One 20oz (vending machine size) bottle of Coke per day is 52 lbs of sugar (well, actually high fructose corn syrup) per year. Next time you go shopping, count 10 5-lb bags of sugar. Each and every year.
Ironically, the land for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which is located in Atlanta, Georgia was donated by none other than The Coca Cola Company.
The average human is advised to drink eight 8oz glasses of water each day. That's 182 gallons of water per year. Next time you go shopping, count out 182 1-gallon jugs of water. Each and every year.
I understand the pitfalls of sugar. But I don't think these kinds of analysis by themselves really teach us anything.
> Ironically, the land for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which is located in Atlanta, Georgia was donated by none other than The Coca Cola Company.
I don't think this is ironic at all. A company needs living clientele.
Also, the CDC has better epidemics to worry about than the obesity one. I frankly don't care if people want to be fat.
Things would probably work themselves out if there weren't so much in the sugar subsidy. If sugary treats and drinks were rare instead of common we probably wouldn't have as much diabetes or overweight people, myself included. I feel this kind of stuff is sadly typical of the world we live in, propaganda at its finest.
I'm not sure this has to do with subsidies. Companies like Coca Cola put billions of dollars into marketing and advertising, and sugar is very addictive. On the other hand, there are a lot of protests when governments try to regulate junk food (like when Bloomberg tried to ban big sodas), the whole "nanny state" debate. In that context, no wonder there's an obesity issue in the US (and other countries). I had some heated discussion with some american friends over this topic, it gets very ideological.
I've always thought it would be an interesting -- but not technically difficult -- project to do a data scrape of PubMed.gov and simply count up and classify all of the studies that contain a conflict of interest disclosure...but while the scraping would be easy, I'm not sure how accurate or complete the disclosures are.
For example, from the OP:
> Last week, the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana announced the findings of a large new study on exercise in children that determined that lack of physical activity “is the biggest predictor of childhood obesity around the world.”
> The news release contained a disclosure: “This research was funded by The Coca-Cola Company.”
This is the link to the press release, which contains the Coca Cola disclosure in the last line:
At every turn the GEBN scientists seem to acknowledge the role of excessive caloric intake and a sedentary lifestyle, then briefly handwave the former as overhyped - a large excerpt from one of the linked GEBN "Portfolio Items" containing a bald-faced example[0]:
>Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is that they’re [...]blaming sugary drinks and so on. And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that in fact is the cause. [...]
The big problem is we don’t really know the cause other than, well, too many people are eating more calories than they burn on too many days. But maybe the reason they’re eating more calories than they need is because they’re not burning many."
So - he does know the cause. A combination of inactivity and overconsumptiom, both of which are remediated with lifestyle changes that invert their prefixes. Why abandon the latter, simply because each is well reported?
Sad state of affairs, but nothing that surprising. They need to fight dirty to ensure they exist as a company in the future. As more people realise the connection between high-sugar diets and weight gain. Tobacco V2.
why do they care that much? coke zero tastes fine, the energy from caffeine means you would move that much more, the fact that something sweet has filled your stomach means you're not eating something with calories in it. diet coke and coke zero are above and beyond coke's calorie-responsible choices - and they're marketed very heavily and available everywhere, even mcdonald's.
exercise is super-important, as are food calories from stuff like hamburgers and fries, that don't HAVE a diet version.
why does Coca-Cola care so much? Article would make more sense if it read "mcdonald's", but that's not what's stated - it says it's about coke.
it just doesn't make that much sense to me. where's coca cola's incentive?
(fwiw I thought I'd mention I have absolutely no disclaimer to make, no connection whatsoever with coca cola.)
"What we've seen from animal data is there is something metabolic that changes when you consume artificial sweeteners," says Bleich. "The brain is tricked into thinking it is less full."
So what's going on? Basically, when we eat sweet-tasting foods, that signals our brains to release hormones to process the sugar. It's part of a mechanism that tells the body how much energy it's just taken in, and when it's had enough.
But in people who are regular drinkers of diet sodas, the theory goes, the body gets confused and no longer releases enough hormones. As a result, researchers suspect, diet drinkers end up eating more — and gaining weight.
Ultimately it might not be any better than drinking normal soda. I'd be pretty terrified of this if I ran a soda company.
Not everyone agrees that Coke Zero and Diet Coke taste just fine, or at least, not everyone is happy with the low-calorie alternatives to choose them over regular Coke. And so this directly impacts Coca-Cola's bottom-line:
I'm too lazy to do number-hunting right now, but those articles state that the total revenue of all low calorie soda sales is in the $7.0 billion range (and declining). Sales for the Coca-Cola company alone is $45+ billion.
So even if Diet Coke is a healthy solution and alternative to regular Coca Cola, its sales are nowhere near enough to sustain the company. Thus, the allegation that Coca-Cola can potentially benefit from a mindset that high caloric intake is not the main cause of obesity.
The calories are not what you should worry about in Coca-Cola. 1 500ml bottle (supposedly 2 servings, but really who does that?) has ~60% RDA of sugar which is just ridiculous.
I don't get why they don't just make a fizzy drink which contains at most 10-15g sugar per 500ml (and not fill it with artificial sweetener).
I cut my fruit juices with water, and if there is a soda water option on the soda fountain I'll do the same thing with sodas. I rarely drink sodas or juices which is probably more effective than my dilution efforts.
I mean, on the one hand, pretty much anything that legitimately gets people exercising more can't be all bad. But on the other, we already have enough "science" with an agenda in the world. At least the agenda here is pretty transparent, I guess?
This would be (barring outright fraud) nearly harmless if we had preregistration as a prerequisite for studies 'counting' (in meta-analyses, in discussions here, in academic rankings, etc) http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/registering-stu...
I suppose they could still add ridiculous interpretations (as is often the case when people's livelihood depends on their work being seen to promote a given side), but at least you could trust the data.
Body mass is simple: calories in - calories out = calories gained.
It's silly to imagine that Coke is doing something nefarious (like Phillip Morris denying that smoking causes lung cancer, or Exxon Mobil FUD-ing solid climate science) by encouraging people to get more exercise so that they can consume what they want.
We have billions of complex chemical processes involved in all of this, and know things like "absorption rates of medicine, vitamins, and nutrients" are affected by everything from random vitamins to environmental factors to whatever else.
But body mass, that we have down 100% for-sure, and it's just that simple formula, no variables, no possibility for any other affecting factors.
Sure.
The fact that weight loss/gain is due to calorie deficit/surplus is true but useless.
The most difficult thing about weight management is willpower management. People (especially techies) love to ignore willpower. They'll say, if you want to lose weight, just eat less. Completely ignoring the fact that "just eat less" is an enormous challenge for many people.
By calling into question the importance of calories, Coke is basically undermining people's willpower, which is a precious resource even under optimal conditions. Promoting exercise as a substitute is useless. On its own, exercise will do nothing to help you lose weight, because the extra calorie burn will just make you hungrier!
I like this analogy when getting into the calories in/out discussion:
We don’t get fat because we over eat. Meaning that overeating isn’t the cause of obesity, it’s an effect. If a room has a maximum occupancy of 20 people and the fire marshal gets upset and wants to know why it happened – you’re not going to say “well, it’s because more people came into the room than left.” Well duh, that’s what happened but that’s not the cause, the reason for the overcrowding. Rooms get overcrowded when more come in than leave and I get fat when I eat more than I burn; but that isn’t the cause.
We get the thermodynamic argument, really we do... but if you're ignoring the metabolic effects of the insulin cycle upon weight gain in the modern diet, you're not really grasping the important details.
That is a bit disingenuous. I literally just finished a 15.2KM run and burnt off 1190 calories so I guess now I can eat what ever I want.
Except a Big Mac Combo with a Large Coke is 1580 calories so even that is a bit much of dinner. And it took an hour and forty minutes to actually run that distance, almost two hours in total with getting my running gear on, warm up and cool down.
>It's silly to imagine that Coke is doing something nefarious (like Phillip Morris denying that smoking causes lung cancer, or Exxon Mobil FUD-ing solid climate science) by encouraging people to get more exercise so that they can consume what they want.
It's silly to assume it's OK for Coke to pay scientists to promote any theory or results in scientific journals. Coke can pay scientists to work on their products and labs. Getting from there to paying to influence what goes to the diet/medical journals and the general public is downright fraud.
As for "encouraging people to get more exercise so that they can consume what they want" that's not Coke's business to do.
And it's BS anyway, since the message "diet doesn't matter much" (which is the inverse of what you started your comment with), will also stick to people not able or willing to exercize.
Unless you are somehow burning your shit to measure the calories that your body didn't absorb in a certain digestion, I'm going to call bullshit on your formula.
Diet remains the single most important factor when it comes to weight management. Two cookies can erase the calories burned from jogging for 1 hour. People routinely overestimate the calories burned from exercise and underestimate the calories that are in food, especially sugary foods. On top of that, exercise can increase your appetite, resulting in a net positive calories if you're not careful.
Exercise provides a myriad of benefits, the most important actually contributing to mental health. But if you are looking to lose weight, a proper and healthy diet should be your priority.
[+] [-] davidf18|10 years ago|reply
Ironically, the land for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which is located in Atlanta, Georgia was donated by none other than The Coca Cola Company.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|10 years ago|reply
I understand the pitfalls of sugar. But I don't think these kinds of analysis by themselves really teach us anything.
[+] [-] duaneb|10 years ago|reply
I don't think this is ironic at all. A company needs living clientele.
Also, the CDC has better epidemics to worry about than the obesity one. I frankly don't care if people want to be fat.
[+] [-] doah78|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yodsanklai|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamnemecek|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|10 years ago|reply
For example, from the OP:
> Last week, the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana announced the findings of a large new study on exercise in children that determined that lack of physical activity “is the biggest predictor of childhood obesity around the world.”
> The news release contained a disclosure: “This research was funded by The Coca-Cola Company.”
This is the link to the press release, which contains the Coca Cola disclosure in the last line:
https://www.pbrc.edu/news/?ArticleID=284
The press release links to the PubMed page for the study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26173093
...Maybe I'm missing it but I don't see the Coca-Cola disclosure in the PubMed abstract. However, the Coca-Cola mention is in the full text of the study: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/oby.2115...
(note: this above link is visible for me because I'm on a university network. It may not work for you otherwise)
On the other hand, the full text of the study also mentions the ClinicalTrials.gov ID number: NCT01722500.
Which means it can be found here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01722500
So maybe the data collection approach should begin with ClincalTrials.gov, which does have endpoints intended for convenient bulk data analysis: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/resources/download
[+] [-] streptomycin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rgejman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmiwhite|10 years ago|reply
>Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is that they’re [...]blaming sugary drinks and so on. And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that in fact is the cause. [...]
The big problem is we don’t really know the cause other than, well, too many people are eating more calories than they burn on too many days. But maybe the reason they’re eating more calories than they need is because they’re not burning many."
So - he does know the cause. A combination of inactivity and overconsumptiom, both of which are remediated with lifestyle changes that invert their prefixes. Why abandon the latter, simply because each is well reported?
[0]:http://www.sharewik.com/portfolio-items/the-global-energy-ba...
[+] [-] bbcbasic|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matwood|10 years ago|reply
Fixed that for you, although it should not be a novel realization.
[+] [-] logicallee|10 years ago|reply
exercise is super-important, as are food calories from stuff like hamburgers and fries, that don't HAVE a diet version.
why does Coca-Cola care so much? Article would make more sense if it read "mcdonald's", but that's not what's stated - it says it's about coke.
it just doesn't make that much sense to me. where's coca cola's incentive?
(fwiw I thought I'd mention I have absolutely no disclaimer to make, no connection whatsoever with coca cola.)
[+] [-] streptomycin|10 years ago|reply
"What we've seen from animal data is there is something metabolic that changes when you consume artificial sweeteners," says Bleich. "The brain is tricked into thinking it is less full."
So what's going on? Basically, when we eat sweet-tasting foods, that signals our brains to release hormones to process the sugar. It's part of a mechanism that tells the body how much energy it's just taken in, and when it's had enough.
But in people who are regular drinkers of diet sodas, the theory goes, the body gets confused and no longer releases enough hormones. As a result, researchers suspect, diet drinkers end up eating more — and gaining weight.
Ultimately it might not be any better than drinking normal soda. I'd be pretty terrified of this if I ran a soda company.
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|10 years ago|reply
Because popular interest groups have been specifically demonizing soda. Compare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_Drinks_Portion_Cap_Rule
[+] [-] danso|10 years ago|reply
- http://fortune.com/2015/04/22/diet-coke-sales-fizzle/
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/23/am...
I'm too lazy to do number-hunting right now, but those articles state that the total revenue of all low calorie soda sales is in the $7.0 billion range (and declining). Sales for the Coca-Cola company alone is $45+ billion.
So even if Diet Coke is a healthy solution and alternative to regular Coca Cola, its sales are nowhere near enough to sustain the company. Thus, the allegation that Coca-Cola can potentially benefit from a mindset that high caloric intake is not the main cause of obesity.
[+] [-] bbcbasic|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismcb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kennydude|10 years ago|reply
I don't get why they don't just make a fizzy drink which contains at most 10-15g sugar per 500ml (and not fill it with artificial sweetener).
[+] [-] undersuit|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rosser|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jongraehl|10 years ago|reply
I suppose they could still add ridiculous interpretations (as is often the case when people's livelihood depends on their work being seen to promote a given side), but at least you could trust the data.
[+] [-] geo77|10 years ago|reply
great book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt ok doc: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3675568/
[+] [-] trevyn|10 years ago|reply
Yay progress!
[+] [-] jgalt212|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|10 years ago|reply
It doesn't matter an iota if it's "surprising"...
[+] [-] xacaxulu|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] feketegy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jug5|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unchocked|10 years ago|reply
It's silly to imagine that Coke is doing something nefarious (like Phillip Morris denying that smoking causes lung cancer, or Exxon Mobil FUD-ing solid climate science) by encouraging people to get more exercise so that they can consume what they want.
[+] [-] DannyBee|10 years ago|reply
We have billions of complex chemical processes involved in all of this, and know things like "absorption rates of medicine, vitamins, and nutrients" are affected by everything from random vitamins to environmental factors to whatever else.
But body mass, that we have down 100% for-sure, and it's just that simple formula, no variables, no possibility for any other affecting factors. Sure.
[+] [-] mikeash|10 years ago|reply
The most difficult thing about weight management is willpower management. People (especially techies) love to ignore willpower. They'll say, if you want to lose weight, just eat less. Completely ignoring the fact that "just eat less" is an enormous challenge for many people.
By calling into question the importance of calories, Coke is basically undermining people's willpower, which is a precious resource even under optimal conditions. Promoting exercise as a substitute is useless. On its own, exercise will do nothing to help you lose weight, because the extra calorie burn will just make you hungrier!
[+] [-] sliverstorm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crusso|10 years ago|reply
We don’t get fat because we over eat. Meaning that overeating isn’t the cause of obesity, it’s an effect. If a room has a maximum occupancy of 20 people and the fire marshal gets upset and wants to know why it happened – you’re not going to say “well, it’s because more people came into the room than left.” Well duh, that’s what happened but that’s not the cause, the reason for the overcrowding. Rooms get overcrowded when more come in than leave and I get fat when I eat more than I burn; but that isn’t the cause.
https://www.thebairs.net/series/ketogenic-soylent/
We get the thermodynamic argument, really we do... but if you're ignoring the metabolic effects of the insulin cycle upon weight gain in the modern diet, you're not really grasping the important details.
[+] [-] Ensorceled|10 years ago|reply
Except a Big Mac Combo with a Large Coke is 1580 calories so even that is a bit much of dinner. And it took an hour and forty minutes to actually run that distance, almost two hours in total with getting my running gear on, warm up and cool down.
[+] [-] cscurmudgeon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|10 years ago|reply
It's silly to assume it's OK for Coke to pay scientists to promote any theory or results in scientific journals. Coke can pay scientists to work on their products and labs. Getting from there to paying to influence what goes to the diet/medical journals and the general public is downright fraud.
As for "encouraging people to get more exercise so that they can consume what they want" that's not Coke's business to do.
And it's BS anyway, since the message "diet doesn't matter much" (which is the inverse of what you started your comment with), will also stick to people not able or willing to exercize.
[+] [-] Thimothy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp3000|10 years ago|reply
Exercise provides a myriad of benefits, the most important actually contributing to mental health. But if you are looking to lose weight, a proper and healthy diet should be your priority.