January 25, 2012 • 26 mins
Could a 1-cent soft drink tax really save millions of lives? What are the health impacts of drinking soda? Are diet soft drinks better for you? Join Cristen and Caroline as they look at the relationship between soft drinks and health.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin Kristen. I've been
(00:20):
wondering would a tax on soda affect how you bought it,
imbibed it, enjoyed it, et cetera. I'm going to say
no because a little insider secret for our listeners. The
office here at How Stuff Works contains many amenities such
(00:45):
as well, really just the main one, which is free
soda we have. I feel like I've mentioned the soda
fridge before. Um, the famous famous soda fridge, the famous
How stuff Works soda fridge that does contain in tab
and diet root beer and not only Vault but also
(01:05):
Diet Vault Vault Vault. I think I've heard of all
in a long time. Or no, wait, I'm thinking of
I'm thinking of the other one that's green Serge, I
mean Surge, which is what I drank at the child
all the time, and it probably stunted my growth. That's
why I'm five for two. I really wish that we
that we stocked serge. We had some secret stock of serge.
(01:29):
But this is really the only place that I drink soda.
I avoid drinking it if I can. I'm more of
a coffee gal um and, but every now and then
I will spring for a diet coke. Yeah, I'm also
a coffee person. I actually quit drinking soft drinks minus
ginger ale when I'm sick when I was a freshman
in college because I read that soda contributed to breakouts,
(01:53):
not the greasy pizza or all the beer you're drinking
all the time now or anything like that. I just
quit soft drinks like this is going to help me
not gain the freshman fishing and didn't break out. Um And, Yeah,
it turns out soda. Soda does have some some interesting
and and terrible side effects on our health. We've learned
a lot about soda. And I'll just go ahead and
(02:15):
warn folks right up front it's mostly bad news. Yeah,
I mean everything in moderation, right, Like you wouldn't want
to eat a whole chocolate cake. I mean I would,
but you wouldn't do it because it's bad for you, right,
not every day? So maybe if you it's I think
it's okay, basically, and I am getting little ahead of myself,
but I mean, I think it's okay to to build
(02:37):
in maybe one soft drink a day, especially if you're
a multiple soft drink a day person and you're trying
to wean yourself down. You might give yourself some headaches.
But you know. But so anyway back to the text,
you say that it would not affect your consumption, and
that's because we have this magical fridge. Not everyone has
a magic fridge, Kristens. I know, I count my blessings.
(02:59):
But a new study out in January of this year
in Health Affair says that attacks on sugar sweetened beverages
and they include not only soft drinks, but you know,
things like sports drinks and juice. Uh. They think that
a tax would reduce consumption by fifteen percent among adults
ages sixty four, which I think is a pretty huge
(03:19):
chunk um. And this news about this tax on over
discovery news was what inspired this podcast because of statistics
like this in the article that jumped out at me.
This is using the Coronary Heart Disease Policy Model, which
is a computer simulated model developed to project future mortality
(03:39):
morbidity in the cost of coronary heart disease, and with
this tax, using the model, they calculated that over a
period from the tax could prevent two point four million
diabetes cases, Yeah, diabetes person years, which I didn't know
what that meant, so I looked it up. Does it
(04:00):
mean fair listeners? It means the sum of the number
of years that each member of a steady population has
been under evaluation. And not only that, it includes nine
thousand coronary heart events, eight thousand strokes, and twenty six
thousand premature death for a sum total of seventeen billion.
That's with a B in medical costs savings, right, And
(04:23):
that's that's not small potatoes. And they're saying that all
of this stuff, all of these these heart conditions, strokes,
premature deaths, all of this could be avoided by just
taxing soda and getting fewer people to drink it or
people to drink less of it, which you know, I thought,
well that maybe that's kind of kind of stretching it.
The soda really have that big of an effect on
(04:44):
people's lives and health, And it turns out, yeah, depending
on how much you drink it really can. Yeah. And
also what I didn't realize is that. According to a
two thousand nine policy brief from the Yale University Rudd
Center for Food Policy and Obesity, thirty three states already
have special sales taxes on soft drinks, but chances are
(05:05):
there so small that people don't really notice them. Yeah,
and this policy brief said that a ten percent tax
could result in about an eight percent reduction in consumption,
with higher effects seen among quote unquote heavy users. Um,
and they kind of they argue that it's along the
lines of taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. But whoa, whoa,
whoa whoa soda pop, cigarettes and alcohol. I mean, are
(05:28):
we talking apples and oranges for government off of my pantry? Yeah?
I know, it's actually it's it's it's comparable. Um. The
government is already pretty involved in what we eat, as
the Red Centers policy brief points out from farm subsidies
to study nutritional standards for school meals. If I mean,
if you think about it, the government has a lot
to do with what we eat all the time. Just
(05:49):
flip over or whatever. I don't know the closest box
of food, do you and see what number one ingredients?
It's probably high fructose corn syrup, right, or just corn
thanks to so much corn food subsidies. Right. And as
far as um, the health issues and comparing soda to
cigarettes or alcohol, you know, there's no there's no secondhand
(06:09):
soda intake. You know, if you're drinking your diet coke
next to me, I'm not like, could you keep it
down over there with your diet soda even though it
sometimes gives me the burbs, hopefully you would do the
sideblow to get that away from me. Um. But Yale
researchers actually did a meta analysis of eighty eight studies
and found that soda intake is associated with a lower
(06:33):
intake of milk, calcium, and other nutrients, with an increased
risk of medical problems such as diabetes. They're not saying
necessarily that the more so do you drink, the less
calcium you will have in your body, necessarily, but it
is displacing other healthier beverages like milk and fortified orange juice,
(06:53):
and instead we're getting a lot of sugar. And I
know that this isn't breaking news to anyone out there,
but just to give it get an idea of how
much sugar we're get. Additional sugar we are ingesting thanks
to soda. And this is I think this includes diet
and regular. The average team boy gets about fifteen teaspoons
(07:17):
of refined sugar from soda every day. The average team
girl gets a little bit less. Girls send to drink
a little less sort of than guys do. And uh,
teen girls get about ten teaspoons of sugar from soda
every day. That makes it a huge chunk of not
only the sugar obviously that the kids are getting, but
the calories. Well, it's I think it's really kind of
(07:39):
gross actually that a majority of these sugary calories that
kids are ingesting come from soda and not the rest
of the food they eat as it should be. Yeah, Soda,
energy drinks, and sports drinks make up thirty six of
all of the added sugar in our diet. So this
(08:00):
is from the National Health and Nutrition Examinations surveys. Yeah,
and all other foods that's in quotes. All other foods
comes in second. It's all the sugary drinks at fift
and fruit drinks follows. And I'm thinking that they differentiate
between sugary drinks and fruit drinks because perhaps fruit drinks
are actual like fruit juice, not those fruit cocktails you see.
(08:22):
But yeah, so speaking of young people, and you know,
I mentioned how soda can kind of displace other healthier
options in kids diets U s D. A study found
that drinking more soda was correlated with children of all
ages consuming two little vitamin A, children younger than twelve
consuming two little calcium, and children six and older consuming
(08:45):
too little magnesium. So not only are they getting too
few of the vitamins and minerals they need, but they're
getting extra stuff like sugar and calories, and that can
lead to some pretty bad things. And we're starting them
so young, right, uh, and not surprisingly over the long
term that this soda intake does not have great impacts
(09:10):
on our health. Yeah, the empty calories are linked to
weight gain, which is a risk factor for type two diabetes,
which has been known typically as adult onset diabetes as
opposed to type one, but it's now just becoming known
as just plain old type two diabetes because they're finding
it more and more in teens. Because the more fat
(09:32):
and sugar that young people consume puts them at greater
risk for this disease. So the answer then is to
switch to diet, right, because that's you know, there're no
calories and that no, that's not the answer. No. June
study from the University of Texas helps Science Center, San
Antonio showed that drinking diet soda is actually associated with
(09:54):
a wider wasteline. There are a couple of reasons, I
mean it is there are some reasons that actually involved
the soda itself. But some researchers have opined that perhaps
some people who have kind of poor diets maybe eat
a lot of fast food and wash it down with
a diet soda, feel like they're making up for the
bad stuff in their diet. Think it's called calorie bound balancing, right,
(10:15):
even though I mean depending on what if you go
and order, you know, a meal at McDonald's and then
you get a diet coke, you're not balancing out that
many calories now. And uh, I thought a really interesting
way to think about diet soda and how it's not
necessarily helping you is your brain really responds to sugary things,
(10:35):
real sugar as a reward, and the reward part of
your brain lights up when you get sugar, and it's like,
oh it's it's sugar time, it's dessert time. But when
you get artificial sweeteners like aspartame, for instance, your mouth
can't tell a difference because it still tastes very sweet,
but your brain can, and scientists have shown that the
(10:56):
reward center of your brain doesn't light up the same
as if you get real sugar, and so your brain
is sort of driving you to get more of that
to fulfill that sweet desire. So even though it might
be satisfactory on your tongue, is it's going down that
you're getting a little sweet sensation, your brain is saying, no,
I need, I need, I need more of you start
going cuckoo for coca puffs exactly, and possibly as a
(11:19):
result of diet SODA's tripping up your brain like that.
Research your Helen Hazuda has pointed out the diet soda
might be free of calories, but not of consequences, and
she points to a study which found that diet soda
drinkers had waste circumference increases seventy greater than those of
non diet soda drinkers. Uh and I believe this is
(11:41):
among sample population of four d and seventy four elderly
people who are followed up over an average of nine
point four years, and those who drink at least two
diet sodas a day had a waste circumference increases five
hundred percent greater the people who didn't drink any diet soda.
(12:02):
I'm never drinking anything but water again, well, water and
beer and coffee. Okay, yeah, I just anyway. A second
study in mice found that the artificial sweetener aspartame raises
blood sugar UH and mice prone to diabetes. So one
group of mice ate food with aspartame and corn oil,
while the other group's food just had the corn oil
(12:22):
in it, and after three months, the aspartame mice showed
elevated fasting glucose levels but equal or diminished insulin levels,
consistent with early declines in pancreatic beta cell function. And
beta cells make insulin, the hormone that lowers blood sugar
after a meal, and an imbalance leads to diabetes. So
people are getting fatter and sicker. Drinking diet soda is
(12:45):
what it sounds like over and this is over the
long term. I mean not to be completely scared tactical
about next week. You're not gonna blow over anything, hopefully,
I mean, I don't know what else you have going
on in your life. But the bottom line is people
who study food policy in the US are very concerned
about soda consumption. And it's understandable that we are because
(13:08):
in order to burn off and moving out of the
diet realm for a moment, in order to burn off
the two fifty calories in your standard and this is
now standard uh twenty ounce bottle of non diet soda.
Usually the standard way back in the day was six
point uh five ounces, the tiny little Coca Cola bottle. Yeah,
(13:29):
we just can't control ourselves anymore. That's why we have
to have hundred calorie snack backs. And as a result,
for that twenty ounces pound person would have to walk
three miles and minutes. That's that's pretty much how fast
I run. They would need to play basketball for forty
minutes vigorously, or bike vigorously for twenty two minutes. And
(13:50):
this is from the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
So and again we know that soda, especially regular soda,
not so great for us. We have their additional calories,
but it does add up, and it seems to be
more dangerous not only for our waistlines, but also for
(14:11):
women in particular and our bones. Osteoporosis has been linked
to soda intake, but that might have to do more
with choices. If you are drinking a coke, you might
not be drinking that glass of milk exactly. Web In
D quotes osteoporosis expert Robert heeney Uh. He says, when
(14:31):
you look at the ingredients of soda and give those
to healthy people and measure what it does to their
calcium composition, nothing happens at all. So there is an
issue of picking the right drinks. If you're going to
be you know, second down liquid all day, make sure
it's it's the right stuff. But Tough University researchers found
that women who drank three or more cola based sodas,
(14:52):
not like clear stuff, but cola based sodas a day
had almost four percent lower bone mineral density in the hip,
even though researchers controlled for calcium and vitamin D intake.
And that might have to do with high levels of
phosphoric acid in those cola based sodas that start eating
away at your bones. That's that's an exaggeration. Cola so violent. Uh.
(15:17):
And then there's caffeine, which can interfere with calcium absorption,
not to mention it's addictive, and I'm just gonna ignore
that because I like coffee, So coffee is not bad. Right. Yeah,
we're not talking about just soda, but webin D recommends,
whether you're a man or a woman, cutting out a
can of two or cola from your diet and replacing
them with milk or fortified beverages. Try taking a calcium
(15:40):
and vitamin D supplement and get enough weight bearing resistance exercise.
But one good rule of thumb from the Harvard School
of Public Health is that at least half your daily
fluid should come from water. Yes, absolutely, stay hydrated. It
does wonderful things for you. Yeah, it doesn't all have
to be water, but to love water. Yeah, if I
(16:01):
had just been told that as a freshman in college,
it's the perfect beverage. Is so, even though we know
that soft drinks are not the best things for us,
consumption has escalated so much in recent decades. Yeah, it's
actually risen pretty dramatically since the nineteen forties, especially back
(16:23):
when they had those six and a half ounce, tiny, petite,
adorable Coca Cola bottles. And it's more than doubled since
the nineteen seventies. Soft drinks now account for more than
one out of every four beverages consumed in the US.
And that's from Michael Jacobson, who's the director of the
Center for Science in the Public Interest, And he also
points out that carbonated soft drinks are the single biggest
(16:45):
source of calories in the American diet. It's crazy. That's crazy.
People eat a sandwich, have that beer calories put it
in a blender. Yeah, I don't understand, especially after reading
a bunch of this stuff. It's crazy to watch people
just drink coke all day, or I'm sorry, drink a
carbonated Cola cola beverage all day. But teenagers get even
(17:07):
more of their calories than just that seven percent average.
They get of their calories from carbonated and non carbonated
soft drinks. Their video gatings. Although sales have declined slightly
in the past couple of years, it reached a high
of fifty six point one gallons per person and has
(17:27):
gone down to a high of fifty two point four.
So what is that four gallons a few less per
person in two thousand four. Yeah, and they said that,
I mean, you can shock some of that decline up
to people being more aware of what they put in
their bodies. But and I think people are still pretty
addicted to their to their carbonated beverages, especially guys. Men
(17:51):
out there, young and old, you are guzzling soda. Pap.
A quarter of thirteen to eighteen year old males soda
drinkers drink two and a half or more cans per day,
and one out of twenty drinks five cans or more.
And across the board, CNN reports that three of and
this is diet soda drinkers in particular, drink at least
(18:12):
four per day. M hm, sneak some water in there,
Come on. I just think of every time I drink
a coffee or a or a cola, that I need
to drink a glass of water to make up for
the dehydration, kind of like when you drink beer. Exactly
that is exactly what I do. Um And I why
I wonder why girls drink less soda soft drinks? Do
(18:35):
you think it's just that people know that it's unhealthy
and maybe girls are more focused on like, oh, I
don't want to. I definitely think it's because we are
more aware of the potential for the weight gain, which
is why diet sodas are so often marketed towards women.
And here's a fun fact about diet soda. The first
(18:56):
diet soda manufactured in the US, it was not tab No,
it was diet right in nineteen um And my dad
drinks really, Uh, what does it taste like? I stay
away from it. Yeah, I don't. I don't drink anything
with the word diet on it. Well, your father is
an exception to the rule in the beverage industry, because
(19:19):
supposedly this was according to an unnamed coke executive talking
to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, saying that diet is a
four letter word when it comes to men that they
are marketing towards, which is why we have something called
coke zero. Exactly, it's just diet coke. I mean maybe
it's not. Even the formula is not exactly the same.
(19:39):
It tastes a little different. Yeah, but it's like, you know,
it's in a black can with silver lettering, and it's
Coke zero, not diet coke. Because the word diet, all
these people are saying in the industry sets off alarm
bells and men's heads that it's a lady drink and
not something machu enough for them. Now I could find no,
no studies or data to back the up. I might
(20:00):
not have searched deep enough, but anecdotally, guys, I haven't
met a guy who's been like a shishy drink. I
have not either, and my father would definitely say that
that's not true. Um. And I'm sure some of you
have seen the ad campaign for Dr Pepper ten, which
made me like, set my dinner down. It's like been
(20:22):
eating in front of the television of the first time,
I thought, because I just wanted to say, really, really,
and and for those of you who aren't familiar, it's
this guy riding through the jungle shooting at people in
his a TV or his jeep or whatever it is,
and and he's holding a Dr Pepper tin and he's like,
this is not for women. You can keep your romance
novels or whatever. He says. Yeah, the ad campaign has
(20:45):
ruffled some feathers, probably intentionally so, because they are so
overtly anti woman. Um. And it's you know, it's not diet.
It's got ten galleries, don't ten manly manly calories. And
according to USA Today, these ads, these this onslaught of
(21:06):
of soda ads come at a time when overall sales
in the seventy four billion soft drink industry are slowing.
Like we said, maybe more Americans are becoming more aware
of of healthy things to put in their bodies. More
people are picking options like juice and bottled water. And
volume of soft drink has fallen from slightly more than
ten billion cases in two thousand five to nine point
(21:28):
four billion cases in according to Beverage Digest data. But
let's face it, that's still a lot of soda. That's
a lot of soda. Well, perhaps women will be leading
the pack in this drop in soda consumption. Maybe we'll
continue to drive that statistics slowly down. It's not to
(21:49):
say that that soda is this horrible poison like cigarettes
and alcohol. Um, but we nevertheless drink less and so
maybe we will influd and to other people to do that. Yeah. Um,
you know, we gave the stats for for thirteen to
eighteen year old boys, uh, and a quarter of thirteen
to eighteen year old female soda drinkers drink two or
(22:09):
more cans per day, and one out of twenty drinks
three cans or more. So that's not quite as high
as the one out of twenty. Boys who drinks five
cans are more, and women in their twenties, it's it's
slightly higher. We drink to twelve ounce sodas per day
on average. I try to I try to limit it.
I I really stick to coffee and only when it
gets later in the afternoon. I don't want a huge
(22:31):
dose of caffeine from coffee. Whill I drink a cola? Yeah,
because keeping in mind, the American Heart Association recommends a
consumption goal of fewer than three twelve ounce cans of
carbonated cola per week. So we're still even ad news
for a lot of people, I know, Yeah, even at
that average of two cans per day. And believe me,
(22:53):
if I don't have my cup of coffee in the morning,
I get the caffeine headache. Yeah, I can't. I just
can't function. If you want me to have my eyes open, yeah,
then it's just I have to have it. But but
cutting the soda, it's not just because of the caffeine,
but it's also everything that's going with it. Phosphoric acid. Yeah,
the special formula I don't even want to know ask
(23:15):
pertain tricking my brain into telling me that I'm satisfied
when I'm really not, and then you just keep going.
You're insatiable. It's insatiable. Uh So, something to keep an
eye out for in the news will be that soda tax. Yeah,
I'll be curious to see if maybe it comes up
in presidential debates. Yeah. The uh this the study and
(23:35):
health affairs, they were really urging the the revenue from
the tax to go towards health education in schools, not
just letting the revenue kind of drift off wherever into
the state and local governments, but really let people know
we're taxing this. You might not like it, but at
least our kids are getting educated about how to be
healthy exactly. I mean the the to me, the statistics
(23:58):
of how how many soft drinks kids are consuming, kids
and teens is the most startling because that's when you
know that's going to carry into adulthood and we need
to stop it early. So yeah, I drink milk every
night with dinner. What what I did that too, was
again though not not that whole stuff. I'll mess with
the stuff that tastes like it just came from the cow,
(24:19):
straight from the cow. So if you have any thoughts
to send our way about soft drinks, and if you
have any insight into the soda pop tax, send us
an email. Yeah, and who's addicted out there? Because I
know plenty of people who cannot go through the day
without like three or more. And we won't judge you. Promise, promise.
We'll just try to gently encourage you to switch to
(24:41):
orange juice or something because I still drink. I mean,
I'll tell you I'll have a couple of dcs a week.
You're You're right there, You're right there at that level.
That's that's approved. Uh So again, our email is mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. And we've got
an email here from Wedge and response to our episode
on pregnancy weight gain. She says, one thing that you
(25:05):
did not mention your podcast is that there is a
big difference between getting back to pre pregnancy weight and
getting back to your pre pregnancy body. Huge difference. It
took me probably less than a year before I was
back to my old weight, but at least eighteen months
or my body to feel like my old self. And
by that I mean my hips and waist and abs.
I'm being generous about my abs I have a pooch,
(25:25):
and I don't have the time and energy to do
the sit ups to get rid of it. Ah Well,
and frankly, three years later, I still don't have my
pre pregnancy body back, and I never will unless I
get a boob job. However, I know I'm one of
the lucky ones I fit into my old clothes, so
add some push up bras and that's kid enough for me.
Thank you, Thanks Wedge, and thanks to everyone else who
has written in Mom's Stuff. At house stuff Works dot
Com is the email address, and of course you can
(25:48):
always find us over on our Facebook page. Leave us
a note there, or send us a hello on Twitter
at Mom's Stuff podcast, or you can check out the
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at how stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check
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(26:10):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin Kristen. I've been
(00:20):
wondering would a tax on soda affect how you bought it,
imbibed it, enjoyed it, et cetera. I'm going to say
no because a little insider secret for our listeners. The
office here at How Stuff Works contains many amenities such
(00:45):
as well, really just the main one, which is free
soda we have. I feel like I've mentioned the soda
fridge before. Um, the famous famous soda fridge, the famous
How stuff Works soda fridge that does contain in tab
and diet root beer and not only Vault but also
(01:05):
Diet Vault Vault Vault. I think I've heard of all
in a long time. Or no, wait, I'm thinking of
I'm thinking of the other one that's green Serge, I
mean Surge, which is what I drank at the child
all the time, and it probably stunted my growth. That's
why I'm five for two. I really wish that we
that we stocked serge. We had some secret stock of serge.
(01:29):
But this is really the only place that I drink soda.
I avoid drinking it if I can. I'm more of
a coffee gal um and, but every now and then
I will spring for a diet coke. Yeah, I'm also
a coffee person. I actually quit drinking soft drinks minus
ginger ale when I'm sick when I was a freshman
in college because I read that soda contributed to breakouts,
(01:53):
not the greasy pizza or all the beer you're drinking
all the time now or anything like that. I just
quit soft drinks like this is going to help me
not gain the freshman fishing and didn't break out. Um And, Yeah,
it turns out soda. Soda does have some some interesting
and and terrible side effects on our health. We've learned
a lot about soda. And I'll just go ahead and
(02:15):
warn folks right up front it's mostly bad news. Yeah,
I mean everything in moderation, right, Like you wouldn't want
to eat a whole chocolate cake. I mean I would,
but you wouldn't do it because it's bad for you, right,
not every day? So maybe if you it's I think
it's okay, basically, and I am getting little ahead of myself,
but I mean, I think it's okay to to build
(02:37):
in maybe one soft drink a day, especially if you're
a multiple soft drink a day person and you're trying
to wean yourself down. You might give yourself some headaches.
But you know. But so anyway back to the text,
you say that it would not affect your consumption, and
that's because we have this magical fridge. Not everyone has
a magic fridge, Kristens. I know, I count my blessings.
(02:59):
But a new study out in January of this year
in Health Affair says that attacks on sugar sweetened beverages
and they include not only soft drinks, but you know,
things like sports drinks and juice. Uh. They think that
a tax would reduce consumption by fifteen percent among adults
ages sixty four, which I think is a pretty huge
(03:19):
chunk um. And this news about this tax on over
discovery news was what inspired this podcast because of statistics
like this in the article that jumped out at me.
This is using the Coronary Heart Disease Policy Model, which
is a computer simulated model developed to project future mortality
(03:39):
morbidity in the cost of coronary heart disease, and with
this tax, using the model, they calculated that over a
period from the tax could prevent two point four million
diabetes cases, Yeah, diabetes person years, which I didn't know
what that meant, so I looked it up. Does it
(04:00):
mean fair listeners? It means the sum of the number
of years that each member of a steady population has
been under evaluation. And not only that, it includes nine
thousand coronary heart events, eight thousand strokes, and twenty six
thousand premature death for a sum total of seventeen billion.
That's with a B in medical costs savings, right, And
(04:23):
that's that's not small potatoes. And they're saying that all
of this stuff, all of these these heart conditions, strokes,
premature deaths, all of this could be avoided by just
taxing soda and getting fewer people to drink it or
people to drink less of it, which you know, I thought,
well that maybe that's kind of kind of stretching it.
The soda really have that big of an effect on
(04:44):
people's lives and health, And it turns out, yeah, depending
on how much you drink it really can. Yeah. And
also what I didn't realize is that. According to a
two thousand nine policy brief from the Yale University Rudd
Center for Food Policy and Obesity, thirty three states already
have special sales taxes on soft drinks, but chances are
(05:05):
there so small that people don't really notice them. Yeah,
and this policy brief said that a ten percent tax
could result in about an eight percent reduction in consumption,
with higher effects seen among quote unquote heavy users. Um,
and they kind of they argue that it's along the
lines of taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. But whoa, whoa,
whoa whoa soda pop, cigarettes and alcohol. I mean, are
(05:28):
we talking apples and oranges for government off of my pantry? Yeah?
I know, it's actually it's it's it's comparable. Um. The
government is already pretty involved in what we eat, as
the Red Centers policy brief points out from farm subsidies
to study nutritional standards for school meals. If I mean,
if you think about it, the government has a lot
to do with what we eat all the time. Just
(05:49):
flip over or whatever. I don't know the closest box
of food, do you and see what number one ingredients?
It's probably high fructose corn syrup, right, or just corn
thanks to so much corn food subsidies. Right. And as
far as um, the health issues and comparing soda to
cigarettes or alcohol, you know, there's no there's no secondhand
(06:09):
soda intake. You know, if you're drinking your diet coke
next to me, I'm not like, could you keep it
down over there with your diet soda even though it
sometimes gives me the burbs, hopefully you would do the
sideblow to get that away from me. Um. But Yale
researchers actually did a meta analysis of eighty eight studies
and found that soda intake is associated with a lower
(06:33):
intake of milk, calcium, and other nutrients, with an increased
risk of medical problems such as diabetes. They're not saying
necessarily that the more so do you drink, the less
calcium you will have in your body, necessarily, but it
is displacing other healthier beverages like milk and fortified orange juice,
(06:53):
and instead we're getting a lot of sugar. And I
know that this isn't breaking news to anyone out there,
but just to give it get an idea of how
much sugar we're get. Additional sugar we are ingesting thanks
to soda. And this is I think this includes diet
and regular. The average team boy gets about fifteen teaspoons
(07:17):
of refined sugar from soda every day. The average team
girl gets a little bit less. Girls send to drink
a little less sort of than guys do. And uh,
teen girls get about ten teaspoons of sugar from soda
every day. That makes it a huge chunk of not
only the sugar obviously that the kids are getting, but
the calories. Well, it's I think it's really kind of
(07:39):
gross actually that a majority of these sugary calories that
kids are ingesting come from soda and not the rest
of the food they eat as it should be. Yeah, Soda,
energy drinks, and sports drinks make up thirty six of
all of the added sugar in our diet. So this
(08:00):
is from the National Health and Nutrition Examinations surveys. Yeah,
and all other foods that's in quotes. All other foods
comes in second. It's all the sugary drinks at fift
and fruit drinks follows. And I'm thinking that they differentiate
between sugary drinks and fruit drinks because perhaps fruit drinks
are actual like fruit juice, not those fruit cocktails you see.
(08:22):
But yeah, so speaking of young people, and you know,
I mentioned how soda can kind of displace other healthier
options in kids diets U s D. A study found
that drinking more soda was correlated with children of all
ages consuming two little vitamin A, children younger than twelve
consuming two little calcium, and children six and older consuming
(08:45):
too little magnesium. So not only are they getting too
few of the vitamins and minerals they need, but they're
getting extra stuff like sugar and calories, and that can
lead to some pretty bad things. And we're starting them
so young, right, uh, and not surprisingly over the long
term that this soda intake does not have great impacts
(09:10):
on our health. Yeah, the empty calories are linked to
weight gain, which is a risk factor for type two diabetes,
which has been known typically as adult onset diabetes as
opposed to type one, but it's now just becoming known
as just plain old type two diabetes because they're finding
it more and more in teens. Because the more fat
(09:32):
and sugar that young people consume puts them at greater
risk for this disease. So the answer then is to
switch to diet, right, because that's you know, there're no
calories and that no, that's not the answer. No. June
study from the University of Texas helps Science Center, San
Antonio showed that drinking diet soda is actually associated with
(09:54):
a wider wasteline. There are a couple of reasons, I
mean it is there are some reasons that actually involved
the soda itself. But some researchers have opined that perhaps
some people who have kind of poor diets maybe eat
a lot of fast food and wash it down with
a diet soda, feel like they're making up for the
bad stuff in their diet. Think it's called calorie bound balancing, right,
(10:15):
even though I mean depending on what if you go
and order, you know, a meal at McDonald's and then
you get a diet coke, you're not balancing out that
many calories now. And uh, I thought a really interesting
way to think about diet soda and how it's not
necessarily helping you is your brain really responds to sugary things,
(10:35):
real sugar as a reward, and the reward part of
your brain lights up when you get sugar, and it's like,
oh it's it's sugar time, it's dessert time. But when
you get artificial sweeteners like aspartame, for instance, your mouth
can't tell a difference because it still tastes very sweet,
but your brain can, and scientists have shown that the
(10:56):
reward center of your brain doesn't light up the same
as if you get real sugar, and so your brain
is sort of driving you to get more of that
to fulfill that sweet desire. So even though it might
be satisfactory on your tongue, is it's going down that
you're getting a little sweet sensation, your brain is saying, no,
I need, I need, I need more of you start
going cuckoo for coca puffs exactly, and possibly as a
(11:19):
result of diet SODA's tripping up your brain like that.
Research your Helen Hazuda has pointed out the diet soda
might be free of calories, but not of consequences, and
she points to a study which found that diet soda
drinkers had waste circumference increases seventy greater than those of
non diet soda drinkers. Uh and I believe this is
(11:41):
among sample population of four d and seventy four elderly
people who are followed up over an average of nine
point four years, and those who drink at least two
diet sodas a day had a waste circumference increases five
hundred percent greater the people who didn't drink any diet soda.
(12:02):
I'm never drinking anything but water again, well, water and
beer and coffee. Okay, yeah, I just anyway. A second
study in mice found that the artificial sweetener aspartame raises
blood sugar UH and mice prone to diabetes. So one
group of mice ate food with aspartame and corn oil,
while the other group's food just had the corn oil
(12:22):
in it, and after three months, the aspartame mice showed
elevated fasting glucose levels but equal or diminished insulin levels,
consistent with early declines in pancreatic beta cell function. And
beta cells make insulin, the hormone that lowers blood sugar
after a meal, and an imbalance leads to diabetes. So
people are getting fatter and sicker. Drinking diet soda is
(12:45):
what it sounds like over and this is over the
long term. I mean not to be completely scared tactical
about next week. You're not gonna blow over anything, hopefully,
I mean, I don't know what else you have going
on in your life. But the bottom line is people
who study food policy in the US are very concerned
about soda consumption. And it's understandable that we are because
(13:08):
in order to burn off and moving out of the
diet realm for a moment, in order to burn off
the two fifty calories in your standard and this is
now standard uh twenty ounce bottle of non diet soda.
Usually the standard way back in the day was six
point uh five ounces, the tiny little Coca Cola bottle. Yeah,
(13:29):
we just can't control ourselves anymore. That's why we have
to have hundred calorie snack backs. And as a result,
for that twenty ounces pound person would have to walk
three miles and minutes. That's that's pretty much how fast
I run. They would need to play basketball for forty
minutes vigorously, or bike vigorously for twenty two minutes. And
(13:50):
this is from the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
So and again we know that soda, especially regular soda,
not so great for us. We have their additional calories,
but it does add up, and it seems to be
more dangerous not only for our waistlines, but also for
(14:11):
women in particular and our bones. Osteoporosis has been linked
to soda intake, but that might have to do more
with choices. If you are drinking a coke, you might
not be drinking that glass of milk exactly. Web In
D quotes osteoporosis expert Robert heeney Uh. He says, when
(14:31):
you look at the ingredients of soda and give those
to healthy people and measure what it does to their
calcium composition, nothing happens at all. So there is an
issue of picking the right drinks. If you're going to
be you know, second down liquid all day, make sure
it's it's the right stuff. But Tough University researchers found
that women who drank three or more cola based sodas,
(14:52):
not like clear stuff, but cola based sodas a day
had almost four percent lower bone mineral density in the hip,
even though researchers controlled for calcium and vitamin D intake.
And that might have to do with high levels of
phosphoric acid in those cola based sodas that start eating
away at your bones. That's that's an exaggeration. Cola so violent. Uh.
(15:17):
And then there's caffeine, which can interfere with calcium absorption,
not to mention it's addictive, and I'm just gonna ignore
that because I like coffee, So coffee is not bad. Right. Yeah,
we're not talking about just soda, but webin D recommends,
whether you're a man or a woman, cutting out a
can of two or cola from your diet and replacing
them with milk or fortified beverages. Try taking a calcium
(15:40):
and vitamin D supplement and get enough weight bearing resistance exercise.
But one good rule of thumb from the Harvard School
of Public Health is that at least half your daily
fluid should come from water. Yes, absolutely, stay hydrated. It
does wonderful things for you. Yeah, it doesn't all have
to be water, but to love water. Yeah, if I
(16:01):
had just been told that as a freshman in college,
it's the perfect beverage. Is so, even though we know
that soft drinks are not the best things for us,
consumption has escalated so much in recent decades. Yeah, it's
actually risen pretty dramatically since the nineteen forties, especially back
(16:23):
when they had those six and a half ounce, tiny, petite,
adorable Coca Cola bottles. And it's more than doubled since
the nineteen seventies. Soft drinks now account for more than
one out of every four beverages consumed in the US.
And that's from Michael Jacobson, who's the director of the
Center for Science in the Public Interest, And he also
points out that carbonated soft drinks are the single biggest
(16:45):
source of calories in the American diet. It's crazy. That's crazy.
People eat a sandwich, have that beer calories put it
in a blender. Yeah, I don't understand, especially after reading
a bunch of this stuff. It's crazy to watch people
just drink coke all day, or I'm sorry, drink a
carbonated Cola cola beverage all day. But teenagers get even
(17:07):
more of their calories than just that seven percent average.
They get of their calories from carbonated and non carbonated
soft drinks. Their video gatings. Although sales have declined slightly
in the past couple of years, it reached a high
of fifty six point one gallons per person and has
(17:27):
gone down to a high of fifty two point four.
So what is that four gallons a few less per
person in two thousand four. Yeah, and they said that,
I mean, you can shock some of that decline up
to people being more aware of what they put in
their bodies. But and I think people are still pretty
addicted to their to their carbonated beverages, especially guys. Men
(17:51):
out there, young and old, you are guzzling soda. Pap.
A quarter of thirteen to eighteen year old males soda
drinkers drink two and a half or more cans per day,
and one out of twenty drinks five cans or more.
And across the board, CNN reports that three of and
this is diet soda drinkers in particular, drink at least
(18:12):
four per day. M hm, sneak some water in there,
Come on. I just think of every time I drink
a coffee or a or a cola, that I need
to drink a glass of water to make up for
the dehydration, kind of like when you drink beer. Exactly
that is exactly what I do. Um And I why
I wonder why girls drink less soda soft drinks? Do
(18:35):
you think it's just that people know that it's unhealthy
and maybe girls are more focused on like, oh, I
don't want to. I definitely think it's because we are
more aware of the potential for the weight gain, which
is why diet sodas are so often marketed towards women.
And here's a fun fact about diet soda. The first
(18:56):
diet soda manufactured in the US, it was not tab No,
it was diet right in nineteen um And my dad
drinks really, Uh, what does it taste like? I stay
away from it. Yeah, I don't. I don't drink anything
with the word diet on it. Well, your father is
an exception to the rule in the beverage industry, because
(19:19):
supposedly this was according to an unnamed coke executive talking
to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, saying that diet is a
four letter word when it comes to men that they
are marketing towards, which is why we have something called
coke zero. Exactly, it's just diet coke. I mean maybe
it's not. Even the formula is not exactly the same.
(19:39):
It tastes a little different. Yeah, but it's like, you know,
it's in a black can with silver lettering, and it's
Coke zero, not diet coke. Because the word diet, all
these people are saying in the industry sets off alarm
bells and men's heads that it's a lady drink and
not something machu enough for them. Now I could find no,
no studies or data to back the up. I might
(20:00):
not have searched deep enough, but anecdotally, guys, I haven't
met a guy who's been like a shishy drink. I
have not either, and my father would definitely say that
that's not true. Um. And I'm sure some of you
have seen the ad campaign for Dr Pepper ten, which
made me like, set my dinner down. It's like been
(20:22):
eating in front of the television of the first time,
I thought, because I just wanted to say, really, really,
and and for those of you who aren't familiar, it's
this guy riding through the jungle shooting at people in
his a TV or his jeep or whatever it is,
and and he's holding a Dr Pepper tin and he's like,
this is not for women. You can keep your romance
novels or whatever. He says. Yeah, the ad campaign has
(20:45):
ruffled some feathers, probably intentionally so, because they are so
overtly anti woman. Um. And it's you know, it's not diet.
It's got ten galleries, don't ten manly manly calories. And
according to USA Today, these ads, these this onslaught of
(21:06):
of soda ads come at a time when overall sales
in the seventy four billion soft drink industry are slowing.
Like we said, maybe more Americans are becoming more aware
of of healthy things to put in their bodies. More
people are picking options like juice and bottled water. And
volume of soft drink has fallen from slightly more than
ten billion cases in two thousand five to nine point
(21:28):
four billion cases in according to Beverage Digest data. But
let's face it, that's still a lot of soda. That's
a lot of soda. Well, perhaps women will be leading
the pack in this drop in soda consumption. Maybe we'll
continue to drive that statistics slowly down. It's not to
(21:49):
say that that soda is this horrible poison like cigarettes
and alcohol. Um, but we nevertheless drink less and so
maybe we will influd and to other people to do that. Yeah. Um,
you know, we gave the stats for for thirteen to
eighteen year old boys, uh, and a quarter of thirteen
to eighteen year old female soda drinkers drink two or
(22:09):
more cans per day, and one out of twenty drinks
three cans or more. So that's not quite as high
as the one out of twenty. Boys who drinks five
cans are more, and women in their twenties, it's it's
slightly higher. We drink to twelve ounce sodas per day
on average. I try to I try to limit it.
I I really stick to coffee and only when it
gets later in the afternoon. I don't want a huge
(22:31):
dose of caffeine from coffee. Whill I drink a cola? Yeah,
because keeping in mind, the American Heart Association recommends a
consumption goal of fewer than three twelve ounce cans of
carbonated cola per week. So we're still even ad news
for a lot of people, I know, Yeah, even at
that average of two cans per day. And believe me,
(22:53):
if I don't have my cup of coffee in the morning,
I get the caffeine headache. Yeah, I can't. I just
can't function. If you want me to have my eyes open, yeah,
then it's just I have to have it. But but
cutting the soda, it's not just because of the caffeine,
but it's also everything that's going with it. Phosphoric acid. Yeah,
the special formula I don't even want to know ask
(23:15):
pertain tricking my brain into telling me that I'm satisfied
when I'm really not, and then you just keep going.
You're insatiable. It's insatiable. Uh So, something to keep an
eye out for in the news will be that soda tax. Yeah,
I'll be curious to see if maybe it comes up
in presidential debates. Yeah. The uh this the study and
(23:35):
health affairs, they were really urging the the revenue from
the tax to go towards health education in schools, not
just letting the revenue kind of drift off wherever into
the state and local governments, but really let people know
we're taxing this. You might not like it, but at
least our kids are getting educated about how to be
healthy exactly. I mean the the to me, the statistics
(23:58):
of how how many soft drinks kids are consuming, kids
and teens is the most startling because that's when you
know that's going to carry into adulthood and we need
to stop it early. So yeah, I drink milk every
night with dinner. What what I did that too, was
again though not not that whole stuff. I'll mess with
the stuff that tastes like it just came from the cow,
(24:19):
straight from the cow. So if you have any thoughts
to send our way about soft drinks, and if you
have any insight into the soda pop tax, send us
an email. Yeah, and who's addicted out there? Because I
know plenty of people who cannot go through the day
without like three or more. And we won't judge you. Promise, promise.
We'll just try to gently encourage you to switch to
(24:41):
orange juice or something because I still drink. I mean,
I'll tell you I'll have a couple of dcs a week.
You're You're right there, You're right there at that level.
That's that's approved. Uh So again, our email is mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com. And we've got
an email here from Wedge and response to our episode
on pregnancy weight gain. She says, one thing that you
(25:05):
did not mention your podcast is that there is a
big difference between getting back to pre pregnancy weight and
getting back to your pre pregnancy body. Huge difference. It
took me probably less than a year before I was
back to my old weight, but at least eighteen months
or my body to feel like my old self. And
by that I mean my hips and waist and abs.
I'm being generous about my abs I have a pooch,
(25:25):
and I don't have the time and energy to do
the sit ups to get rid of it. Ah Well,
and frankly, three years later, I still don't have my
pre pregnancy body back, and I never will unless I
get a boob job. However, I know I'm one of
the lucky ones I fit into my old clothes, so
add some push up bras and that's kid enough for me.
Thank you, Thanks Wedge, and thanks to everyone else who
has written in Mom's Stuff. At house stuff Works dot
Com is the email address, and of course you can
(25:48):
always find us over on our Facebook page. Leave us
a note there, or send us a hello on Twitter
at Mom's Stuff podcast, or you can check out the
blog during the week It's stuff Mom Never told you
at how stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
(26:10):
how Stuff Works staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The how stup Works iPhone
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