PepsiCo Wants to Sell Healthy Food, Consumers Want Chips
wsj.com
wsj.com
If PepsiCo is genuinely serious about encouraging healthy foods, the only way that's ever going to work is if the Lay's and Doritos are re-designed to be less appealing. Putting them in a fight head-to-head with the healthy foods in their current state is a fight the healthy foods are always going to lose, even if Pepsi's intentions were pure as the driven snow. But they can't (again, irrespective of whether they're good or evil) because that would kill the brands and competitors would simply swoop in and take the market share; so once again we have a coordination problem where regulation is realistically the only solution.
However, some research has been coming out lately that suggests diet soda (more specifically artificial sweeteners) may have various negative effects on health. Nothing conclusive but enough to make me avoid artificial sweeteners entirely.
The phosphoric acid is the problem - the cola drinks contain a large amount.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/
While there's no conclusive proof diet soda definitely causes weight gain, there's absolutely no evidence at all that it helps with weight loss.
Sugary or not, there's no rational basis for considering sodas of any variety "healthy."
Diet soda makes you hungrier, and that makes you eat more and gain weight.
As an aside, I have a hypothesis that naturally focusing on proximate vs. root causes is actually a big contributor to the divide between major segments of the population.
I didn't claim this. "Healthy" food is a subjective term, and to most people does not mean "something that makes you loose weight". Compared to non-diet pop, it is a healthy alternative.
If you're trying to loose weight, stick with water. If you are managing your weight fine and enjoy pop, diet is better than non-diet. The studies you linked to support this.
You mean like the fact that they inhibit beneficial intestinal flora [1], or that numerous studies have found that people have a higher risk for diabetes if they drink diet soda [2], or that people gain weight when they switch to diet sofa from regular [3]?
Yeah, those wacky skeptics - they'll believe anything...
[1] http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/10.1139/apnm-2016-0346#....
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23364017/
[3] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
What is known is that suddenly cutting caffeine after large regular intake will cause weight gain.
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/enhanced/web...
Number 2: major confounder is that people who eat unhealthy or are already obese drink those diet drinks. People who aren't drink normal ones. Needs interventional study not dumb epidemiology.
Number 3: see number 2.
Sugar is the enemy, but so often fat and salt are demonized when in a proper diet these aren't unhealthy at all.
Medical cause and effect is a slippery thing. You can't argue from individual experiences because some people are lucky, or they live in a healthier environment or have a healthier lifestyle, or they're less susceptible to certain conditions because of genetics.
Salt and sugar won't kill you instantly. What they actually do is increase the statistical occurrence of common medical conditions across entire populations, in ways that aren't usually obvious until later in life.
You may be lucky. Or you may have undiagnosed high blood pressure and something bad will happen tomorrow. There's no way to be sure. But if you have an interest in longevity, dietary discretion is a wise choice.
I'd recommend you read Reddit's /r/keto, specially its side bar, and make sure you always meet water intake goals and take your electrolytes.
I've consistently lost weight on the diet, and consistently gained it back when I abandoned it because Doritos.
When they banned alum in flour, industry and customers did scream. Today we find it very normal that our flour not contain alum. Alum makes whiter bread and consumers wanted whiter bread, paralleling what Pepsi is saying today.
Atkins-style diets have their downsides. especially in regards to blood pressure. Eating paleo sounds great, but remember that few of our ancestors expected to live past 30.
Life expectancy in pre-modern eras may have been around 30-ish years, but that mostly reflects extremely high levels of infant mortality. If you could reach adulthood, you usually expected to die around 50-60.
Only at the beginning if you already had big, BIG troubles with blood pressure. The salt intake required might take you over the edge before your body adapts to ketosis. But only in those extreme situations and at the beginning; after keto adaptation you will excrete a huge amount of your salt intake rather than absorb it like you would otherwise.
We know humans both survive and thrive on widely different diets.
The raw ingredients that are part of classical preparations are extremely cheap. For example, in the United States, rice can be had at ~ $0.50-$0.75 a pound, or in my favorite normalization, < $1 per 2000 calories. Beans can be obtained for ~ $1.00 a pound, or ~ $1.50 per 2000 calories. On the other hand, bread is far more expensive at standard grocery stores, and typically comes in at ~ $3 per 2000 calories. The above is an illustration with respect to carbohydrates, there are similar easy examples with respect to protein/vegetables/fruits that allow significant optimizations as compared to the average diet. The end result is that (dependent on location) balanced meals requiring a minimum of preparation work out to roughly $2.50-4.50 per adult per day.
As for preparation time, again with some thought one can minimize effort (pressure cooking is one concrete example).
The point is that if people thought a bit more deeply about their food choices and the cost tradeoffs made, healthy food budgets should really be very minimal as compared to far more expensive things, like health insurance, rent, etc. Most media outlets instead spread a lot of disinformation - the standard "working" assumption is that healthy food is organic, is found in expensive stores like Whole Foods, and that one needs to pay more for healthy food. A fun experiment that illustrates this point: try looking at the labels of marketed "healthy/organic" stuff at a store geared towards such things and examine the sugar content in them. And this is why such places get away with ridiculousness regarding their prices on basic items.
It's worth mentioning that there's a science behind this, called food reward. Stephen Guyenet is a (white-hat) researcher in this area with a fairly interesting blog. A recent post of his[1] is probably one of the better capsule introductions to the topic. He also has a book on the subject, intended for a general audience, in the works.
A caveat: his blog posts vary between widely accessible and commentaries on specific research results that can be hard, frustrating even, to interpret without a lot of additional context. Go easy with what you take in here until you've got enough background.
[1] http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2016/11/this-is-your-b...
You reminded me of this phrase:
"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?"
(Steve Jobs' pitch to Pepsi exec John Sculley)
A lot of policies would make more sense if we had radically different systems in place to mitigate their side effects, but we simply don't. Until then, things like the trans fat ban are solid, fair policies.
I've never tried Sabra hummus, but the others are super sugary. A couple years ago I made a conscious attempt to eat less salt and sugar, and once you do so it's amazing how much sugar you notice added to virtually every processed food you'll find at a grocery store.
Cooking food from scratch is basically the only way to have control over your diet.