York (and the City of NY) leave in droves, like lemmings, when they hit retirement age. Why? Because their real estate taxes on their homes exceed the amount they have earned on their monthly social security check. So the lemmings flee to where brother Rupert moved or uncle Murphy, to North Carolina. When they get here they are from NY and know it all and speak with an accent from a foreign country. Very soon they are telling you that your grass is too short and your trash stinks. Bloomberg has found an issue for the under 65 who have to stay there in NY to perfect their pensions to take their minds off of their high taxes. It is a good issue and we in North Carolina hope that fewer of the fatsos move south. If Bloomberg could just teach them how to speak the Kings English. I live on 33rd Street and these guys pronounce it Turdy Turd. This is hardly appropriate for young ears. One of the dogs in our pack moved here from NY and he is A-OK. That is his name. We like him. We send him on missions. His nickname is LawnPooper. He may have his turn on this blog.
I have mentioned before that the role of sugary drinks in obesity at this time is an open scientific question.
What is not an open question is the role of exercise in the control of weight and obesity.
I think it is fair to say that there is no one magic bullet in regard to weight control. When it comes to weight (1) what you consume (2) how much you consume and (3) activity level are all important.
If anything, one might argue that activity level is even more important to long term health than what one consumes for nutrition – maybe not, but it certainly is as important. Exercise has multiple good effects in regard to weight control and general health.
As I have mentioned before many efforts to regulate individual behavior seem whimsical, based on the passion and indignation of the would be regulator rather than on careful analysis of costs and benefits.
To those who would regulate nutrition in the form of sugary drinks or in any other form I pose the question how did you arrive at the conclusion to prohibit sugary drinks instead of requiring increased activity levels.
If the government can compel citizens not the eat certain products then what prevents government from compelling physical training. The health benefits from exercise and PT are probably greater over a life time than reduced consumption of food.
If your justification for restricting what we eat is based on cost to the community in the form medical care then why not argue for enforced exercise. If you do not agree that enforced PT is acceptable then how do you distinguish it from enforced restriction of nutrition?
When it comes to reducing the cost to society enforced PT is far more effective and therefore far more reasonable and much better justified.
Let’s just call that a rant. Gotto go take my morning caffeine now. 200 mg. Yellow tablet. Wash it down with water. I’m not gonna live very long but I’m gonna be mad as hell the whole time.
@Malisha “I’m gonna be mad as hell the whole time.”
Pretty close to stark raving I’d say.
Just be careful bragging about those yellow pills. They might set you up and charge you for attempting an unregulated caffeine buy. Oh… you clearly have a predisposition so it would not be a set up.
Resistance is futile. You will be assigned to an exercise battalion. Your caloric intake will be restricted. You will be healthy under the authority of the regional governor as implemented by your deputy block director. Be happy at your work.
Kellogg Institute (if my memory serves me) did some research into the question of diet and in particular vegetarianism during the 50s. One of their studies was done in the Far East in a city in which the rickshaw drivers worked all day long at high speed dragging heavy people and packages in a rickshaw powered by a bicycle they drove without the help of any fossil fuel or the like, ONLY MUSCLE AND EFFORT. They worked about 12 hours per day and they ate mostly rice, with a bit of vegetables thrown in from time to time but almost never meat. The study was set up so that for periods of six weeks at a time, their food was provided for by the study itself, and half were given meat twice a day and the other half stayed on their no-meat diets. The drivers with meat in their diet were delighted at first but three to four weeks later either quit the study or asked to be switched because they could not stand the pain, fatigue and muscle soreness. What had happened was that their blood buffer systems were overwhelmed and their consumption of meat had caused their bodies to build up lactic acid in their muscles, giving them cramps, soreness, pain, and even disability. The body has a way to buffer the blood, but its resources are not unlimited.
The point I wanted to make with this, however, is that the rickshaw drivers WERE PERMITTED TO QUIT THE STUDY or they were permitted to continue the study, as they chose. I don’t know the details of how many quit, but it was not an insignificant number. Those, one presumes, chose to do their bodies and their health a favor.
To me, until we begin to regard our society as a big family that will take care of its members by really BEING THERE FOR THEM and really taking care of them, it has no right to act like a big family that will set the standard for how its members will take care of itself.
Frankly, I’m ALL FOR being the big family. I call it the “life interest” and I think three or four generations of it would not just solve the obesity epidemic but would even bring us democracy! People who get on this blog carrying on about how terrible it would be for the country to move a bit to the “left” [I put it in quotes on purpose because it’s not even close enough to the center to be called left of right] have no concept of how I would do it if I were god, but it’s just not in the cards. Giving a New York mayor the chance to puff up his patriarchal daydreams so that he is the “tough love daddy” to all the fat girls in Harlem is not my idea of a decent way to address the problem I see as this: WHY DO YOUR PEOPLE WANT TO HURT THEMSELVES IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE, BIG DADDY?
If a 104-pound rickshaw driver in China knew in 1950 that he didn’t want to threaten his own lifestyle, bitter as it might be, by eating a free pork chop, and he had the good sense and freedom to walk away from it, why doesn’t a 240-pound rest-room cleaner at Port Authority have that same good sense and freedom? What’s going on here, Mayor So-Strict? Does your city need better education? Does your city need something else?
Caffeine. Idealist mentions caffeine — he doesn’t do it. I do. I remember having a helluva knock-down-drag-out with a pharmacist in DC about this one time. I had become addicted to caffeine when I was in college and I had a rough schedule, carrying 18 credit hours and working 20 hours a week in the snack shop in the basement of my dorm. Then, in 1991, I was on a tough schedule working about 70 hours per week as a legal secretary to be able to afford the lawsuit that was then in its 11th year that had sucked up $187,000 from me to pay for lawyers to defend my right to custody when the whole case had started with my ex-husband hiring a psychiatrist of HIS CHOOSING to decide the issue after a binding arbitration BY THAT PSYCHIATRIST, the order setting up the arbitration having been signed by me, the father, and both lawyers, and so-ordered by a judge, and entered, as a court order. Once the arbitration was over my ex-husband sued the psychiatrist he had hired (eventually put him out of business) and then sued the judge who gave me custody. MY SOCIETY made me keep litigating against this madman and took all my money and energy to throw into the effort to regain some of the rights that had been taken away without due process, and that was my life, and that was my life, and by the way that is still my life.
I was up to 1600 milligrams of caffeine by that time in 1991. The drugstore where I bought my caffeine was within a block of the law firm where I worked. So one night I went there to buy my caffeine and the pharmacist suddenly turned paternalistic on me. Comes out and says to me, “You’re buying too much caffeine, and tonight I’m not selling you any.” He said it was bad for me.
This was 10:00 p.m. I had to go back to the firm and work maybe another three, four hours. My own work on my own case was also involved and I had a deadline. I not only hate coffee, but I had none. (I probably could have found a coffee maker at the law firm’s break room, but I can’t remember that right now — maybe in desperation, later that night, I did so; it is not important to the story.)
I lost it. I started off by begging and being “sweet” and explaining that I appreciated his concern and I would start to taper off my caffeine. Then I offered to pay for a whole bottle and have him open the bottle and just give me two caffeine tablets (that night’s urgent need). No and No and No and No. I could see what it was about — power — but I wasn’t conceding. As his refusals infuriated me, I reached a point that to this day I have not been able to find funny. I reached the point of saying, in effect (although that night, my choice of words was not eloquent):
“Since you have not taken responsibility for my health in all the years that I have come here to patronize your establishment, since you have not involved yourself in helping me reclaim my constitutional rights, my human rights, my life interest, since you know nothing about what has driven me to this point, where only a stimulant can keep my system from completely shutting down and rendering me passive and inert so that I can no longer even attempt to defend myself from an all-out assault on my ability to live, my ability to remain someone who chooses a somewhat diminished lifestyle with some hope of amelioration over an act of self-destructive but satisfying mayhem that would, to me at least, express my desperation and relieve the pressure of my habit of polite response to inexcusable victimization, since, in that way at least, you have never established the position of being my benefactor, how are you now appointing yourself the guardian of my health?”
Actually, what I probably said was, “Since you never helped me, never WOULD help me, and never WILL help me solve my problems or defend myself, and since I run on caffeine so I can do all that myself, and since it is perfectly legal and since I PAY FOR MY OWN CAFFEINE, you better goddamn sell me some goddamn caffeine ‘fore I come over this counter and tear out your fucking goddamn bloodshot alcoholic EYES, motherFUCKER!” or words to that effect.
Whereupon he stood there and got a hard-on by saying: “I won’t.”
That’s where I see Lord High Chancellor Mayor with his stupid sodapop bill. I hope a bunch of protesters all buy empty 24-ounce paper or plastic cups, fill them with something OTHER than sugary sodapop (Oh I don’t know, get creative), and go spill them in his office.
Hey Mark, this was a terrific blog post.
I do think it’s wrong to look at this as the government, in an effort to keep costs down, has a right to regulate what you eat or do.
It’s far better, and not misleading, to say, we the people have a right to demand intentionally faulty products are not brought to market.
Many people at this blog favor some form of drug legalization. And I do to.
Many people who do so take the position that drugs should be taxed and regulated.
Drugs are not good for you, they are not good for society, but you have the right to take them, and society has the right to regulate them and charge a sin tax to help diminish their use and clean up from their harm.
It’s not clear to me that soft drinks should not be in a similar regime.
Think how we feel about cigarette smoking now which I actually think in many ways has gone overboard (when companies can demand only non-smokers are hired.) Think how we might feel in 10 – 20 years about soft drinks if all we did was impose a 10 cent per 16 ounce tax on soft drinks.
Anyway, good blog post, in the future, it’s okay if you thank me as helping to open your eyes.
mESPO:
Thanks for the info, I thought that was right.
Sodas are pretty bad for you but you should have the right to abuse your body if it only affects you.
The tooth dissolver thing is a bit skewed. Yes, it can dissolve such things. However, there is something that a mouth normally produces – saliva – that protects teeth. Sugar causes more production of saliva than normal. The tests that scientists use are not on bodies, but on teeth removed from bodies. Without the saliva, it is not a complete experiment and it doesn’t have accurate results.
I don’t think anyone seriously contest the negative effects of soft drinks. But it appears that the roll of soft drinks in the obesity epidemic is, at this point, an open scientific question.
But for the moment let us just suppose that the drinks are the major cause of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The question is what is the proper role of government and what is the standard for government intervention in decisions that are deeply personal. I think what a person puts in his or her mouth for sustenance or pleasure qualifies as deeply personal.
The post argues for one role for government. I think many of us would argue for a different less intrusive role government. If government can intrude to this extend on the kinds of facts that describe soft drinks then I think it is fair to say their is no limit to government intervention in the lives of individuals.
And yes I think the quip regarding vegetables is actually very apt. I eat mostly vegetables. I am sure that population as a whole ought to eat more vegetables. I am sure that long term health cost would greatly decline if only more citizens ate more vegetables. And I support government programs to educate citizens regarding the importance of vegetables in their diet. I strongly object to government regulations and laws that would require citizens to eat more vegetables.
At some point I think this gets to be a sort of ‘is too, is not’ argument. I understand the problems with soft drinks and the advantage of vegetables. That is why, with the exception of an energy drink to replace coffee, I don’t drink soft drinks and I eat mostly vegetables. But I do not want the government telling me or other citizens that they have to take these actions.
Bron:
” I read an article once that said if the body did not have a pH buffering system the acid in a can of coke would kill you. ”
**********************
The research I read says absorbing calcium from the bones is the body’s way of fighting high acidity. Thus it’s a bad cycle.
i give up. google aspertame. the article i intended to post is from dr. mercola, but there is more.
Cancer cells slurp up fructose, US study finds
Study shows fructose used differently from glucose
* Findings challenge common wisdom about sugars
2010
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/02/cancer-fructose-idAFN0210830520100802
Excerpt:
Aug 2 (Reuters) – Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.
Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.
They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.
“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.
“They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”
Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods.
Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.
Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.
Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
let’s try this
Aspartame is, by Far, the Most Dangerous Substance on the Market
Thought there was a link in the above. Here it is
sites/articles/archive/2011/11/06/aspartame-most-dangerous-substance-added-to-food.aspx
“Diet soda fairs no better with new research indicating its sugar less formula may well trigger food cravings and thus leads to weigh gain. It contains equal or more amounts of acid and caffeine and provides little in the way of nutritional benefits.”
—————-
Worse that providing “little in the way of nutritional benefits”, diet sodas contain aspertame. “Aspartame is, by Far, the Most Dangerous Substance on the Market that is Added To Foods It hides behind brand names such as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure, but its makers cannot mask the fact that it accounts for 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA.”
Excuse me, Excuse me, “Or are we just rationalizing our own indulgences under the banner of freedom of choice?” OK.
When we decide to use birth control because we do not want to have a bunch of kids to support even though we do want to have sex, are we not “rationalizing our own indulgences under the banner of freedom of choice?”
When we decide to spend $26,000 to buy a Biiiiiiiiiiiig damn CAR instead of riding our bicycle to work each day, are we not “rationalizing our own indulgences under the banner of freedom of choice?”
When we decide to formally marry someone who shares our own gender rather than simply remaining good friends living under the same roof and supporting, loving, honoring and living with the other person without benefit of a silly ceremony and a bunch of tax advantages, are we not “rationalizing our own indulgences under the banner of freedom of choice?”
Perhaps drinking a big soda is that self-indulgent, and is that selfish, and in the view of a person who practices birth control, or a person who has enough money to buy a car, or has enough social and legal standing to challenge the big laws that have been made in important places, is disposing of rights that belong to some pretty unimportant folks, but why should suddenly the “banner of freedom of choice” suffer demotion to the land of ironic put-down phrases?
If I am a person who has $2 disposable income per month and I choose to buy a big damn sugary soda with it, how come the “banner” doesn’t cover my foolishness?
If socialized medicine becomes the law of the land then yes, I think the government has a right to force people to be healthy. I dont want to pay for people who can be healthy but choose not to be.
I also think they will have the right to force people who can exercise to exercise to reduce health care costs.
And they will have a legitimate reason to ban smoking and the consumption of alcohol, 2 of the most harmful substances in terms of health risks.
They will also have the right to force us to eat healthy as well. Forget about steaks and ribs and say hello to tofu, kale, soybeans and fish.
The government will be able to do this by refusing to care for people who abuse their bodies. Fat people will be left to fend for themselves but there wont be any fat people because government will shut down fast food restaurants, Yum Brands, McDonalds and Coca Cola, Sara Lee and other producers of high sugar, high fat foods or they will shut them down by having some sort of regulation limiting sugar and fat thereby reducing the appeal.
Bloomberg regulating the size of soft drinks is just the tip of the ice-berg.
People eating better and getting exercise is a good thing, forcing them to be healthy is tyranny.
You can have my big gulp when you pry it from my cold, pudgy fingers. Not dead just cold due to loss of circulation from diabetes.
I think one of the problems with the way we eat is the lack of trace minerals in our food, I think [hypothesise] the reason for over consumption is that we are not getting enough of these trace minerals in our daily diets.~Bron
———————————————–
Monster sized Industrial farming tactics …no fallow = no replenishing the ground with those very necessary trace minerals, vitamins etc.
Soon we will be eating eating eating and starving to death. Add to that the developement of fake sugars that our bodies don’t have the ability to assimilate and we will have become like gummed up engines seizing at the very thought of growth and sustainabi…….
oh, there ya go……
“Are we like spoiled children refusing to “eat our vegetables” because we just don’t want to eat them?”
Hell yes!!!
And while we got this wonderful systeem on insurance companiess deciding let’s give’em the right (probably have already) to increase total premium payment for those who have not taken the pledge. Ie, the pledge to drink only one drink a month. I don’t even drink that much, and don’r feel deprived. But I don’t do caffeine.
Holding myself up for praise? Hell, no. Just showing there is another way to live—-and quite happily too.
Problem is of course who’s gonna snitch, and on whom. Big nanny cab fix that. Put soda in the ABC stores, and give out ration books. (ID cards will do in our modern data world.)
That was fun for those old enough. Not many I believe can say they do.
Or do what they do with gasoline, tax it to hell.
I predicted this line of argument when I wrote:
In Bloomberg’s scenario, any activity or behavior that potentially raises socialized health costs could be regulated. Twisted ankles from high-heeled shoes. Skin cancer from sunbathing. STD’s from sex with untested partners. Liver diseases from drinking. Broken bones from bicycle riding or skiing.
Prenatal testing may indicate disease that would be expensive to treat throughout a lifetime. Should government allow mothers to choose to have those children? How many times?
Mespo:
does the acid in the colas interfere with bone production? I read an article once that said if the body did not have a pH buffering system the acid in a can of coke would kill you. I only drink coke once in awhile now and make sure to take some calcium with it.
I think one of the problems with the way we eat is the lack of trace minerals in our food, I think [hypothesise] the reason for over consumption is that we are not getting enough of these trace minerals in our daily diets. Just a supposition but I am betting if people would find a good broad spectrum mineral supplement there eating habits would change in a week or so.