Two conspiracy theories about cola
dynomight.net
dynomight.net
>The research, published August 18 in Nature, focused on the effect of a high-fructose diet on villi, the thin, hairlike structures that line the inside of the small intestine. Villi expand the surface area of the gut and help the body to absorb nutrients, including dietary fats, from food as it passes through the digestive tract. The study found that mice that were fed diets that included fructose had villi that were 25 percent to 40 percent longer than those of mice that were not fed fructose. Additionally, the increase in villus length was associated with increased nutrient absorption, weight gain and fat accumulation in the animals.[0]
[0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210818135218.h...
>According to Taylor, the observations in mice make sense from an evolutionary perspective. "In mammals, especially hibernating mammals in temperate climates, you have fructose being very available in the fall months when the fruit is ripe," he said. "Eating a lot of fructose may help these animals to absorb and convert more nutrients to fat, which they need to get through the winter."
Humans generally don't hibernate.
Our evolution had a lot of steps, so well possible that we too have this feature as in the past it might have been adaptive.
Did they compare against sucrose? I see they did have it but can't see if that result was in comparison to the control or to it.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31933405/
"Synthetic azo dyes are widely used in industries. Gerhardt Domagk discovered that the antimicrobial effect of red azo dye Prontosil was caused by the reductively cleaved (azo reduction) product sulfanilamide. The significance of azo reduction is thus revealed. Azo reduction can be accomplished by human intestinal microflora, skin microflora, environmental microorganisms, to a lesser extent by human liver azoreductase, and by nonbiological means. Some azo dyes can be carcinogenic without being cleaved into aromatic amines. However, the carcinogenicity of many azo dyes is due to their cleaved product such as benzidine. Benzidine induces various human and animal tumors. Another azo dye component, p-phenylenediamine, is a contact allergen. Many azo dyes and their reductively cleaved products as well as chemically related aromatic amines are reported to affect human health, causing allergies and other human maladies."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27635691/
"Approximately 0.7 million tons of azo dyes are synthesized each year. Azo dyes are composed of one or more R₁-N=N-R₂ linkages. Studies have shown that both mammalian and microbial azoreductases cleave the azo bonds of the dyes to form compounds that are potentially genotoxic. The human gastrointestinal tract harbors a diverse microbiota comprised of at least several thousand species. Both water-soluble and water-insoluble azo dyes can be reduced by intestinal bacteria. Some of the metabolites produced by intestinal microbiota have been shown to be carcinogenic to humans although the parent azo dyes may not be classified as being carcinogenic. Azoreductase activity is commonly found in intestinal bacteria. Three types of azoreductases have been characterized in bacteria. They are flavin dependent NADH preferred azoreductase, flavin dependent NADPH preferred azoreductase, and flavin free NADPH preferred azoreductase. This review highlights how azo dyes are metabolized by intestinal bacteria, mechanisms of azo reduction, and the potential contribution in the carcinogenesis/mutagenesis of the reduction of the azo dyes by intestinal microbiota."
The second one talks about allergens, noted though not particularly relevant, and does this have amounts anywhere?
And the third one seems to be mentioning other mechanisms to get the same effects, but is not classifying the actual danger levels based on dose? Interesting but it's not helping me figure out if the additives are safe in small amounts.
Jan 1978 Hyperkinesis and diet: a double-blind crossover trial with a tartrazine challenge https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/349320/
Jan-Feb 1982; 'Sulfanilic acid: behavioral change related to azo food dyes in developing rats' 'While our work suggests a significant effect of azo food dyes on the developing rat central nervous system, species differences in parameters such as absorption, metabolism, and blood-brain barrier properties do not permit any extrapolation of these observations to proposed effects in children.'
But now we know the blood-brain barrier imagined in 1982 was not accurate so...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6803178/ From 1998 'Synthetic food colourings and 'hyperactivity': a double-blind crossover study' https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3395307/
From 6 September 2007 'Major study indicates a link between hyperactivity in children and certain food additives'
https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2007/09/hyperactivity-in-...
From 10 April 2008 'Food Standards Agency cites Southampton study in new recommendation on food additives'
https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2008/04/food-standards-ag...
21 August 2014 'Effects of a textile azo dye on mortality, regeneration, and reproductive performance of the planarian, Girardia tigrina' https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-0...
Then from Aug 18, 2021 'The FDA says they’re safe in moderation. But some experts say their guidelines are outdated and need changes to account for the possibility that dyes affect children's brains and behaviour'
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/is-it-time-to-rethin...
The jury is still out, hopefully continuous array's together with fast and high resolution non-invasive brain scans will be able to revisit all this stuff I'd imagine?
With regards the quantity and effect quandary 'Threshold effects can be felt with as little as 25 micrograms of LSD' so who knows.
Finally it's a petrochemical derivative, just mentioning that, here, at the bottom.
If the rate of childhood obesity would have been higher without the warnings, then they do indeed work.
These days, Lucozade Sport (in multiple flavours) has taken over, but being "isotonic", presumably has various salts.
I see that nowdays even the sugar-free lucozade is advertised as an energy drink, I'm not sure quite how that works, though!
That being said, the placebo effect is strong. When I was a little kid, I was only allowed to move from bed to the couch once I’d turned the corner on my illness but wasn’t yet ready to go back to school. To this day I move to the couch when sick, and it makes me feel better even though the only plausible mechanism is my own head. I bet a lot of colas given for upset stomachs are in the same category.
My go to brand, Seagram’s, contains “natural flavors”. Content and concentration unspecified.
"They do buy actual ginger, but then what they do is they boil it in ethanol, and that essentially destroys any nutritional or medicinal benefits," Mark Canofari said, adding that Canada Dry uses a ginger concentrate. "One drop fills 70 cans [...] and a drop is .05 ml. So that's how little, even of the concentrate, is actually in one drink."
https://www.foodandwine.com/news/ginger-ale-canada-dry-medic...
However, in my experience Coke/Pepsi (phosphoric acid) and ginger beer/ale (ginger extract) may work better as anti-nausea medicines.
Canada Dry was sued for their Ginger Ale not containing "real ginger" (as per the label), but I think it still contains something like ginger extract. The anti-nausea effects may be one reason airlines serve ginger ale as an in-flight beverage.
One thing to note that isn't in the article, is that concentration can matter, so comparing one can to a 30ml dose of medication might not be a great comparison (although this still supports for the author's position that phosphoric acid is not added to cola to prevent vomiting).
Is the placebo effect applicable in infants? I would think that infants would not be capable of the understanding that something will make them better, and thus placebo wouldn't apply to them. Unfortunately this paper is pay-walled so we dont have details about the methods used, but the summary seems relevant.
I wouldn't put too much stock in this study you linked. It's a meta analysis of other studies. These other studies were not designed to test placebo effect. The P value also seems quite large to me (.17). Seems to me like any benefit may have been the conventional drugs they were on...
"In each study, the treatment group received the experimental therapeutic intervention in addition to conventional antiepileptic drug treatment, and the control group received a matching placebo in addition to conventional antiepileptic drug treatment."
not when you use sci-hub
https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1016/s0022-3476%252851%252980084...
It seems very plausible that after 8 hours vomiting would stop without intervention.
8 hours seems pretty ‘normal’ from the few times I’ve been ill like this though - would basically feel like ‘most of a day’ or ‘most of a night’.
More commonly though, the placebo effect is just natural progression of the disease, errors in data collection (such as patients trying to be helpful and confirming that vague symptoms have somewhat improved), or errors in data analysis (such as lab techs thinking they've seen something in the sample that they expected to see there).
The psychological effects may or may not apply to infants - that's a somewhat separate question. The other effects definitely do - it's perfectly plausible that a lab tech looking for an improvement in an infant's blood sample after treatment "finds" it.
So I do agree these other effects exist, but I don't think they exist under the classification of placebo effect. It's possible one of these is at play in this study.
There's a reason real medicine requires preregistered double blind trials. It's just far too easy to get causation wrong without using rigorous scientific methods.
That's a gross oversimplification. You could continue to vomit. You could also die. There are multiple types/causes for vomiting. Not all vomiting simply stops on it's own.
"It's good old mind-tricks of correlation vs causation."
I'd say this is more than just mind tricks. The study shows there's a strong correlation and evident effects, which suggests studies should be done on the cause.
"There's a reason real medicine requires preregistered double blind trials."
Or in this case a grandfathered status (it is a "real" medicine as it is approved for sale). I also think this is, again, only a half truth. Double blind studies tend to provide the strongest evidence, but they are not the only kind of study accepted for drug approval.
If there's a scientific study, that might show something better than the giant fail-fest of cultural medical knowledge. I don't know of any human society that hasn't at least historically had a bunch of ineffective medicine that was widely used. Even modern western society probably has some - such as this Emetrol perhaps or wrong results of drug trials. An extreme case is China where normal doctors in hospitals routinely prescribe herbal remedies alongside conventional medicine.
Did you look at the study linked in these comments? Or are you just going to go on and on about cultural medicine and mind tricks?
You mean US coke contains HFCS rather than sugar? Because it uses regular sugar in most of the world. The USA is the outlier here, not Mexico.
I’ve felt this for many years and have even tested by pouring into glasses. I like the can one better.
Is this just me?
Still, there’s nothing better to me than a cold glass bottle if I had to drink soda.
I'm wondering at what point quality is "sampled." There's the first sip ... and then the last. Maybe overall perception is tied more strongly to the last sip?
I don't think so. Bottles impart a small amount of flavor that's almost imperceptible to most people except for warm bottled water. Canned water exists but is a little unusual, that liquid death company with the energy drink looking cans is the only one I could find around here easily. The few times I've had it I wasn't able to detect any plastic flavor, even when warm. My guess is the lining is way more inert than the bottle, or that because the aluminum is blocking light, there's no ability for photodegradation of the liner to happen.
The test in the video doesn't seem valid because they didn't cleanse their palates in between drinks, and drinking one after the other would likely affect the taste somewhat. They're also influencing each other's decisions.
Fountain soda is noticeably different.
Aren't those “urban legends” more than conspiracy theories? (Non-native English speaker here)
Q.E.D.
Also, the whole premise (sugar causing people to throw up) seems a bit weird. Think about honey, cakes, ...
I don't drink soda, so I am not willing, but I am interested as to whether I could just use any food-type acid mixed in water to ease stomach discomfort and dodge this whole sugar/hfcs/fructose/sucrose question entirely.
> aspartame has basically zero negative effects ...diet cola is much safer than real cola.
I won't argue that sugar isn't bad for you, but I don't think the science (and my own observation) agrees that diet cola - specifically aspartame - is "much safer" or somehow healthier. The linked WebMD page mentions this:
> The study found that consuming a low-calorie sweetener was not, by itself responsible for slowing metabolism. However, when combined with other carbohydrates, or fats, the consumption of the non-sucrose sweetener did lead to a significant drop in metabolic rate.
We don't generally ingest things in isolation, so you have to account for what an ingredient does in the context of an average diet accompanying the ingredient, and in that sense, aspartame absolutely does have significant negative effects. Those effects may or may not be worse than real sugar, but after the whole switch from "margarine is a healthier butter substitute" to "turns out margarine might be worse for you than butter" (and other similar upended dietary advice), I'm personally included to prefer sugar - in moderation - over sugar substitutes.
And that's another problem with sugar substitutes: claims that they have no negative effects encourage people to consume "diet" products in very high amounts - often more than the products they replace, so you're no longer comparing equal amounts of the substances. For me, drinking a sugary soda is an infrequent, deliberate decision - one I don't take lightly. There's a guilt that comes with it, but I think that's a good thing to make me think twice. But I also see people drinking diet soda all day, every day, thinking there are essentially no negative consequences (when there obviously are).
2021: "Artificial Sweeteners Negatively Regulate Pathogenic Characteristics of Two Model Gut Bacteria, E. coli and E. faecalis"
> For me, drinking a sugary soda is an infrequent, deliberate decision - one I don't take lightly. There's a guilt that comes with it, but I think that's a good thing to make me think twice. But I also see people drinking diet soda all day, every day, thinking there are essentially no negative consequences (when there obviously are).
I notice people eating excess sugar and carbs all day. Even without drinking a sugar sweetened soda, more people are consuming excess sugar and carbs. Therefore sugar sweetened soda is still worse than non sugar sweetened soda.
But that’s neither here nor there when comparing the consumption of just sugar sweetened and non sugar sweetened soda.
https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3222116/palestinian-...
[1] https://www.ada.org/en/~/media/ADA/Public%20Programs/Files/J...
From their study link:
>And, the reason most people say that they prefer Mexican Coke is that it contains real cane sugar instead of corn syrup. But according to this Time article, a study done by Obesity journal found that Mexican Coke did not contain sucrose
What does this mean? Last I looked many years ago, Mexican coke has two formulations you can notice *just by looking at the ingredients*: sugar or corn syrup. Did they not look? Did they not trust it?
The taste difference is noticable, because less-refined cane sugar is very tasty.
I must say that I find the word “conspiracy theory” to have rather odd usage in common parlance that does not seem to have much to do with conspiracies but I'm not sure what the actual definition is either.
If anything, perhaps it's actual semantics are little more than “allegations of wrongdoing the speaker considers to be false”.
Killing a dozen people by shooting up a bus station is national news. Killing millions, year in and year out, slowly enough, is just business.
/me cracks open a Mexican Coke.
Juice is wholly as bad as Coke.
I've always put it down to the fact that Coca Cola is very effective at washing out the taste of vomit.
Difference in trace constituents, triggering allergy, is completely plausible. But either way, it is the fructose identical in both that is actually poisoning you.
For myself, I get tiny blisters on the backs of my hands and neck from cranberries. And, onions make my sinuses bleed. Indigestion is more common.
Grain fields get fertilised with around 250 kg/ha of superphosphate, which contains 20 kg of phosphorus.
The people who know the most about fructose blame it for the huge public health crisis that the US (and UK, Pakistan, India, and some other countries) are suffering, manifested as insulin resistance and type #2 diabetes, "metabolic syndrome". It kills way more than COVID.
Specifically: fructose is mostly processed only by the liver. (The liver's main job is neutralizing toxins.) Excess fructose is processed on the same metabolic pathways as alcohol, a major toxin. Large amounts of fructose are turned into fat and stored in the liver, like alcohol, and generate uric acid, which causes gout and numerous other problems, like alcohol. (Your kidneys work to try to clear uric acid, but the spikes are harmful.) Today, American children are getting cirrhosis, like alcoholics.
Taken with enough fiber, fructose absorption is delayed long enough that gut bacteria get most of it, instead, where it causes them no problem. Fruits have fructose and fiber, but juice and soda have no fiber. Fructose without enough fiber is slow poison.
A good place to start learning about fructose metabolism is Robert Lustig vids on youtube. (I watch them at 1.5x-2x speed with subtitles, to save time.) Or read his books. Lustig is a respected endocrinologist.
The Epidemiology of Uric Acid and Fructose - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3197219/
But isn't fructose pretty much only a US based sweetener due to corn subsidies?
The rest of the world uses sugar in coke which is a better mixture of sucrose and fructose.
The notion that sugar is less harmful than fructose corn syrup is sugar company propaganda. Both are identically harmful. As noted in TFA, sucrose gets split into fructose and glucose before it gets into the can.
That Taubes's critics are wrong (e.g., in first paragraph of his Wikipedia page) seems worth mentioning.
[1] https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Faulty-...
Car accidents are not seen as a current public health emergency meriting massive interventions; and anyway cause way too few deaths to make a meaningful comparison.
[1] Temporary myocardial inflammation notwithstanding
Have a reference for this? Seems implausible, bacterial fermentation of any sugar in the intestines should result in distress, i.e. the same symptoms a lactose intolerant person would have upon drinking milk.
Point is, the products of bacterial metabolism of sugar in the human gut tend to cause issues, as in lactose intolerance, or the more rare sucrose intolerance. Hence my request for a citation on fibre delaying absorption of fructose so that "bacteria get most of it".
I am only passing on what Robert Lustig, who is in a position to know, reports. You would have to ask him.