What about starch and other carbohydrates, like rice, pasta and bread? Inside the body they are converted to glucose. So does that mean that eating two-can-soda-equivalent amount of bread shows the same harmful effects?
This doesn't make sense.
EDIT: living in Netherlands.
I think "don't drink soda every day" is about as likely to be good advice for everyone as any diet advice a person gets, but as I ranted about in a very long comment yesterday, this is an inherent limitation of nutrition science. Even what is probably the actual study here that someone linked to says in its conclusion that what they found "supports current recommendations to limit the intake of SSBs even for physically active individuals." They make no claim that they found a concrete causal link and for sure soda will hurt you if it's your only vice.
In other words, "don't eat the kind of diet that people who drink two or more cans of soda per week tend to eat"?
If the message here is supposed to be “if you eat sensible portions of healthy foods and lots of vegetables but you also drink two Dr Peppers a week then you’re going to have measurably worse health outcomes” then I sure want to understand that.
What's the source of that claim? America's most popular pasta brand is Barilla (also probably Italy's most popular brand), and that's made with exactly the same ingredients, process and machinery in the US as it is in Italy.
I have followed health and fitness sites, nutrition sites and discussions by scientists and doctors for the better part of the last couple decades in response to my own medical issues that doctors could not help with. As I state in my profile I do not provide links. If a topic is interesting to you then I would suggest researching it so that you can decide for yourself which sources are bribed and which are legit. All of the information is well within reach. nih.gov, healthline, even youtube have a handful of decent scientists and doctors to follow. If you are suggesting I am not telling the truth then it is not possible for us to have a good faith discussion on this topic.
A: I think X. B: Interesting, why do you think that? A: I have 10 years of thinking about it. B: I have 10 years of thinking about it and have the opposite opinion. A: If you're suggesting I'm not telling the truth then it's not possible for us to have a good faith discussion on this topic.
I might've made a fallacy, but this is what popped to mind when I read this comment.
Two slices of Wonder Bread contain 5g of added sugar. https://images.app.goo.gl/qLE4rqLjfUDwd3ew8
I think some of this ends up being the basis of something like the raw food diet, or the way The Rock has said he eats, which is to never eat anything he actually likes except on cheat days. Enjoyable and cooked foods aren't bad, but if you otherwise can't control yourself, one way to do it is only eat stuff you either don't like or is hard to eat. Even that is largely conflating looking like a model with "health" when they aren't the same thing. When The Rock was a pro wrestler and not an actor, he was noticeably fatter but not to the point that I think it was making any difference in terms of health rather than in terms of his ability to land lead roles in action movies that want you to look like a bodybuilder.
The physical structure of the item has an enormous impact on how healthy it is, and the rate of absorption is one of the most important factors for sugar related issues. One big shot of sugar all at once is hugely unhealthy, but when released over time (such as when eating a whole unprocessed fruit) isn’t detrimental at all.
OK, but the glycemic index of cola is 60, which is roughly identical to fruits like kiwi, banana, mango and watermelon.
EDIT: love the downvoting for literally providing a factual response here, people.
As is pointed out elsewhere, what the study actually seems to point out is that the diets of people who drink soda twice a week are likely to be worse-overall than those who eat two mangos a week.
How do they differ?
Also how those carbohydrates eventually become glucose might matter too. Starch gets broken down into glucose in the mouth, stomach and intestines(with varying speed based on structure). Fructose and sucrose(which is made of fructose and glucose) can't be used directly by the body like glucose. Sucrose gets split into glucose and fructose in the intestines. Fructose gets digested in the liver. Some hypothesize that excess fructose metabolization can cause long term issues.
And the glycemic index is just one averaged measurement. Soda probably benefits from its high water content on that metric. Satiety and nutrition play a role. Soda provides no other nutrients and doesn't do much for hunger long term. A person will need to consume something more, which means more overall calories. While there may be better choices, at least rice and bread provide something with the glycemic response.
- 2 cans a week is the amount it will start to be harmful. Effect size is proportional to the extra consumption.
- It's a correlation detected over a large, but very homogenous population. There is space for all kinds of spurious results. That's reason to look for other studies, not to simply dismiss this one.
- What it actually finds is that exercise benefits do not interfere at all with harm from excessive sugar. You can have either combination of them.
- Non-sugared beverages effects (if any) were indistinguishable from noise. (IMO, that one is very surprising.)
The major factor is how fast carbs are induced into blood stream. Bread has some fiber and also carbs are more complex, which makes process slower.
Also surprisingly for me, pasta had a relatively low impact on my blood sugar.
It depends on methodology how you calculate it. For example this article says that per some methodology cola GI can be 91: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1989668/
Also, I think GI is weight normalized, so you compare 250g of cola with 40g of carbs to 250g of white bread with 120g of carbs.