Is soda bad for your brain? (And is diet soda worse?)

Interesting story & findings, especially in light of just how popular and widespread this stuff is.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170420162254.htm

Is soda bad for your brain? (And is diet soda worse?)
Both sugary, diet drinks correlated with accelerated brain aging
Date:
April 20, 2017
Source:
Boston University
Summary:
Excess sugar -- especially the fructose in sugary drinks -- might damage your brain, new research suggests. Researchers found that people who drink sugary beverages frequently are more likely to have poorer memory, smaller overall brain volume, and a significantly smaller hippocampus. A follow-up study found that people who drank diet soda daily were almost three times as likely to develop stroke and dementia when compared to those who did not.
...

 

Approximately 191 BILLION cans of soda consumed each year in the USA alone.

Obviously Americans could care less about the health issues of soda.

Americans consume all sorts of crap in these quantities, stuff filled with calories, sugar, gelatinous fat, synthetics, etc. and wash all of it down with sodas...

 

I dont feel strongly enough on this subject to post links. If you do, you're welcome to google for yourself.

Recently it was discovered (or uncovered) that the sugar industry bribed a bunch of scientists to put out a report saying that animal fats (like butter and lard) were attributed to heart disease, high cholesterol and obesity. They did this because there own research had already shown them that sugar was actually a big cause of these things, and they (for obvious reasons) didnt want it getting out. Well its out now. As well as new research showing that animal fats have benefits that we didnt previously understand scientifically- things like good cholesterols that ur brain needs (linking cholesterol meds to alzheimers btw) and fatty acids that help you more effectively utilize the types of fat that you store.

As a side note, it also turns out that cooking your food makes it worse for you from a nutritional standpoint. Good fats turn into bad fats (in meats and eggs) at high temperatures. Of course, if you dont cook it, you run the risk of food poisening (due to our tendency to store food too long before its sold) and parasites (that we used to kill by eating berries and herbs that were just poisenous enough to kill them but not us, that are no longer in our processed diets). So, unless you're eating primarily off the home farm and/or taking a crapton of (hopefully well researched) nutriceutical suppliments, try to just barely cook your food enough to kill everything, but not enough to chemically transform it

Almost forgot: artificial sweeteners just keep turning out to be bad and worse. Dont put anything that says 'diet' in your body without researching it, researching the debunking of that research, and researching the debunking of that debunking, and... you get the idea. Just use honey. Its a miracle substance from the gods. Lots of it. And your own bees. We need more honey bees.

 

It's one of the things that makes a lot of us resentful towards the idea of universal healthcare, too. Who wants to subsidize medical care for people who destroy their own health like this?

Efforts to crack down on junk foods will only be met with loud protests, though, especially by this crowd:

 

I think it would be beneficial for people researching this topic to use information from within the last few years...not 50 years ago. It is also incumbent upon people to qualify the sources and review peer sources and to actually do some thinking! Sodas for example are not essential in any way so why is it so difficult for people to avoid soda when there are overwhelming data on the negative health effects? It's not like giving up 'air'! It's a fricken soda which is overpriced and nonessential...

 

Today government and society does not want to do anything 'too harsh' towards anyone. A failing public school kid won't be held back because it's too harsh. Government won't tell people they need to lose weight, or exercise because it's too harsh. We won't even place law enforcement cameras in HOV lanes to automatically give out $481 (min. in CA) fines to violators because it's too harsh. So it seems to me that in health and so many other areas today that using your logic/position won't force any change and will just cause frustration...what you mention and other things today have become a deplorable norm...

 

So true. It's the age of the participation trophy and "fat shaming," where everyone is right and everyone is special.

Idiocracy awaits. We're getting there.

 

IMO Americans and the country have already bumped up against the Peter Principle!!

 

We already know Americans couldn't care less about the health
of their brain. but so true.

Water, Water and more water. Humans function best with a dilute urine. An oddity considering how so many mammals concentrate urine and preserve water better.
Children: Milk or Water. No Juice.

I remember when a soda was a treat and not sustenance.
Maybe two sodas a month. Certainly not daily. Or several, daily.
A soda, like beer, does not supply water to one's body. It cost water.

Moi

r > g

Got Milk?
Make sure it's milk.
Not that subsidized stuff
killing the Milk industry.​

 

Soda pop (carbonated beverages) is/are bad for your stomach, and the highly concentrated sugars are bad for your pancreas.

Try tea -- it's much better for you.

 

Oh yeah, I avoid sugars in my drinks, so black coffee, tea, carbonated lime or lemon water, plain water, milk... Pretty much anything that isn't giving me a bunch of sugar. Same with my foods, by and large. Worst things I'll indulge in with any sort of frequency are pizza and pasta. No diabetes here! No ill health effects, no medications.

But too many people develop food dependencies that take them to unhealthy extremes, and unfortunately there is no forcing them out of it - they have to be willing, same as a heavy drinker or smoker.

 

soda is a good replacement for the lack of economic opportunity, if the brain is enlarged to its full capacity and potential, it still won't be enough for competition in a market that gives near absolute control to the rich.

 

To be fair, those sodas and beers and juices, etc. contain a boatload of water...mostly water...but they also include synthetic stuff and sugar. I'm not sure how the stuff in sodas and beers, etc. effect how the water is processed into our system? As a kid, although filled with sugar, I sure enjoyed drinking gallons of Coolaid...

 

I'm guessing most people simply don't care about what they eat because they are unaware of what food, beverages, drugs, etc. might present to them. How good are prescription meds in our systems? How about all those recreational drugs? Judging from US obesity, which most people now believe is a-okay, consuming 5000-6000 or more calories per day, with a sedentary lifestyle, is normal. We're called an intelligent species but fact is we're pretty stupid...

 

We have marvellous reasoning capacity combined with a marvellous capacity for overriding reasoning with emotion and impulsiveness. The scientific view seems to be that our evolved apetites for certain kinds of foods is now betraying us with so much of what we crave available. It happens even in early childhood that some will overeat while others will abstain. It's an individual variation. Those prone to overindulging suffer, whereas in the past they may have been better equipped against starvation when times were harder, as they certainly were throughout the vast majority of human history.

We can't expect everyone to master their appetites, unfortunately, and again, there would be much protesting against any attempt to crack down on junkfoods, which are formulated specifically to appeal to those natural cravings for fats and carbohydrates and salt. I suppose the solution would have to come at the insurance end, rewarding those who eat responsibly and making those who don't pay their fair share. But then again, how many of those people wouldn't be able to afford that? And what about less visible poor health habits that insurers can't so easily detect and charge for?

Maybe a DARE type program to raise nutritional awareness would help, but probably not by a whole lot. DARE certainly hasn't eliminated drug use, for that matter. Where does that leave us, then? A big, fat sin tax on junkfoods?

 

Soda is terrible, either way. I can't believe some people drink it every day.

 

The water is offset by that needed to process the beverage

 

I'm not a doctor but I play one on the internet...all I know is during a physical some years ago my physician told me he would rather see his patients drinking beer over sodas almost anytime....

 

Given the decades of painfully wrong studies having to do with nutrition, I'm skeptical of this one too. Since dementia and stroke are also high risk for type 2 Diabetics, I would question the participants of this study. Don't a lot of obese people drink diet sodas? I bet the diet soda group was already at risk.

 

We have brains of which if they are fed information, at the optimum learning times, we can attain knowledge. However, in parallel we must also learn how to extract and use this knowledge. It serves no purpose to have a trillion bytes of knowledge in the vault if we don't have the secret passcode to access it. Seems to me our behavioral habits trump whatever knowledge we posses and this is where we easily dismiss or ignore the warnings. Contrary to what you say above in bold, we are a pathetic lot when it comes to maintaining healthy human bodies! I don't believe it will ever change because I think most of us are in over our heads when it comes to reasoning on any topic...

 

When I've been working outside and am a bit dehydrated, I open a Pacifico beer and place it in the freezer 20 minutes prior to eating and drinking the beer. No matter all the stuff in beer, I know I'm being rehydrated...and it tastes great! However, it would probably be a poor choice of me to obtain most of my water consumption by drinking beer...

 

CHEERS!!!

 

A 12oz. Coke has 140 calories, 0g fat, 45mg sodium (2% of daily needs), 39g carb all from sugar, and 0g protein...with a caffeine content of 34mg. Even drinking 5 Coke's each day, this is only 700 calories, 0g fat, 225mg sodium (10% of daily needs), 195g carb all from sugar, and 0g protein. I think the daily needs are calculated for people consuming 2000 calories per day. I think the US average is 2700 calories per day?? I'm thinking drinking sodas is a small percentage of our eating/health issues. Looking at some data the average intake per day of sugar in the US is ~80g which is ~19 teaspoons...hard to imagine! Type 2 diabetes is mostly genetic but lifestyle choices impact as well including lots of stuff not associated with drinking sodas. I don't drink any sugar or diet sodas...only water and 100% fruit juices...

 

Nature forced us to be healthy, to struggle to keep fed, to be physically active or perish (barring handicaps and our instincts to care for one another socially).

Now, suddenly, we face practically the opposite problem of too much food tailored to our palates and too little need to exert ourselves physically. So, again, it's our reasoning skills vs our base instincts. We can only overcome this new challenge intellectually, and possibly also through eventual evolutionary response to our new situation, which however would take a very long time to develop.

 

How healthy were we in the early days? We were forced to eat to survive but were we really that healthy?

Do humans have base instincts? I'm not sure??