Coca-Cola To Fund Research That Shifts Blame For Obesity Away From Bad Diets 663
An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times reports that Coca-Cola is teaming up with influential scientists to support research into fighting obesity through other means than improving diet. They've provided funding to a new nonprofit called the Global Energy Balance Network. Its president said, "Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, 'Oh they're eating too much, eating too much, eating too much' — blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks and so on. And there's really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause." Health experts say it's an attempt by Coca-cola to deflect criticism of the sugary drinks that are the lifeblood of its business. "This clash over the science of obesity comes in a period of rising efforts to tax sugary drinks, remove them from schools and stop companies from marketing them to children. In the last two decades, consumption of full-calorie sodas by the average American has dropped by 25 percent."
Already propagating (Score:3, Insightful)
Yesterday on a radio I heard a DJ saying that there was a study showing that diet drinks didn't help people loose weight. So the propaganda is already flowing.
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't the classification of "diet drink" completely unregulated? I would be very surprised if "diet drinks" helped people lose weight at all.
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Informative)
The main purpose of a diet soda is that it doesn't have any sugar, and therefore, no calories either. What defines "diet" isn't regulated, but every diet soda I've seen indeed has less than or equal to one Calorie.
I suspect that it could very well be true that diet soda doesn't help you lose weight, but if so, it isn't the fault of the diet soda that you aren't losing weight. The more calories you consume, the more "full" you feel, and likewise, simply drinking diet soda isn't going to help you shed pounds if you're consuming something else in lieu of those calories.
Let's say for example that as part of your daily routine, instead of drinking a regular soda (about 150 calories) you decide to drink a diet soda, and have a chocolate chip cookie (typically about 150 calories) with it. In this scenario, you're still retaining the same calorie intake, so you aren't going to shed any pounds that you otherwise wouldn't have.
Having said all of the above, indeed you *can* use diet soda as part of your weight loss plan, but at the end of the day your calorie intake must be less than your Basal Metabolic Rate [bmi-calculator.net].
Oh and for anybody who wants to know how to lose weight, it's dead simple, just follow this formula:
Nc = F - (Bmr + E)
Where Nc = Net Calories, F = food calories consumed, Bmr = Basal Metabolic Rate, E = Calories burned during exercise.
So long as Nc is less than zero, you're losing weight. How fast you're losing weight depends on how much deficit. One pound of fat is roughly 3600 calories. As a rule of thumb, your food intake shouldn't be less than around 1800 calories per day for males, 1200 for females, and if you go below these figures, your liver slows down your metabolism (aka starvation mode) and you get tired all the time lose weight slower.
Also one thing to remember about calories: They are a total sum of protein, fat, carbohydrates, and alcohol. How much of each you need is debatable, but I've found that getting calories mostly from protein and fat (aka low-carb) works best for me (not to mention, low carb also got rid of my cholesterol problem.)
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Informative)
What you're saying is wrong.
There is evidence that diet sodas actually cause weight gain. They are not simply water: the artificial sweeteners have physiological effects, and they are not benign.
While we're still figuring out exactly what those effects are, the main ones that we're aware of now are:
1) They stimulate your appetite.
2) They disrupt your intestinal bacteria.
Re:Already propagating (Score:4, Informative)
What terrible thing did I eat to make me feel so sick? A can of PEACHES. That's right, it had sugar but was also laced Sucralose.
Thanks to a complete failure of the media, I didn't know Sucralose could make me sick until after it happened and I started doing some digging. Tons of people apparently have similar reactions:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com... [consumeraffairs.com]
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Interesting)
I love how people say artificial sweeteners are harmless, but whenever I accidentally ingest one I get a headache, become nauseous, a sharpness around my heart, and almost vomit.
I'm sorry you have a bad reaction to an artificial sweetener, but you should realize that the term "harmless" doesn't mean "nobody can ever have anything bad happen", it means that for normal people it does no harm.
For most people, peanuts are harmless. For most people, a bee sting is an annoyance. For most people, shellfish are a yummy treat.
For most people, aspartame is a harmless sweetener. For people who have phenylketonuria (PKU) it can kill them. They lack an enzyme that processes phenylalanine, an amino acid (building block of proteins) that is part of aspartame, and is also found in higher concentrations in turkey. Should the media report on a regular basis this fact?
For most people, most medications intended to treat some symptom or disease do just that and nothing more. But read the contraindications or side-effect lists and see that some people don't have the same reaction that everyone else does. Does that mean the drug or whatever should be banned? Of course not.
Thanks to a complete failure of the media,
I don't know that it is the media's responsibility to report every bad side-effect that a minority of people experience to some common food additive. They'd be so busy reporting on what affects a minority that the main news would never get covered.
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Informative)
Many of these sweeteners also disrupt beneficial digestive bacteria. So no, artificial sweeteners aren't really harmless for most people. They are just even more harmful for a small minority.
It's worth mentioning, there are actually a few artificial sweeteners that don't trigger an insulin reaction such as Stevia and not to astroturf on Coca-Cola's behalf but I will credit them being responsible for forcing the FDA to acknowledge stevia as being safe for human consumption. Before they pushed this issue it was considered safe to eat as a supplement yet somehow not safe to use as a food additive... a strange determination that smells of uncontested U.S. sugar industry lobbying efforts.
Re:Already propagating (Score:4, Insightful)
This is correct. They also muck with your body's insulin production. This is problematic for someone with Type 2 diabetes who used to drink a lot of diet soda.
Re: (Score:3)
Normally I'd be on board with what you're saying, but I'm starting to have a huge problem with conclusions that are based upon studies and surveys. If all you have is a "link" from cause A to effect B without knowing the exact nature of the relationship, then you really haven't proven anything, and you could very well be wrong, and in fact a lot of recent "dietary wisdom" that was just based on studies showing correlation has been shown to be VERY wrong lately.
For example, for the period between the 70s and
Re:Against science... (Score:5, Informative)
Unless you have a causal mechanism and argument, generated through the scientific method...
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right that weight loss is generally a matter of expending calories in as-great or greater a quantity than one consumes them. Soft drink companies seem to be in a do-or-die effort to convince us that their products, often some of the biggest single contributors of calories and sugar to our diets, aren't the problem, when all of the anecdotal evidence that I've seen indicates that simply dropping the soda without making any other lifestyle changes (ie, diet, exercise level, etc) actually causes weight loss. I've experienced it myself in switching from Mountain Dew to coffee, I lost about ten pounds without doing anything else.
We've taken things that were treats and turned them into regular consumption and are surprised that we're having problems, and these companies can't afford for us to relegate these products back to where they belong, as occasional treats.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe the soft drink companies should think of something new. Very lightly sweetened teas or highly diluted fruit juice drinks without carbonation would be nice. Please no artificial tasting crap like Fruitopia. I don`t see why there can`t be perfectly good tasting beverages with 8-10g sugar max and without artificial sweeteners. I don't always just want plain water, but often the only options are water, high calorie juice, or soda. People are going to continue to drink something, so how about the beverage
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't as simple as eating fewer calories than you expend.
If I'm hungry and eat a handful of almonds - say 100 calories - the fiber and fat content makes me feel satiated for several hours and signals to my body that I'm full. Craves go down and blood sugar remains in a normal range.
Compare that with a handful of skittles. Also say 100 calories. I get a sugar rush, my blood sugar spikes, the skittles breakdown into energy that isn't used and is immediately stored as fat, and my body gets no signal that it's hunger has been satisfied - leaving to more cravings.
Not all calories are equal to one another. On the surface just eating less than you expend works out, but in practice it's a lot harder to do without changes to the actual diet that's supplying the calories.
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Funny)
No no no, thyroids are mythical.
I assure you thyroid glands are real. When you go to the doctor and he palpates the base of your neck he is checking your thyroid.
If you don't believe in prostate glands either, you're in for a big surprise when your doctor decides to check it.
Re: (Score:3)
Although what you're saying is "common wisdom," it's really not true.
1: it's not psychology. When your blood sugar goes up, you create more insulin to store that excess energy as fat - when you make your blood sugar spike quickly, a LOT of insulin is produced, when your blood sugar drops because the insulin is triggering it's storage as fat, your body REALLY DOES trigger the feeling of hunger.
2: you can lose weight without burning calories. It's the science behind low carb diets, and yes, it really works.
Re:Already propagating (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Informative)
Oh and for anybody who wants to know how to lose weight, it's dead simple, just follow this formula:
Nc = F - (Bmr + E)
Where Nc = Net Calories, F = food calories consumed, Bmr = Basal Metabolic Rate, E = Calories burned during exercise.
The idea you're expressing - "Eat less exercise more" - is correct but this formula is deeply incomplete. A fat calorie isn't equal to a sugar calorie isn't equal to a carb calorie because the metabolic pathways are entirely different. Even different kinds of each of a given calorie (e.g. sucrose vs glucose sugars) are metabolized differently.
The human body simply doesn't process calories like an LTI system. It's both hysteretic and complexly dependent on what the composition of a meal is. Drinking a soda or pulpless fruit juice on an empty stomach basically dumps the entire sugar content into your bloodstream the moment it reaches your intestines, which sends your liver and metabolism into panic mode and turns a goodly amount of it into fat, but eating a fruit (which contains asstons of sugar) is harmless because the fiber slows bioavailability. Likewise, if you eat a meal after a long fast (meaning all of 5 hours), your metabolism will be in "ermahgerd starving" mode and process it very differently than if you'd snacked a bit in between.
So it's more like
* eat less in general
* eat less at once, more often
* eat more natural/less processed foodstuffs
* exercise more
This is without getting into things like how science has been used to subvert your body's self regulation systems. Greasy, fatty fast foods - by design! - contain just the mix of salts and fat to prevent you from feeling full and satisfied, so you keep eating until your stomach's "oh god, buffer overload" signal gets through. Well, perhaps this just falls under "eat natural" but still.
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh and for anybody who wants to know how to lose weight, it's dead simple, just follow this formula:
Nc = F - (Bmr + E)
Where Nc = Net Calories, F = food calories consumed, Bmr = Basal Metabolic Rate, E = Calories burned during exercise.
The part you left out is Bmr = f(F, Ft, E) where f is a non-linear function that we don't fully understand and Ft = type of Food and is a catchall for the impact of different types of food on your metabolism. A naive reading of your original equation might lead people to assume that Bmr is a number rather than a function of the other variables. A more accurate formula would be:
Nc = F - (f(F, Ft, E) + E)
Also worth noting that F = g(F, Ft, E) where g is a function describing your body's hunger and fullness sensing mechanisms as well the decision making neural pathways in your brain. The ability to solve a differential equation or write an elegant piece of software or make a correct decision under psychologically challenging conditions is very much influenced by F and Ft. So I think your simple equation would be more accurately written as:
Nc = g(F, Ft, E) - f(F, Ft, E) - E
I distributed the subtraction to remove an extraneous pair of parentheses.
Since g and f are non-algebraic functions it's understandable that solving this equation is a bit more complicated than the simplistic arithmetic that your original equation implies.
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Informative)
Not so much propaganda as well known psychological phenomena. Some people switch to diet drinks and decide that since they consume less calories now, they can have an extra piece of ice cream. Often that turns out to more than offset the gains.
Re:Already propagating (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
I am not ruling out the possibility, of course. It's still likely. But remember that many health recommendations that seemed obvious and intuitive 20 and 30 and 50 years ago are now viewed as inc
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Insightful)
Not surprising, making one good choice (avoiding sugared soft drinks) isn't enough to make a good diet, just like one bad choice doesn't make a bad diet. You could lose weight on the "Coke Diet" by consuming nothing but 10 servings of Coca-Cola every day.
It's simple math - calories in and calories out. There are "good foods" and "bad foods", but the effect of which food you eat makes less of a difference than how much food you eat on weight loss. Effect on overall health is a different story. A person on the "Coke Diet" above would almost certainly lose weight, but they would almost certainly suffer health problems if they stuck to it for too long. A lot of people give "healthy eating" advice as "weight loss" advice and vice-versa.
The real problem is the "Silver Bullet" mentality. The soft drink industry didn't cause this problem all by themselves and telling people to stop drinking Coke isn't going to do any more good than telling people to eat less fat did over the past forty years. If people used the low fat campaign to buy Twizzlers (a low fat snack), then the no soda campaign will produce equally horrible outcomes.
Re: (Score:3)
smoking really does work, though you might not like the side-effects.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Informative)
Yesterday on a radio I heard a DJ saying that there was a study showing that diet drinks didn't help people loose weight. So the propaganda is already flowing.
They don't. They reduce the amount of calories you consume from drinking soda (diet vs. regular), but they stimulate your appetite so you actually end up eating more food when you do eat.
Re: (Score:2)
So in other words, they do help you lose weight as long as you don't change your other eating habits.
Right, but on average, you won't lose weight because it makes it hard to not change your other eating habits. Also, there may be other ways in which diet sodas interact with the body which impede weight loss. There's some indication that your body actually reacts to the taste of sweetness... although I only half-believe that myself, it's still interesting to think about at minimum.
Re: (Score:3)
There's some indication that your body actually reacts to the taste of sweetness... although I only half-believe that myself, it's still interesting to think about at minimum.
From what I understand artificial sweeteners causes insulin to increase [diabetesjournals.org] the way that sugar/HFCS does, but since they don't have any calories, you're left feeling more hungry.
Re:Already propagating (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Already propagating (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
diet drinks actually cause your pancreas to go throwing a lot of insulin into your blood stream contributing to insulin resistance (think eventual type 2 diabetes) and condition your body over time to want more calories by appreciating food less.
the mantra of calories in vs energy out is also a fun bit of spin by these processed food manufacturers. food is not made equally. refined sugars = straight to pancreas = straight to insulin = straight to sugars .... high glycemic index, high fat conversion. migh
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Aspertame and MSG, introduced by food manufacturers to try to replace the taste lost by removing anything resembling fats from our foods, both seriously screw with Leptin, which regulates how hungry you think you are.
It's not propaganda, it's science.
Sugar, the body recognizes, and can adjust appropriately-- but many artificial sweeteners which trick the brain into thinking you just had something sweet, are also tricking your endocrine system into thinking you just had something very sweet, and reacting as
Re: (Score:3)
Yesterday on a radio I heard a DJ saying that there was a study showing that diet drinks didn't help people loose weight. ...
That snippet is old news, and I'm pretty sure it stems from psychology more then from the actual affect of diet drinks, metabolically. People think to themselves, "Oh, I'm drinking fewer calories anyway... so super-duper-size it!"
The bottom line is pretty simple, actually: people almost universally like sweets. You take away their favorite soft drink or candy, and they're going to find a substitute. I'd imagine this is one of the issues that the Coca-cola study will examine... and they're probably going
I'm torn.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I'm torn.... (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly you don't own any Coca Cola or sugar stocks. If you did, you would know that sugar is totally benign, has no ill effects, and can be consumed in massive, even concentrated quantities in soft drinks with no ill effect whatsoever.
Sugar is just like CO2, totally harmless.
Re:I'm torn.... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know, is Conservative kool-aid still built with a large dose of "the universe owes my preferred economic system a free pass from the laws of physics"?
Re:I'm torn.... (Score:5, Funny)
if you can come up with a legitimate way for me to lose weight without diet and exercise, I will love you forever
Eating doesn't make you fat. Marriage makes you fat.
Just compare the waistlines of your single and married friends, and you will see what I mean.
Re:I'm torn.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just cut out as much of the processed sugar and other junk foods as possible and go walking for 30 minutes every day. The notion that you have to eat completely healthy and spend hours in the gym doing intense workouts is a pretty big misconception. Not eating crap foods and getting a small amount of exercise every day is enough to have a significant effect. That won't turn you into Mr. Universe, but it will improve your overall health by a lot.
Re:I'm torn.... (Score:5, Funny)
...I think your options are pretty much limited to violating the laws of thermodynamics.
I was not aware of this option. Please sign me up for your newsletter.
Re: (Score:3)
It doesn't require a violation of the laws of thermodynamics to increase the body's resting metabolism, "just" some fancy tricks of biology. (Scare quotes because that's not exactly an easy problem itself, but it i just an engineering problem, not a new-physics problem). If there was some way to safely cause people to waste excess energy while sitting around doing nothing, that would solve the problem completely.
Alternately, some kind of food additive or supplement that chemically reacted with caloric nutri
cut back on net carbs (Score:3)
Seriously. I went on Atkins about 10 years ago, *severely* cut back on bread/sugar/rice/pasta/cereal, and lost 50 lbs over a year or so with relatively little fuss. I ate lots of vegetables, with meat/cheese/eggs/cream/butter, etc. It tasted good, I wasn't hungry, and I satisfied sweets cravings with stuff sweetened with sucralose/stevia/sugar alcohols/etc.
Migh as well get on it (Score:5, Insightful)
Limit your calories per day say 2000 and go for a 30 Min walk or bike ride. You can easily lose 20LB in 4 months. Besides who wouldn’t want to have great cardio and not get winded when picking up a trash can.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I'm torn.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly, being 'naturally' fairly slim, but having been on medication that first made me gain more than 40 pounds, and then on other medication that made me lose those 40 pounds again and had me basically stuffing as much sugar and fat into myself as I could stand and still losing weight, I have gained some respect for the idea that it might not actually be that easy for an individual to control.
At the very least it's certainly possible for medications to move around the body's perception of hunger from anything between having to basically force things down to not ever being full. For someone stuck at either end it must be a complete horror, and anyone managing to override such an urge through sheer willpower has certainly earned my respect.
Re:I'm torn.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry to break this to you, but - as a fellow overweight individual - there is no substitute for diet and exercise. If you hear any "lose 10 pounds in one week without exercise or changing your diet" then either a) it's a scam, b) it's some kind of drug that will have horrible side effects, c) it's a fad diet that will indeed let you lose the weight but you'll gain twice as much back once you go off the diet, d) there's an asterisk with "results may vary" in the fine print because most people only lose half a pound but that one guy lost 10 pounds", or e) some combination of the above.
If you want to lose weight, here are my recommendations:
1) Drink Water: A lot of times, we mistake our body's "I'm thirsty" signals for "I'm hungry" and then we snack and snack and snack. To add insult to injury, we might snack on salty foods which ups the "I'm thirsty" signal more. So drink a lot of water. Not only will it turn off the "I'm thirsty" signal but it will help make you feel full. And don't drink soda instead of water or those sugar-added "flavored water drinks." Just drink regular water.
2) Keep track of your calories: I use the MyFitnessPal app. It has a barcode scanner and lets me see just how many calories I've eaten and how many I have left in the day. Record EVERYTHING! Don't leave out that handful of potato chips or that bowl of cheese doodles.
3) Weigh your food: Get yourself a food scale and actually weigh your food. It's amazing how much an "American Portion" differs from a real portion of food. If you're having a "serving" of pasta, you might eyeball a serving and assume you've got it right, but chances are you've just given yourself two or three servings.
Obviously, there's more you can do like exercise more, eat more fruits and veggies, etc. These three make for a very good start, though.
No compelling evidence? (Score:4, Informative)
How the hell else do you get fat? You consume more calories than you burn, your body mass will increase. It's really basic thermodynamics at work here...
=Smidge=
Re:No compelling evidence? (Score:5, Interesting)
How the hell else do you get fat? You consume more calories than you burn,
Wrong. You metabolize more calories than you burn, while your body is in a state in which it will store the unused food as fat. But all of this is controlled to a very large extent by factors other than what you eat right now; some of it is controlled by what you've been eating, there appears to be a genetic influence, and there's also the current condition of your gut biota which is also affected by the other two major factors. Remember, poop transplants can make people fatter or skinnier. Once you realize that, it's all a bunch of shit.
Re:No compelling evidence? (Score:5, Funny)
Remember, poop transplants can make people fatter or skinnier. Once you realize that, it's all a bunch of shit.
Gouging my eyes out now, but still can't get that image out of my head.
Re: (Score:3)
*checks username*
Re: (Score:3)
And yet if you don't consume more calories than you burn, how do you metabolize more calories than you burn?
That is the opposite of my point, which is that we all metabolize less calories than we consume — some less than others. The equation is not so simple as being based on consumption, although consumption provides a limit.
Some people can consume massively more "calories" than they burn, and still lose weight, others can't. This fact is commonly ignored in discussions on obesity, but it bears repetition.
Re:No compelling evidence? (Score:5, Interesting)
The general idea is still sound. The problem is that the calorie/kilocalorie values are based on a very average and idealized man
No, the problem is that the calorie/kilocalorie values were derived by setting food on fire [scientificamerican.com] . Seriously, I am not making this up. Since mitochondria are not little coalmen shoveling food into furnaces, the whole idea of deriving caloric benefit values by setting food on fire is basically insane. But as the link above explains, today, we don't even do that. We just look up each ingredient in a table, a table which was derived by setting food on fire [wikipedia.org], and then decide what its caloric content is. So not only does the back of the package not tell you what percentage of the food you're going to metabolize (it can't, since we're all different and we don't actually know that much about it) it also doesn't actually tell you what the caloric content of the food is! (There are numerous other problems with the system; some of them are described in the second link.)
Setting food on fire can be fun, but it's not a very good substitute for actual knowledge of how it will behave in the body.
Re:No compelling evidence? (Score:4, Informative)
No the mechanism is still oxidation using oxygen (in case anyone wnats to be pedantic about redox reactions with other oxidisers), so the same amount of energy is going to be released. Given the same inputs and the same outputs, it does not matter what happens in the middle, or how fast: the energy balance is the same.
Now, sure as the person mentioned it is approximate because not all stored energy can be metabolised, but it's still not a mindlessly stupid method. It also gives you a pretty strict upper bound on the amount of energy in the food. The actual amount you get will be less, but never more.
Re:No compelling evidence? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, right. I guess that's my point. The energy content of the food when set on fire is an interesting data point, but it doesn't tell you how it's going to behave in the body, let alone your body.
Yes, that's true. It's still not useless though. You know that certain kinds of food are going to behave pretty similarly (e.g. processed meat pastries like saysage rolls, meat pies etc will have broadly the same types of ingrediends), so the calorie value across different ones will be somewhat consistent for you.
And in some cases, especially for things high in fat and simple sugars, it's going to be a pretty accurate number, because on the whole those get metabolised and absorbed pretty well.
Re:No compelling evidence? (Score:4, Interesting)
And in some cases, especially for things high in fat and simple sugars, it's going to be a pretty accurate number, because on the whole those get metabolised and absorbed pretty well.
Oh no, not at all! The percentage of fat in particular that you eat that is metabolized varies widely based on a whole bunch of factors, including how much you eat at once! And metabolism is also significantly affected by how thoroughly you chew! It's an interesting number, but it really is all but useless. Out of context, it means nothing.
Re:No compelling evidence? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do I get a poop transplant to deal with obesity and type II? Presumably this will clear my stress hormones too.
Since it's a pretty new thing, I imagine you'd either have to join a trial, or find a back-alley donor.
You probably don't want to know that freeze-drying poop and putting it into capsules [thepowerofpoop.com] and then taking it orally has been shown to also work...
Re: (Score:3)
You consume more calories than you burn, your body mass will increase. It's really basic thermodynamics at work here...
It's sort of almost that simple, but not quite. I know I'm walking into a mine field, here, because a lot of people seem to have a lot invested in thinking that digestion is just "basic thermodynamics", but it's a little more complicated. I'm only bothering to raise this because I think a lot of people try to argue that being overweight is a simple issue of "willpower" and "not eating so much", but there are some basic complications:
1) You can't actually make use of all calories in all food, though it's
Re: (Score:3)
"old science" was something along the lines of 3,500 kcal in a pound (2.2 kg) of fat. However, some quick googling seems to indicate that this statement is being viewed as (partially) false nowadays, due to the way that weight-loss tends to taper off as you lose weight; though I cannot really find any specifics as to what the "new science" actually is.
There is no "new science", just new marketing. Reducing calories is still an effective way to lose weight. The benefit of most alternative diets has nothing to do with nutritional science, but with psychology. Diets don't fail due to bad science, they fail when people don't stick to them. The most effective diets are the ones that are easiest to follow, and people hate counting calories.
Personally, I'm the type of person that can tolerate counting calories. Three month ago, I got fed up with my state of hea
Re:No compelling evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
Coke and Pepsi have been around well over a hundred years.
100 years ago coca cola contained actual cocaine, it probably did promote weight loss
Re: (Score:3)
"100 years ago coca cola contained actual cocaine, it probably did promote weight loss"
By 1891 coca cola was already de-cocainized to the best available technology of the day. (That's already 124 years ago)
" In an entire year's supply of 25-odd million gallons of Coca-Cola syrup, Heath figured, there might be six-hundredths of an ounce of cocaine."
http://snopes.com/cokelore/coc... [snopes.com]
And that's gallons of syrup. Actual coca cola of course is further mostly diluted by water.
Back in the 1860s-1880s, before "Coca-
Re:No compelling evidence? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is silly (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Coke is bad for you. Plain and simple. (Score:4, Interesting)
So anything that shifts the attention away from that will only help their business of selling detritus. I would say it's an addictive drink, almost as bad as cigarettes.
Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain (Score:2)
To maintain healthy weight: Calories In ~= Calories Out
I can already hear the soundbite.
Coca-Cola President: "It's not OUR fault your fat ass can't get up and exercise."
Simple on paper, but people are not paper (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that simple for most people. The body prefers a certain caloric intake level. When it does not get its preferred level, the body "complains" loudly in terms of cravings and discomfort.
And over time metabolism will slow down to catch up with the lower intake, so that one still gains weight even though they are eating less. And, still feel like sh8t.
It usually backfires after about 4 years. Very few can maintain that level of discipline to suffer beyond 4 years. Evolution heavily shaped our bodies, genes, and cravings to error on the side of plump.
Who knows, chubbies may better survive the apocalypse, having the last laugh. When nukes are flying, nobody will care about their slim figure.
It also makes me break out. (Score:3, Informative)
It's like clockwork. If I drink one ordinary can of soda, two days later my face id covered in zits, and I wear them for a good two weeks.
I have been told by some that this is impossible, there must be some other cause, etc. It's bullocks.
And it isn't just soda, if I eat a nice big slice of cake, or anything with 40 grams or more of sugar and little-to-no protein, this happens.
And yet... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with that, is that it's like saying 'as long as you put gasoline in the car, the car will keep running.'
It's very reductionist, and ignores a lot of other factors, many of which are interconnected.
Re: (Score:3)
True, however, a poor diet of fast food, highly processed snacks and soda is harder to reduce than a good well balanced diet.
First, the fast food and snacks are engineered to make you crave them - t
Re: (Score:3)
Sure that are lots of other factors, but 1st order effect *has* to be energy in = energy out.
This!
There are absolutely myriad factors affecting things - genetics, gut flora, etc...and they *do* matter. But I'm tired of hearing people try to shift things away from the most important aspect, which is the overall thermodynamics. Genetics affecting how efficient you are at absorbing energy from food doesn't change that - it just means that you have less/more that you need to eat. This may be unfortunate for the taste buds, but won't adversely affect the nutritional content.
I experienced the parent's
It's not bad diets, it's inactivity. Grant money? (Score:3)
A diet isn't inherently bad when you're expending that energy through physical exertion. A power lifter can drink a coke and not have any issue whereas a sedentary programmer whose maximum amount of exertion for the day was climbing into his car not so much.
Calories in / calories out. You want to eat trashy feel good diets, then exert that amount of energy in your day so it won't matter. Otherwise, get your diet in check.
A super secret weight loss tip: Strength training is a far more effective means of losing weight than cardio and way less miserable.
Re: (Score:3)
A diet isn't inherently bad
Calories in / calories out. You want to eat trashy feel good diets, then exert that amount of energy in your day so it won't matter.
Mister self proclaimed health expert says that you can drink sugar water all day with no bad effects, as long as it's accompanied by exercise!!!
Who is paying you???
Re: (Score:3)
A diet isn't inherently bad when you're expending that energy through physical exertion.
This is true in one sense; untrue in most others.
It's absolutely true that if a person's energy intake is perfectly balanced with his energy output, that he won't gain weight -- or at least not much. Your body composition might be changing a little bit so your weight might not be 100% stable, but let's say this is true as a first approximation. The thing is, a human body isn't an insulated laboratory reactor; it has interfaces to the outside world that take in and expel energy and matter. The problem with
Re:It's not bad diets, it's inactivity. Grant mone (Score:4, Insightful)
A common, but simple error. Muscle weighs more than fat. If you strength train, your muscles will constantly be repairing themselves well after you've done strength training. This repairing burns far more calories than the initial 900-1400. It will be far more than that.
Phelps spent at a minimum of 5-6 hours in a pool a day. His routine (assuming what is listed is correct) highlights all of the stuff he does http://workoutinfoguru.com/mic... [workoutinfoguru.com] If you're spending 5-6 hours swimming then you need to consume 10,000+ calories. Looking at Phelps diet he's eating a lot of grains, an energy drink, and could most definitely eat those pizzas you're referring to.
He also incorporate compound lifts into his training. Compound lifts include the bench, pull ups, push ups (really just a bench), squats, and deadlifts. These work the most muscles in your body and give you the most bang for your buck.
Word of advice for you to help speed up your fat loss. Stop looking at your overall "weight" and saying I need to lose X. Weight is a cumulative number that fails to show the full picture. Instead, find out what your body fat percentage is. This number is what you really need to focus on and bring down. Muscle is infinitely more attractive than adipose tissue.
Next eat a diet high in protein. Pick either animal fats or carbohydrates. If you pick both you will get fat. One of the other. If you lack self control, consider trying the paleo diet. This will force you onto a high protein and fat diet while lowering your carb intake.
Good luck, personal fitness is a goal that every one should esteem to be the best at. People instinctively follow those who are in better shape.
They should also fund the Fat-Acceptance movement (Score:2)
if they haven't already
Can't hurt (Score:3, Insightful)
You can always ignore what they have to say. Obviously, calorie intake (and coke sure is high in calories!) makes you fat. However, the body isn't a simple machine. Denying it calories results in a lot of negative reactions which are intentionally designed in to ensure the body keeps amassing calories. Most intelligent doctors know that just telling a fat guy to stop eating so much is worthless advice and just about never works (there's exceptions to every rule). Diets failing is the rule.
If Coke figures out how to get fat people thin without going the diet route (how, well, hell, I don't know!) at least it gives the overweight a fighting chance. As one of the members of that category, if you could slice 100 lbs off me tonight, I imagine I'd have a HELL of a lot more energy for the physical fitness I desire.
Or just keep making fun of fat people and telling them to diet. I mean, it's working pretty well right now, isn't it? I'm sure telling someone who already spends extra money on more calories that their food will cost even more is definitely going to make a big difference!
They say to really know someone you need to walk 1000 miles in their shoes. Well, to really know what it's like to be overweight, you need to be overweight. It's pretty much that simple. If you are, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you're one of the few that beat it through the traditional diet and exercise (ie: Sheer willpower) approach, good for you! But you know as well as I do that it sure as hell was harder than stopping smoking or even putting down the drink. Yet society views those as things to offer support, rather than ridicule for.
Sigh. I'm sure someone will just reply to this "LOL FATTY". Whatever. I'm in a taxpayer funded healthcare system. You're paying for not helping.
Re:Can't hurt (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nothing more than a pre-emptive strike against the rising war on sugar. The tobacco companies did the same thing for years, despite the science being pretty fucking conclusive since at least the 1950s. But big money buys big influence, and allows companies to essentially peddle poisons for decades.
Yes, calories are required for survival. But there's a helluva lot better source of calories than what amounts to a flavored sugar syrup in a carbonated water solution.
Re: (Score:3)
In sufficiently large quantities, they are poisons. The point here is that a large company whose profits are based largely on the copious use of sugar in its products is about to fire up a campaign to utterly misrepresent and minimize the risk of high amounts of sugar in the diet.
And jesus fucking christ, lots of things are dietary requirements that taking in large amounts can have detrimental effects. Vitamin A is incredibly important, but it, just like sugar, can have very ill effects in high concentratio
Re: (Score:2)
If Coke figures out how to get fat people thin without going the diet route
monkeys will fly out of your butt
Re: (Score:3)
On the plus side, that should result in significant weight loss.
Problem solved (Score:3)
They say to really know someone you need to walk 1000 miles in their shoes
If I walked 1000 miles on a regular basis, even in my own shows, I wouldn't be fat anymore.
Funny (Score:5, Informative)
Had a quick google and evidently 1 pint of Coca Cola has a few more calories than...a pint of Guinness!
Fine (Score:2, Insightful)
Fat? It's not your fault! (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, your not fat because you eat a bag of cheetos and 2 liters of coke everyday and never leave your house. You're Fat because of North Korea and Iran and you don't believe in the right God.
Watch "Merchants of Doubt" HBO documentary (Score:5, Informative)
Corporations have been doing this for ages.
The same professional deniers that insisted there was nothing unhealthy about smoking cigarettes, are now working the Koch brother's PR firm, and insisting that global warming is a hoax.
These scientists also work for, and support: the nuclear industry, Monsanto, and factory farmers.
You might also want to watch "That Sugar Film"
Patrick Moore, a scientist who help found Greenpeace, now works for several corporations.
Here he is promoting the wholesomeness of GMOs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSten18rI9A
Here he claims that rising levels of CO2 are good for the environment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc
Just typical corporate shenanigans.
Re: (Score:3)
You're only correct to a point - ingesting GMO's, by and large, is safe by scientific consensus.
On the other hand, GMO's are horrible for the environment. The main "modification" given to plants is to make them more tolerant of highly toxic weed killers. This has sparked an arms race between your corn crop and weeds, to the point that superweeds are basically the farming equivalent of super bacteria. This is horrible for local flora and fauna who are out competed by the super weeds that grow faster and hard
This is a good thing (Score:2)
Sure, they have a very clear motive, and may bury any science that doesn't support their claims. That's bad.
But the idea that diet is the primary cause of obesity is a very intuitive one. There's no lack of studies showing the link, so burying new studies may not have a huge impact. The problem with intuitive ideas is that they're often wrong, or partially right, or ignore the root causes behind them. Research funded by a biased source is not necessarily bad research, and can uncover previously-unknown
Re: (Score:2)
Research funded by a biased source is not necessarily bad research, and can uncover previously-unknown factors.
the world desperately searches for a justification for carbonated sugar water, as if it will solve any of the world's problems
Re: (Score:2)
The research does come with a free frogurt, but the frogurt contains refined sugars. Just how bad that is is yet to be determined.
At worst, we will probably learn some things. One of them will be just how far Coca-Cola is willing to stretch the truth to appear like they aren't scum.
Does it make me look fat (Score:3)
Sugar and carbohydrate content. (Score:2)
No way around it. IF you ask people that have a clue, AKA Doctors, they all will tell you that eating more than 15-30 grams of carbohydrates per meal is bad for you and will cause your body to convert sugars to fat.
so yes, if you are drinking 3-6 cans of soda pop daily, you are making yourself fat. So stop with the Pancakes covered in syrup, the Bagel and Coke. and eat frigging meat and veggies.
and no Potatoes are not veggies, those are carbohydrate bombs.
Calorie counting doesn't work. (Score:3)
Until you actually try it. Then when the weight starts dropping after a couple weeks, you wonder why you denied the obvious for so long.
CocaCola should have funded social studies instead (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Related video (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the best math I've seen about sugar, coca-cola, energy drinks and obesity.
Seriously (Score:3)
Re:This is dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
But you're missing the point, instead of trying to bribe scientists into "proving" that sugary drinks are okay, which is terrible, they should be putting forth the stuff that is at least marginally healthier as an alternative. It shouldn't be Coca-Cola's job to convince you to consume the healthiest thing available, it should be Coca-Cola's job to convince you to drink their brand of whatever it is you want to drink. If you're concerned about the sugar in Coke they should want to convince you to drink Diet Coke, and if you're scared about both real sugar and artificial sweeteners they should want to convince you to drink Dasani. Their job should not be to convince scientists to lie to you.