Is the Can Worse Than the Soda? 388
DevotedSkeptic sends this excerpt about research that found a correlation between the use of a common food-packaging chemical and obesity rates. "Since the 1960s, manufacturers have widely used the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) in plastics and food packaging. Only recently, though, have scientists begun thoroughly looking into how the compound might affect human health—and what they've found has been a cause for concern. Starting in 2006, a series of studies, mostly in mice, indicated that the chemical might act as an endocrine disruptor (by mimicking the hormone estrogen), cause problems during development and potentially affect the reproductive system, reducing fertility. After a 2010 Food and Drug Administration report warned that the compound could pose an especially hazardous risk for fetuses, infants and young children, BPA-free water bottles and food containers started flying off the shelves. In July, the FDA banned the use of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups, but the chemical is still present in aluminum cans, containers of baby formula and other packaging materials. Now comes another piece of data on a potential risk from BPA but in an area of health in which it has largely been overlooked: obesity. A study by researchers from New York University, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at a sample of nearly 3,000 children and teens across the country and found a 'significant' link between the amount of BPA in their urine and the prevalence of obesity."
Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
BPA or not, there is probably a significant link between teens who drink a lot of soda and those that don't. Maybe this obvious correlation is not causation issue is covered in the full publication (I only read the excerpt)... but if not, this is pretty damn stupid.
There is probably a significant link between the number of fast food wrappers scattered around someones home and obesity, but that doesn't mean the ink in the paper is to blame.
At the absolute minimum, "worse than the soda" is pretty unlikely. Soda is definitely bad for you, whereas BPA _might_ be bad young children and infants.
And in general, I think while environmental factors do probably contribute in a small way to obesity, it seems silly to worry about these things when the real causes are pretty damn obvious: eating wrong and getting no exercise. That bit o` BPA you drank probably made no difference, but your lifestyle of sitting in a chair all day at the office, then going home and sitting on a different chair until bed while eating a whopper probably made a huge difference.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume BPA is bad. The question is, is it worse than no BPA? The reasons cans are lined with plastic are to prevent botulism and to keep the contents from eating through the cans.
Really, though, there's no reason we need to keep doing this. Just switch everything back to glass. The occasional shattering bottle is probably less of a danger to society than the constant poisoning through food and drinks.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you know, we could be lining our canned food items with something that's safe.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Interesting)
Up until the late 1970s cans had a corrosion-resistant liner made from wax. This was replaced by bpa-based lacquers - I worked for a coatings vendor at this time who watched their business disappear due to this shift. Wax coatings were sprayed in just before the product, the BPA finish went on at the coil plant or can maker. To some extent it just pushed the liability upstream. The coatings we made we resistant to pretty much everything outside of aromatic solvents and heat. Depressing to see that what replaced them leeched chemicals into the food. Guess this is our version of the roman lead cooking pots.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Interesting)
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Beeswax.
WARNING: BPA lining in CANNED FOOD as well !! (Score:5, Informative)
One thing about this article submit is that it only tells part of the story.
BPA lining is not only present in the soda can.
BPA lining is also present in CANNED FOOD - yes, inside the cans that are used for CANNED FOOD
http://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/tips/bpa-in-canned-foods [thedailygreen.com]
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Re:WARNING: BPA lining in CANNED FOOD as well !! (Score:4, Insightful)
If people are too lazy to extract the contents of a can into a pan, there are other issues to consider than just what lines a can.
But as I keep getting modded down when I talk about personal responsibility in healthcare, I guess that goes out the window as well when talking about safely handling food.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Funny)
glass
Recycling (Score:3)
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Re:Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
BPA-free plastic has other chemicals that replace the functionality of BPA. We know less about those chemicals than we do about BPA. Pick your poison.
BPA is everywhere (Score:3)
http://website.lineone.net/~mwarhurst/bisphenol.html [lineone.net]
Click the above link and see for yourself where the BPA-compound (resins, epoxy) has been used
And one of those is "WATER PIPE"
Yes, the water pipe that you got your tap water from
You do not need to drink can soda
You do not need to eat canned food
All you need is to turn on the tap and there you go, you get BPA.
Re:BPA is everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I - like many Americans - would like the government to do a better job. Again, you probably think I just claimed that I am a political genus. I once again feel the need to point out that I am not making such a claim. As it turns out I really can suggest we do something better even if I don't know exactly what that "something better" might be. I leave that to the experts, not because they have a solid track record, but because I am not, in fact, one of the experts.
It would be a sad(der?) world indeed if the barrier to wanting a better approach was expertise in the matter.
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For hundreds of years food and drink was regularly contained in a substance called "glass". Some of these glass containers have survived more than a century of regular use are are still considered safe and functional.
After drinking soda that had been stored from the factory in a glass bottle, I was surprised how the same soda out of a can tasted very different, and I rarely drink out of cans.
Plastics then became common (in the 80s) and the flavor was again very different. The rare times I drink soda now I s
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Bottles can also be reused (not only recycled).
Indeed. That's the whole point.
The problem with glass is that it requires more energy to make than a can
Not sure about that. Aluminium is very energy intensive to produce, and of course the cost of the glass bottle is amortized over tens (or hundreds) of uses.
AND more energy and water to wash a bottle before reuse than to make a can.
I think anyone who has ever washed dishes would disagree with that.
The big problem with glass bottles is that they are heavy. That increases transport costs, reduces stock density, and reduces sales. People can pick up a two litre plastic bottle quite comfortably - a two litre glass bottle would be a lot heavier.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's assume BPA is bad. The question is, is it worse than no BPA? The reasons cans are lined with plastic are to prevent botulism and to keep the contents from eating through the cans.
Really, though, there's no reason we need to keep doing this. Just switch everything back to glass. The occasional shattering bottle is probably less of a danger to society than the constant poisoning through food and drinks.
Not to mention, things just plain taste better when coming from a glass container.
/. audience to go get a can of your favorite soda, and a glass bottle of the same, and do your own taste test.
Yes, I know that's entirely anecdotal, but instead of having your normal, knee-jerk reaction of pointing out the obvious, I implore the
Re:Silly (Score:4, Interesting)
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What "beer" can you get in both a bottle or a can?
Re:Silly (Score:4, Informative)
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale:
This isn't a Bud:
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/sierra-nevada-pale-ale-bottle-can/365/ [ratebeer.com]
And recently, it's being sold in bottles and cans -- I've seen it my local supermarkets:
http://www.craftcans.com/sierra-nevada-pale-alesierra-nevada-brewing-company [craftcans.com]
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Plenty, but you might have to look a little as few retailers even have the space to sell both for anything but some domestics. Often the good beers are only sold in cans in places or near them, that prohibit glass containers but allow alcohol.
It's true that light and air are among the worst enemies of liquid bread and that canned is considered 'better' by a certain crowd. However, one could argue that a bottled beer is kept in the dark both in it's package and in the fridge. Also the cap isn't really tha
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"there is a vacuum seal, that you even hear released, just like you do in a can."
of your beer has a vacuum seal, buy better beer. All of my beers are under pressure, a LOT of pressure, from 12-18psi of pressure in them... the CO2 carbonation in it does that.
If you have a vacuum seal you are drinking FLAT beer or something that is not beer.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Informative)
Heineken
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The bosses of Amstel, Heineken and Grolsh are meeting in a cafe (probably for price-fixing). The waiter comes and the Heineken boss orders Heineken beer. The Amstel boss orders Amstel and the Grolsh boss orders one Amstel and one Heineken!! Noticing the incredulous stares of the others he says "Oh, it is too early for a beer".
Seriously though, why does it take at least a decade before something that is well known to scientist finds its place in the public domain, especially when the data is vitally importan
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Guinness.
But if you must get guinness that isn't on tap, the bottle does a better job because of the rocket widget....
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The last 12-pack of Guinness bottles I bought had no rocket widget, but instead some fancy verbiage on the package about how they decided that it wasn't necessary.
No more rocket widget :( (Score:3)
Guinness took out the rocket widgets from bottles about a year or so ago, while at the same time replacing the nitrogen heavy gas mix with pure carbon dioxide.
The result is that Guinness from a bottle now tastes like complete ass and if you poor it out you'll notice the head looks much more like Coke-Cola then anything you might call stout.
The cans still have the widget and the right gas and still taste great. Or just drink Murphy's, it's a much better stout then Guinness anyway.
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Re:Silly (Score:5, Funny)
...you're a tool if you think solid beer isn't available in can form.
It's only solid if it's frozen. I prefer my beer in a liquid state, thanks.
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Hipster is such a hipster word.
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I never said that -- for example, Dale's Pale Ale comes in a can and is one of the best IPAs that I have ever had. My point was only that very few good beers come in both. Some that are have no comparison -- Guinness in a bottle is Extra Stout, not the same stuff that gets canned.
Re:Silly (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but no. Canned beer is worse than bottled beer is worse than tap beer.
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The key is that the canned beer has to be poured into a glass (the can taste is all because your bare lip is touching freshly sheared aluminum). What do you think a keg is if it isn't a big can? You can get many great beers in cans and I find I prefer them...recently I have had several beers from Surly, an IPA from Two Brothers, and many cans of 312 from Goose Island. The latter is the only one I can do a comparison on (the other two are fantastic, but unavailable in bottles) and I thin
Re:Silly (Score:5, Funny)
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It also indicated that Hillary Clinton is hot.
So she found that radioactive rod that was lost in Texas last week?
Didn't anyone tell her not to open it?
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Sorry, but no. Canned beer is worse than bottled beer is worse than tap beer.
Modded "informative"? As a homebrewer and craft beer connoisseur, this is totally false. Let's not judge a book by its cover, eh? Canned beer--and really most other canned food--used to be taste awfully worse than its non-canned counterparts, at least before the advent of plastic lined cans... Now-a-days, you can buy some really fantastic craft beer in cans. Moreover, it has fewer detrimental effects due to light spoilage (aluminum being opaque and all), and you can also take it to places you can't take
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Oh sweet jesus, are you crazy? I've done the test -- I'd just flown in for a job interview, I'd already gotten lost trying to find the hotel, it was late, and I was from a state that didn't usually allow beer sales in gas stations...so while I was picking up my gas station dinner, I figured 'fuck it I'll get a bigass can of beer!'...got a Yuengling Lager, which is far from my favorite beer but certainly drinkable in a bottle...in the can it was quite possibly the worst beer I've ever had.
There's a reason RE
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Well, gee, maybe someone should do some research on the subject.
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...or buy your pop in Big Gulp cup. Sorry NYC.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Interesting)
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Even if they started using cane sugar rather than HFCS, it might make a difference.
I blame the prevelance of really shitty food and the difficulty of finding decent food more than the packaging it comes in.
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From all I can tell, HFCS is almost identical to sucrose metabolically. Okay, there is a very, very small amount of extra energy used when metabolizing the sucrose: the bond between the fructose and glucose molecules has to be broken. With HFCS, you have molecules of fructose and molecules of glucose. Interestingly, the ratios of fructose:glucose are almost the same. Sucrose is 50:50 while HFCS is usally 55:45, about the same as honey.
It's also worth pointing out that fructose tastes sweeter than glucose, a
Re:Silly (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. But it goes further. There is substantial evidence that bulk fructose, in it's role as 50% of sucrose is the underlying cause of the modern rise of obesity.
The story goes like this..
The POMC neurons in the brain (the VMH - Ventromedial Hypothalamus to be precise) regulates energy expenditure are hunger based on levels of glucose, non esterified fatty acids and various hormones, principally insulin and leptin.
Bulk fructose damages those cells, so the regulation goes out of whack. Then the carb-insulin mechanism of obesity kicks in and you're sensitive to carbs. Now regardless of the leptin signaling and the copious NEFAs, the brain isn't telling the rest of the body that you're in an energy rich environment and so it resist burning fat in favor of storing it and you're hungry all the time.
The evidence is pretty good and getting stronger as new studies dig in. E.G. There are many ways to break the VMH in rats. Do it and they get fat. Starve them and they stay fat, but rob their own muscles and organs in order to survive, while leaving the fat cells intact. MSG will do it, Fructose will do it. An ice pick will do it. Section the brains of freshly dead fat people and they have exactly the same lesions in their VMH.
We never had bulk fructose until recent centuries and we never had it in the quantities we have it now. People fart around arguing about micro-nutrients and trace elements looking for reasons, but the macro-nutrients are where the first order effects can be explained.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
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And that original iconic Coca-Cola bottle was 8 ounces.
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When I was a kid, the McDonald's large was the size of their smallest adult cup today, and the largest sandwich you could buy was a single quarter pound of meat.
At least as far back as 1982 you could get a double quarter pounder with cheese, you just had to ask for it and they would make it for you. You would be surprised at how flexable they can be.
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I enjoyed a good can of mountain dew in high school/early college...for a while being at 2 cans on a normal day. I had access too as much as I wanted but, unless I was staying up late to finish a paper or something, I never could stomach drinking more than 2. Then it became just one...and then it became none.
Consuming 2 liters of pop a day is pretty hard to defeat with just exercise.
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Quote from TFA:
The finding is only a correlation between the amount of BPA in the body and obesity, rather than evidence that one causes the other.
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"Worse than the soda" actually isn't unlikely. Hormonal imbalances are a major cause of weight gain. If your hormones are significantly out of balance, you aren't going to achieve a healthy weight even if you practically starve yourself.
Also, soda is arguably one of the least significant sources of BPA in people's diet. Most people don't drink from cans all that often; they drink soda from 2-liter bottles (which do not contain BPA), from
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If your hormones are significantly out of balance, you aren't going to achieve a healthy weight even if you practically starve yourself.
PLUS ONE for this.
Anyone who has a medical condition treated by large (relative to normal levels) steroid doses on an ongoing basis will tell you this.
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Do they use BPA laden can liners in Estonia and Afghanistan?
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The first law of thermodynamics says nothing about whether the levels of calorie intake required to lose weight are going to be healthy. (It doesn't even require them to be non-fatal!) From what I've heard, at least some people with hormonal imbalances actually found that when they tried to lose weight by cutting down on food it made them actually unable to function and work normally.
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Re:Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Soda in general is absolutely horrible. I've never really been very much overweight, but at one point I got up there enough to decide that I wanted to lose some weight. The first thing I did was cut my soda intake from whenever I felt like it down to "merely" twice a day. I lost ten pounds in just two or three weeks and the weight stayed off. I also cut down on other things afterward, but the weight never came off as fast as it did after first regulating my soda intake.
Having managed to successfully lose weight when I wanted to without resorting to salads or some special food, the secret to pure weight loss is simply not eating more calories than you need for the day. That's it. As long as you actually do it, as opposed to thinking that eating a gallon of "low fat" ice cream is going to make you lose weight, you always lose weight. There are days it spikes up and down, but if you maintain it day after day, you make steady progress.
Things like BPA or certain types of food are really only going to be corner cases. Your body cannot store fat from nowhere. If your body uses up all the calories ingested for that day for energy and then some, you will either lose fat or at the very least, you won't have much to make fat from. Endocrine problems are going to be an issue, but even if your body stores extra fat, it gets used up with normal daily exertion, and even more with exercise. You may never be thin, but you're not going to be obese.
Now, the major problem with things like soda isn't that it is soda, it's that it is a high calorie beverage that gives you zero nutritional value. That means to get proteins and nutrients, you have to eat other things which also have calories and you will become hungry for those things because your body won't allow you to fall over dead without letting you know something is missing. You get fat from soda because you have to eat other things with it. That goes even for diet soda (to a lesser extent). It also goes for anything that is high density fat/carbs, but lacks nutrition you need.
So, if BPA has made an epidemic of anything, I'd say it was more like an epidemic of being "slightly chubby", but not one of obesity.
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The counter to that is that I went from 2 liters a day to none at all (I don't even like the taste now) and.....nothing changed.
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Ever try to drink a plain seltzer water? Sugar helps get the enormous amounts of dry nastiness down your throat.
Analogously, I doubt that either Lye or Muriatic acid would taste very good on their own, but together they make an excellent seasoning for a variety of dishes.
Peanut butter and Chocolate on the other hand are the exception to this rule.
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Ever try to drink a plain seltzer water? Sugar helps get the enormous amounts of dry nastiness down your throat.
...I'm confused...I'm sitting here drinking from a two liter bottle of straight seltzer as I type this...why is sugar necessary?
and my father...my god, the man goes through three liters of the stuff EVERY DAY. It's all he drinks!
It's even better if you toss in some lime and gin...or maybe vodka...or some lime, gin, and quinine... ;)
Seriously though, anyone who wants to cut down on sugary, HFCS-loaded soda...try buying a bottle of flavored seltzer. Soo much more refreshing. Or buy plain seltzer and toss in a
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You are 100% inaccurate.
I make my own soda. mix it with tap water, tastes great. mix it with carbonated water, tastes the same but fizzy. if the pop has a different flavor between flat and fizzy, then your pop is complete crap.
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BPA or not, there is probably a significant link between teens who drink a lot of soda and those that don't. Maybe this obvious correlation is not causation issue is covered in the full publication (I only read the excerpt)... but if not, this is pretty damn stupid.
Yep. From the abstract: "Controlling for race/ethnicity, age, caregiver education, poverty to income ratio, sex, serum cotinine level, caloric intake, television watching, and urinary creatinine level, children in the lowest urinary BPA quartile had a lower estimated prevalence of obesity".
So apparently they haven't controlled for the soda (or sugar) intake. On the other hand, I'd expect that to be correlated to a number of the factors they did control for.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Informative)
Oh boy, thanks for sharing your tremendously valuable Common Sense with us.
In fact this study is shocking and here is why (in bold):
So here is what I pull from the emphasized bits:
The idea of significantly impacting the obesity epidemic simply by replacing BPA with something else is hard to believe. But occasionally a technical breakthrough on what was previously considered an issue of character and morality does does occur, and can be revolutionary: consider birth control.
Re:Silly (Score:4, Insightful)
It's hard to control for caloric intake. You're relying on people self-reporting.
Also, contrary to popular myth, all calories are not the same. Your body absorbs much more energy from 100 calories of sugar, for example, than it does from 100 calories of raw vegetables. This is because calorie content is based on laboratory measurements and does not factor in calories lost when food is harder to digest, or when food is not fully digested (in which case the energy is instead absorbed/used by bacteria in the colon).
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Dude, those bacteria must be some pretty vile creatures then. They are converting all this "absorbed/used" energy into what? Heat? Energy of chemical bonds in something that is dumped out? What? Where does that energy magically disappear, and will you sell me some of those bacteria, because I have a whole bunch of uses for them!
Re:Silly (Score:5, Informative)
I have no idea if the OP's statements are accurate or not, but just because you consume something that has "100 calories" does not mean your body will metabolize 100 calories of energy. If the food is incompletely digested (perhaps because the food is hard to break down), you will excrete undigested food energy. The method used to determine caloric energy does not resemble the human digestive system, and it is indeed possible for only a portion of the measured food energy to actually be absorbed by the organism consuming it.
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Nope! If your theory is that caloric intake is the real cause, what you must now explain is why misreporting of caloric intake (not caloric intake itself!) would be so strongly correlated with BPA in the bloodstream.
Some interesting cases to look at would be those with low BPA and high self-reported caloric intake (for example people eating pies or drinking sugared fountain drinks instead of drinking soda from cans), or
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What if the BPA leads to sitting at home, eating more, less exercise, etc etc. Could be a feedback loop.
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Mostly the number of fast food wrappers around our house is a function of being about 2 blocks from a McDonalds and getting them blown into our yard. I get really tired of picking them up every other day.
We already know soda drinkers are fat (Score:5, Insightful)
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Everyone on /. already knows correlation != causation.
People that drink 2L bottles of soda on a regular basis are going to high higher BPA and higher obesity.
Actually, that might be a good test - is there a stronger correlation between obesity and cans than 2L bottles?
Beer Drinkers? (Score:2)
Similarly, is there any statistically significant weight difference between people who drink beer from cans vs. glass bottles?
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Actually, what they are implying is that people who drink 2L of soda from cans daily will be in a worse state than those who drink 2L of the same soda daily from plastic BPA-free bottles.
Some individuals would probably be just fine drinking 2L of sugar soda from plastic bottles if they're active enough to burn off the extra calories.
2L soda = 800 calories (Score:3)
Two liters of soda carries in the neighborhood of 800 calories. The usual number quoted is that running burns about 100-120 calories per mile. Roughly speaking, you're gonna pay for that two-liter soda with a seven mile run.
Need to gain weight fast? One pound of fat = 3500 extra calories. Roughly, eight or nine liters or four six-packs (22 cans) of soda equal one pound. Drink a six-pack a day and you'll be a pound, pound and a half heavier by the end of the week. You'll be four or five pounds overweight by
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zero grams of salt is a pretty small amount..
Perhaps you are thinking of sports drinks.
Re:We already know soda drinkers are fat (Score:5, Informative)
However, they also admit in the conclusions, "Explanations of the association cannot rule out the possibility that obese children ingest food with higher BPA content or have greater adipose stores of BPA."
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well if that was true, then why are so many studies (or the articles posted about them anyway) LOADED with broken correlation? The only answer that makes sense is that many of the authors are ideologically/politically obsessed about some action (seems like soda is a current target considering the stupidity in NY), so they sprinkle it with some badly manipulated stats and serve it up as 'research.' Even under the rare instances the actual studies are sound, the articles themselves often are not. The frequen
Amount in urine (Score:4, Interesting)
The studies that look at the mount of BPA in urine drive me crazy. They take a group of people, give them some food or liquid with BPA, then freak out when it's in their urine.
I'll let you in on a little secret here: humans have the ability to excrete BPA. Mice do not. All those studies that show health issues in mice from BPA ingestion are testing on creatures that cannot rid their bodies of the compound.
Re:Amount in urine (Score:5, Interesting)
I googled something and found something that disputes your claim that
humans have the ability to excrete BPA. Mice do not.
http://healthandenvironmentonline.com/issue-archive/bpa-science-safety-1/ [healthande...online.com]
Slashdot: A mix between a peer review journal and "bum fights"
Re:Amount in urine (Score:4, Informative)
Dr Julia Taylor, the author of this work, is a co-worker of Prof Frederick S. vom Saal. von Saal is the primary BPA critic and is under a lot of criticism because much of his work has been found to be not reproducable in large multigeneration studies done in national labs both in the United States and Europe.
Lack of reproducability in small volume academic exploratory studies is a big problem in the endocrine literature. It's very worth being aware of when evaluating these papers.
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articles/PMC3135059//reload=0;jsessionid=SXzQiL3qssivuEwafSgl.24 [ukpmc.ac.uk]
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I'll let you in on a little secret here: women excrete oral contraceptives [wikipedia.org] and yet they appear to function just fine between the time they're taken and the time they're pissed out.
If you've ever lived with a woman who's taken BC, you would know that your preceding statement is flatly false. A woman will end up trying several different types of BC, finding one that doesn't cause weight gain / lack of desire / batshit insanity / skin breakouts / dry skin / hair falling out / BEARDO TAKE OUT THE FUCKING GARBAGE syndrome / etc
Just remember, 40 years ago we started loading up little boys with female hormones. Now they're marrying each other.
Homosexuals have been around forever, and will be around forever. Hormones in the drink containers didn't give the Victorians / Romans / Greeks / Neanderthals / e
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If you've ever lived with a woman who's taken BC, you would know that your preceding statement is flatly false. A woman will end up trying several different types of BC, finding one that doesn't cause weight gain / lack of desire / batshit insanity / skin breakouts / dry skin / hair falling out / BEARDO TAKE OUT THE FUCKING GARBAGE syndrome / etc
Exactly. That's true i spite of women excreting the contraceptives. So excreting a substance isn't the same as being unaffected by it.
Correllation? Causation? (Score:2)
Did they control for soft drink intake, or did they just compare BPA levels to obesity?
I mean, it seems like drinking more soda would increase both BPA and obesity, while switching to glass containers isn't going to stop someone from being obese if they drink enough.
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Drinking soda would only boost BPA if it's from the can. The far more common plastic soda bottles have no BPA.
Blame the can! (Score:3)
Let's find an easy scapegoat for obesity . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
. . . it's not overeating and lack of exercise. Let's blame the soda can!
It's sure enough easier than convincing people to eat healthy and get more exercise . . .
"It's not my fault that I'm fat . . . I was given too much BPA as a child!"
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Having run a few marathons and covering 2000+ km per year I'd dispute the effects of cardiovascular exercise on weight loss (there's a lot of other great reasons to run, weight loss just isn't one of them). High intensity training has some effect (I don't think it's significant though), but a lot of endurance exercise doesn't really affect weight loss.
Diet however, can make a huge impact, there's a lot of other factors that also make a huge impact (genetics, maybe gut flora, etc), but diet is the only one w
I'm a fat bastard.. (Score:2)
I think this short 30 second youtube video is appropriate for the discussion, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ihOi56J17Hw [youtube.com]
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and I know who to blame: myself. I just eat too much and don't get enough exercise.
It's never too late to fix that. I started biking to work 16 years ago. I've dropped from 250# to 160#, and now I even teach spin classes.
Re:I'm a fat bastard.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I should take this moment to reflect and do something about it, I know I would be a lot happier if I did.
Xenoestrogen (Score:2)
strange end result (Score:5, Funny)
BPA also linked to increased breast cancer risk (Score:2)
Fat kids eat more (Score:2)
Is the Can Worse Than the Soda? (Score:2)
No.
Other sources of BPA might be worse (Score:4, Insightful)
There's also the finding that many types of thermal paper contain much larger amounts of BPA than food packaging:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/07/28/study-finds-bpa-in-store-receipts-health-effects-as-yet-unclear/ [discovermagazine.com]
Would be interesting if the link between obesity and eating fast food was only partly due to the food itself and partly due to handling the receipts.
Re: (Score:2)
Yea... they didn't actually come to those conclusions.
They tested it by lacing mice food with bpa and observing their health in a controlled experiment.
As "smart" as some of these slashdot posters think they are, they often come up with the *dumbest* conclusions.
Re: (Score:2)
The articles cited state that researchers looked at BPA levels in people's urine, and found a correlation with obesity. No mice where harmed. You must be be thinking of a different study.
Re: (Score:3)