A major US Soda/pop/cola bottler is coming out with a feel good series of “Healthy Choice” ads for the thoughtful consumer. Sugar beverages have been feeling the pinch of the media’s less than skeptical eye for dietary pseudoscience. Trans fats, sugar beverages, high fructose corn syrup, organic food, and other assorted diet pseudoscience has primed the public to accept an easy premise. Sugar Soda is making us fat.
Sure soda can make us fat, but is really more unhealthy than lets say a latte, or a smoothy? Soda is being singled out as a direct obesity factor. Seems on the surface like low hanging fruit. The US diet certainly would benefit from fewer “empty” calories in the diet. Soda certainly seems to be an empty calorie drink. Unfortunately like most dietary/obesity issues, the easy solution, is often the wrong solution.
Full disclosure here, I was a soda junkie at one time. I loved the stuff in the red can, with the polar bear in the commercial. Trademark name left out on purpose. Prior to 2008 my BMI was 44, very considerable. I drank probably anywhere from 2-10, 12 oz/.35L cans per day or equivalent. In 2008 I did a dedicated weight loss program and I lost more than 100lbs/45.36KG. One key diet change, to lose the weight, was minimizing sugar beverages. Today I drink no more than 12oz/.35L on average a month. I still enjoy it, I just don’t drink it like it is a dietary staple anymore. My BMI is 29 now which I have maintained for the last 5 years. In my opinion stopping the soda party probably lost me at least 30lbs of initial weight. Still losing the weight was much more complicated that stopping soda. Media health reports always grate on me when they focus on the nutrient rather than the real issue. Too many calories not enough exercise.
In the US sugar soda has become the ultimate dietary boogeyman. All the food pseudoscience fears rolled into one. Big corporation, mass produced, unnatural, not locally grown, chemical additives, and “Gulp”even High Fructose Corn syrup. I mean you can basically organize every advocate of dietary woo into one big drum circle on this one. To this woo we add the very real issues of tooth decay, concentrated calories, and sodium. You could ask the question, why oh why would anyone ever drink a carbonated sugar sweetened beverage? Short answer is, people like the way they taste. There is nothing inherently evil or bad about any particular type of dietary sweet. People like them, they make our primate brains very happy.
Is one dietary sweet inherently more dangerous than any other? No not really. What is the nutritional difference between a peanut butter cup, a popsicle, a cupcake, a lollipop and a soda pop? Nutritionally, they are different, slightly. Some of these items have calorie dense fat in them, but they are all what I would call “empty” calories. Not much nutrition present. Still, healthy or overweight, people will occasionally partake of one of these little dietary disasters. So why is soda pop a problem, and what makes it different?
The advertising campaign is causing the news outlets to dredge up an oft quoted article from the New England Journal of Medicine. It concluded a correlation between the so called “fat genes” and weight gain with soda. The study alluded to the fact that the number of fat alleles correlated with higher weight gain and a greater number of sugary sodas. My analysis, it is an opinion about a collection of data not a controlled study. The data shows increased number of obesity genes correlate with increased sugar soda intake and corresponding weight gain. So…people who have a genetic disposition to be fat, drink more sugar soda, than people without the gene. Not ground breaking. I’ll bet we could pull retrospective data from this study showing that they consume more of many food items.
The author’s summary and title proposes that the sugar soda somehow triggered a greater weight gain response in people with more “fat gene” alleles. I would say that there is equal evidence that people who have fat genes drink a lot of soda. The primary investigator Dr Hu was quoted as”"Two bad things can act together and their combined effects are even greater than either effect alone,” Hu said. “The flip side of this is everyone has some genetic risk of obesity, but the genetic effects can be offset by healthier beverage choices. It’s certainly not our destiny” to be fat, even if we carry genes that raise this risk.” The author was trying portray a balanced version of the data. This balanced view is not how this study has been presented. Media science reporting has focused on one part. Reports have alluded to the idea that sugar soda somehow triggers a genetic response resulting in greater weight gain. Which is science fantasy.
Obviously liquid sugar is not a good dietary option for an obese population. Making food choices that are less calorie dense, and higher in fiber are more healthful. I will tell you that forcing better drink choices does not improve outcomes. Especially if the overconsumption behavior remains unchanged. 8oz of Orange Juice would be an example of a healthier choice. Nutritionally it has fiber, vitamins, all sorts of good stuff. No high fructose corn syrup, fresh squeezed and completely ”Natural”. OJ has 112 calories per 8 oz. Cola has only 97 calories. No matter how much better OJ is for your health, drinking 2 liters a day will slow any weight loss program.
News outlets like compelling narratives. Sugared soda forcing you to be extra fat is a compelling narrative. Add in a big faceless corporation making money off of your genetic problem and you have news gold. Compelling narrative yes, but not the truth. Plus it has a real negative psychological imperative. Allowing people with weight problems to divorce weight gain from their behavior is disingenuous and fatally flawed. The problem is not the soda, it is uncontrolled calorie intake.
Insinuating that poor health choices are somehow genetic and out of your control contributes to worsening abuse. I like to call it “I can’t” syndrome. I can’t lose weight because of X. Pick your excuse I can’t exercise(you only lose 5% weight by exercise alone), I have low thyroid(Treated with medicine), I don’t have the time( yet the same people will talk about the football game they watched on Sunday), the list goes on. If you give an obese person a plausible excuse they will utilize it. Soda is making you fat is just another quick poor solution. Should it be taxed, restricted, or eliminated? The health benefit for any of those options is at best tenuous. The ban on trans fat has zero health impact on overall american health or obesity.
Soda will only make you fat if you drink too much of it. It is just another food item. Moderation is the key for every diet program. The problem is not that you drink soda, rather is is that you drink a gallon of soda. If you can only buy 12oz cans instead of a 20oz bottle you will buy two cans. I did it all the time. It will not result in any appreciable change in behavior. People who make bad health choices will gravitate to another bad choice. Especially if you convince them that the calories are not at fault. Outlaw soda and over-eaters may switch to a latte, 190 calories per 12 oz serving. Just one example of many. Portion control and prudent diet choice is more important than any particular nutrient. Attacking the soda manufacturer is pop culture nonsense and should not be encouraged.
See your doctor and make sure you do not have a metabolic disease or a underlying health issue. Then take a look in the mirror and realize that total calories and not enough exercise is the reason why you are overweight. No excuses, no fads, no crazy diets. Simple equation, burn more calories than you eat and you will lose weight. I don’t care what you eat. If you find a way to be satiated by eating less calories you will lose weight. Finding a eating pattern that you can maintain long term is the way to do it forever. Picking on any nutrient is a distraction and pointless. Law of conservation of mass, you cannot gain a pound if you eat an ounce of cake, period. Long term it is our behavior that we need to change. Make soda a treat not a staple. That should be the focus of education. Not nutrient X is making you fat.
We should be reinforcing portion control, moderation, exercise, and high fiber low fat diets. It is not easy, and it is not a easy conversation to have with someone. Giving them a lie because it easier, fails to help obese people and allows them to accept that nothing can be done.
Part of the reason to single out cola is the fact that it is cheap and a lot easier to have around without going to a coffee shop or a smoothie cafe. It lends itself to making it easier for a person to overindulge.
Robert H Lustig, MD makes the claim that your un-named brand soda has 55mg of sodium in a can. The sodium helps make you thirsty (for more) and it has more sugar than needed to hide the salt.
(I have not seen this verified, just sites repeating it, but I would like to know if it is true. Info like this can help consumers make better decisions on when to splurge on items that are not good for you, like soda)
This is a very good question because it brings up a common talking point about soda. Sodium is a problem in drinks. People with kidney disease and hypertension need to be aware of total sodium intake. I am not advocating that people use sugared soda for primary hydration.
But the statement”Robert H Lustig, MD makes the claim that your un-named brand soda has 55mg of sodium in a can. The sodium helps make you thirsty (for more) and it has more sugar than needed to hide the salt.” is not medically accurate.
Thirst is a complicated feedback system. What matters is the osmolarity of the fluid. Sugar does not “hide” anything from your body. Dissolved sugar decreases the water concentration. Overall the Osm of a sugared soda is less than your stomach contents and blood osm. That means you will absorb water into your system and it will re-hydrate you. It is not as effecient as water. You would need to drink a slightly greater volume of sugared beverage to achieve the same level of re-hydration that you would from from plain H2O. Sugar soda is not concentrated enough to make you “more thirsty” it is about 1/6th blood volume concentration.
The thirst response is more complicated than sodium being present in the fluid. Sports drinks are an effective re-hydration tool, yet they contain a significant amount of potassium and sodium salts. Again not as effective as plain water. You may drink more to relieve your thirst especially if you are very dehydrated. The feedback system is delayed so even if you are drinking water you will drink much more than necessary to relieve your thirst. Because of that delay you almost always overindulge every fluid when very thirsty. It is not reasonable to conclude that you will drink significantly more of sugared drinks. The thirst feedback loop probably evolved that way because it is easier to eliminate excess fluid than it is to find more fluid.
“Part of the reason to single out cola is the fact that it is cheap and a lot easier to have around without going to a coffee shop or a smoothie cafe. It lends itself to making it easier for a person to overindulge.” True but there are several ways to look at this. Sugar drinks are ubiquitous, kool-aid, fruit juice, sports drinks, home refrigerated latte’s, sugar iced tea, and cream and sugar in your home brewed coffee. All calorie nightmare’s, easy to obtain and have at home. Does making soda more difficult to obtain really fix anything? In my opinion no. People will just fill the house with other bad choices. Unless you address behavior, not the nutrient, there will be no net gain.
Overall a decent article, but I am always slightly disgruntled by the “you are fat, yes, you” tone, just as many other non-overweight people, I suppose.
Valid point I will try to edit to be a little less preachy.
Here is some food for thought–When I was in grade school, the entire school was gathered to hear a man lecture on how he had basically fed his children and himself on almost nothing but soda, until their teeth rotted away and their stomachs were dissolved (or whatever the correct medical term is). SODA IS BAD! he proclaimed. I wondered why anyone would go around telling the whole world about their child abuse, and a little light went off in my head. I went up to him afterwards to ask, and sure enough it was true–His school talks were community service that kept him out of prison.
I was at a talk about some interesting research being carried out in the Netherlands a couple of years ago. Their hypothesis was that a sugar-containing beverage increases calorific intake without providing any sense of satiety (i.e. less hunger), so the individual will not feel inclined to change their intake of other foodstuffs to account for this. They tested this by giving children who were already soda drinkers a can of regular sugar-containing soda or a can of artificially sweetened soda (both made to look and taste identical, including packaging) and monitoring their weight gain. I found this copy of a paper they published in the New England Journal of Medicine available to the public (via a rather anti-soda website). Apparently kids drinking the artificially sweetened drinks didn’t gain as much weight.
http://www.kickthecan.info/files/documents/Ruyter2012_NEJM_TrialSSBsBodyWeightChildren.pdf
Thanks for the link. If you take regular calories out of a soda drinkers diet there will be a corresponding drop in weight loss. What I find unbelievable about this study is that they can find a artificially sweetened drink that kids think is identical.
Your BMI was 44? Surely that was a typo?
no that was a very unfortunate truth. at one time I was 349lbs.
No, I checked..
Look, I have no problem with people wanting to kill themselves in any way they find economically appropriate.
I thank you for an article that folk can read and say to themselves they too have an example.
You can continue to post on all the remaining later life risks incurred during that middle age brain snap you experimented with.
This is exactly why I pretty much ignore mass media food reports at all costs. I’m all for improving my diet, and have reduced my sugar consumption considerably upon discovering I had high blood sugar. I switched to diet soda, and when I do eat sugar, I eat it in moderation and I found it tastes wonderful.
The real problem here, as you say, is too much energy in and not enough energy out. People may accept this good food, bad food scenario but It’s crap.
DIET SODA! I didn’t think it was a big deal, and I continuously shrugged off and dismissed the “myths” my friends threw at me.After a little research I got to know, among adults, diet soda consumption has more than doubled, and consumption has grown almost 25%. They are generally marketed toward health-conscious people, diabetics, athletes, and other people who want to lose weight, improve physical fitness, or reduce their sugar intake.