When was that? I don't live in the US, but just the other day I finished 'The Emperor of All Maladies' that someone recommended here. If I understood the book correctly, the link between tobacco usage and lung cancer was established pretty rapidly, but it took a very long time (and decisive political action resulting in massive propaganda campaign) to convince the public.
I always chuckle to myself a bit when I see narratives of "trust the science" on various social media platforms. There seems to be no end of credible-to-the-layman scientitsts who have any opinion you want to hear and politicians and companies will find them.
I'm not an antivax climate denier or anything but a single study or a single scientist isn't going to convince me of anything. I just tend to remain unconvinced a bit longer than most.
The important thing to me is to recognize that I'm not an expert in most things and to remain open to having my mind changed in those things.
And it is quite normal, these are not "bad" scientists, as in only "bad" scientists will receive money to spit out the "desired" societal results, this is how science generally works.
If the society needs rockets in its arms' race against a foreign foe then said society suddenly "forgets" that the scientists involved are bad by definition (Von Braun was a Nazi, it doesn't get any more "bad" than that, his rockets had killed innocent British civilians) and it starts using their work for its societal needs. When some scientists start growing a spine and start realising the moral conundrum of their trade they're either treated as crazy or as communists (see Oppenheimer).
In fairness, if people drink this everyday, as some do, it's hardly Coca Cola's fault.
It's quite obvious that obesity is caused by a bad diet. People should watch their diet. The rest is just politics: politicians don't want to blame people and companies don't want to be used as scapegoats.
We also need to accept that the vast majority of people are neither victims nor stupid. People do make choices knowing that they are not good for their health. I think that at least some of the anti-experts trend we see is a reaction against being told what to do on the ground that people cannot decide for themselves.
I don't think that's particularly fair, actually. When you're bombarded with images of attractive people doing a thing, your brain will naturally associate the two. And that's just the obvious ad tilting that anyone can see and everyone agrees with. You and I got educations (probably) and have spent time intentionally building up defenses to this sort of thing (also probably), but it's definitely on the companies for making what amounts to misleading propaganda. To some extent, at least.
Even intelligent and self aware people will fall for this given a bad environment. You can be aware of how harmful something is while doing it yet won't stop because it feels better on short term.
That's what addiction is and soft drinks definitely fall into that.
Not to mention the trap that those who are addicted to it will often place others in situations where it's more present and can form or reinforce habits in others.
One of the hard lessons I learned when I was younger was that some (or many, depending on the sample population we're talking about) don't actually have as much agency as you do, or as much agency as they like to pretend. It's a hard lesson, because it rubs up against many of the core values you grow up with in a country like the US - freedom of choice, personal responsibility, etc. So, yeah, people really should watch their diet, but that's only a part of the broader issue.
There is a middle ground. People are responsible for their actions, but so are corporations. If the conclusions in this article are correct, Coke deliberately misled people.
So do we say to society, “Coke would have you believe it’s calories vs. calories out. Run a mile. Drink a Coke. It’s all good. The truth, though, is that it is mostly about diet. However, Coke can say whatever it wants. It’s a free country. If you can’t figure it out, if Coke fights to shape news, medical publications, educational material, and every other way you could find the truth, well, sucks to be you.”?
Or do we say, “Coke misled you. They will be held responsible for their actions corporately and individually. Here is what literature not funded by motivated parties says. It says that if you drink a lot of Coke, whether you exercise or not, you will get fat. If you are ok with that, fine. If not, now you know.”?
The issue here is again assuming that studies and expert knowledge is required to determine whether drinking too much soft drinks and/or having a bad diet is bad for health and causes obesity.
Even if that was not obvious, which it is, it becomes so very quickly as you start putting on weight.
Similarly, it is obvious and well-known that burning more calories means being able to eat more calories.
People know all that.
Those studies and the attempts at influencing results are mostly political. These studies are tools to influence policy. That's why you have plenty of studies paid for by plenty of pressure groups and which results magically serve the interests of these pressure groups (whatever the side of the argument, or the topic). If you want to have a law passed you need tools to help you. If you want to prevent that you also need tools.
Of course on scientific studies can be very important on many issues, but on this one really they are not to uncover anything Earth-shattering.
No, blaming it on a lack of discipline or willpower is the easy thing to do, and it's what we've BEEN doing, all while enabling companies like Coca-Cola to mass produce addictive, sugary garbage. We're all victims of our own biology. For most of human history we didn't have easy access to cheap sugar, which absolutely lights up pleasure centers of the brain. Companies like Coca-Cola exploit this, and I truly can't believe we still have to argue this. So I'll say it again: food companies exploit the human brain for profit. This will never not be true as long as we keep doing what we're doing.
Is there a place for the occasional Coke in a healthy world? Absolutely. Life's short, enjoy a Coke once in a while. But does Coca-Cola (the company) need to advertise it literally everywhere while getting massive corporate welfare at the expense of the world's health? Probably not.
It's nor really about what people do. Is about what society can do.
Society can and should impose costs and penalties for the behavior that is costing everyone. Coca cola is not lobbying for individuals not realizing sugar is bad and stop buying their products, they're lobbying against a sugar tax, or if you don't like taxes, against the insurance companies having justification to implement a coca cola clause.
I have children. When they see some ad and ask me to buy something, if I think it's not a good idea I just say 'no'. That's a parent's job to do so.
Marketing does not cause bad parenting.
But, again, politicians find it less risky to tell people (electors...) "Oh poor you, you're doing all you can and you're doing a great job but those companies undermine you with all those ads" rather than "You're a parent, take your responsibilities and do your job". And unfortunately some people buy that because it's also more comfortable than facing the music.
Coca-Cola just engineers the environment to maximally exploit human weaknesses. But it is ultimately the people's fault for not being iron-willed über-mensch and resisting temptation.
Whatever the people do to fight this, they should do it individually, and not consider any pesky freedom-infringing legislation (such as banning vending machines in schools, or soft drinks in school cafeterias, or a tax on soft drinks). Act alone - there's one of you, and one Coca-Cola. One versus one - fair, right?
It is possible to tax unhealthy products to compensate for the toll they create on people health and subsequent costs to society. Tobacco is heavily taxed, and so is alcohol. While buying coke is close to the price of mineral water.
It's Coca-Cola's fault paying scientists to downplay how sweet drinks are related to obesity.
It's Coca-Cola's fault not using morbidly obese people in their marketing campaigns and instead choosing physically fit, attractive people, those who realistically will not be drinking much Coca-Cola to get their gym bods because of the sugar it has.
A 375ml can of coke is 161 calories / 40g of sugar. Two 375ml cans a day is the equivalent of a small meal calorie wise with no nutritional benefit, only 80g of sugar.
People are essentially having multiple meals a day on top of their solid food by drinking soft drinks and unknowingly or through ignorance are in massive calorie surplus.
Anyone who goes to a gym and in good shape knows it's 80% food 20% time working out. Your food is more important than the workout.
It's not in Coca-Cola's interest to educate people advertising CocalCola as a very poor liquid meal consisting of only sugar.
There's a big difference between what you know as an abstract fact vs. what seems normal in your society. By definition, normal people do what is normal in their society.
I've lived in the southeastern US, various places in California, China and Europe. The type of consumption that is considered normal is so vastly different in all those places.
In the southeastern US, your whole environment is telling you that eating enormous meals, drinking sugary drinks, etc, is totally normal. If you are responsible, maybe you could cut back a little to "watch your health". But you are starting from an unhealthy default setting and you have to dig yourself out of a pit to get back to 'healthy'. This includes Atlanta, the home of Coke (where I went to college and lived several years).
In southern California or even more so in Europe, the norms are vastly different. Meals are much smaller and sugary drinks aren't assumed. Healthier options are available nearly everywhere.
But in Europe, things go much further than even the healthiest parts of the US. The very composition of basic foods is different - brand name foods are less sugary and contain less preservatives than the same brands in the US, staple foods like bread are less shelf stable but contain less additives, and so on. Things like Kraft Mac & Cheese, Snickers bars and Doritos chips are literally illegal in Europe with their original US formulations and are produced with tweaked ingredients. It's in the very DNA of society to default to a more healthy lifestyle. Sure, it's possible to be unhealthy but the default setting of your environment is much healthier so more people are healthy.
The point is that people operate at a default setting that seems normal for their society. Some will be healthy minded and will outperform the norm for their area, but not everyone will. If you want a healthy population, you need a healthy norm and no amount of telling people to take responsibility is going to fix a society if literally every food easily available is bad for you. There is just a mountain of public health evidence that shows this to be true.
If I remember correctly what I was tough in elementary school it was that pizza and chocolate makes you fat and soda and candy makes your teeth bad.
The sugar obesity link has been clouded by fat (in food) being the same words as being fat, for quite some time I guess. Probably the same thing about getting a cold from being cold?
"It's Coca-Cola's fault not using morbidly obese people in their marketing campaigns and instead choosing physically fit, attractive people, those who realistically will not be drinking much Coca-Cola to get their gym bods because of the sugar it has.
A 375ml can of coke is 161 calories / 40g of sugar. Two 375ml cans a day is the equivalent of a small meal calorie wise with no nutritional benefit, only 80g of sugar."
That's the thing, sugar water is not a bad drink for people doing sports. It's common to consume 60-90g of carbohydrates per hour during prolonged endurance exercise (let's say 90min+). Whether that's from gels, sports drinks or Coke doesn't make much of a difference. They are all full of sugar and caffeine. Even glucose-fructose-syrup is fine for sports: there's a limit to how much glucose the colon can absorb in a period of time, because fructose is absorbed via different pathways it helps increase performance.
Outside of sports I wouldn't drink refined sugar myself. But a positive aspect is that a high-sugar diet will not give people diabetes, while a high-fat diet can.
Coca Cola has one of the most incredible branding and marketing operations on earth.
I’d suggest doing the tourist trap in Atlanta if you find yourself there. You’ll learn than if you have ever experienced a moment of happiness, it was due to Coke. The idea that the company would find a way to convince people that guzzling corn syrup was not that bad is completely unsurprising.
Alternative perspective: World of Coke sucks. It’s one of those one-way guided museums like the creationist museum in Kentucky, and contains nothing you couldn’t get out of a Wikipedia article or two.
I wonder if stuff like this has an outsized effect on the anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, or the general “anti-science” crowd.
I know many of these people, and they’re not actually against science at all — they just believe that the “science” being preached at them is simply political fodder or, at the very least, is intentionally biased to fit a narrative.
Ideally, they’d be able to mentally allow for different authorities / scientific foundations to exist, and 1 bad Apple shouldn’t ruin the whole bunch. Unfortunately, “scientists == corrupt” is an easier (and more provocative) conclusion when stuff like this happens.
Someone I know sent me a link to a 'peer-reviewed' paper 'proving' that hydroxycloroquine cut mortality rate 'in half' from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. However, a cursory look at the data shows a large median age discrepancy between the populations receiving treatment -- the no HCQ group was significantly younger. The vast majority of people have outsourced their opinions to 'trusted sources'. And a sizable fraction suffer from massive confirmation bias.
Very hard. I tried and failed for the good part of the last 15 years despite mounting evidence (and resurfacing burried one). Dr. Lustig has some good talks online that were revelatory for me at the time of "my transition".
It's kind of with everything else... people are addicted (I certainly still am, after decades of sugar abuse). Then there's a whole culture around that addiction and our natural craving for easy calories (fuck evolution, really).
As with all of those issues (religion, ideology, conspiracy theories) you need to "nudge" people in the right direction so they can "discover" the issues themselves. Facts don't help nearly as much as one might hope and a lot of it is correlation obfuscated by wishful thinking and genetic variability ("but my cousin Joe always drinks a coke a day and still isn't fat!").
Ever tried to convice a smoker of non-smoking? An anti-vaxxer of his narccisistic ignorance? It's always the same pattern.
Very difficult,
Sadly nutrition research is not yet very conclusive on what is good and what is bad for our health.
(It's very difficult to have correct experiments as the volunteers never have the same physiology)
And our nutriments needs may be very specific to one's genetics and activity level.
Sugar is fuel for the brain and the body, it is not necessary bad, but abusing it is bad. Maybe sugar (eg pasta) is bad when mixed with other ingredients and healthy with others. It is extremely difficult to reach a good consensus even if you read the litterature.
And usually (micro)nutriments have trade-offs : good for somethings bad for others.
Look at the different kind of diet, they are all based on different researches and can be extremely different while all are using 'valid' research data.
The main idea behind them is usually to have 'good' proportions between macronutrients (each diet define a different proportion) while keeping the number of kcal in the range you want to reach your objectives.
For a first rule of thumb that I would use: abusing in any direction is bad. Sugar is ok in 'small' quantities, fat, etc also.
However reality is way more messy :)
The thing is that sugar is harmful is kinda counter-intuitive: it's tastes good and we all want it. We get overweight because of fat but sugar is not fat. And most importantly, the scientists were covering it up: blaming fat and protein rather than sugar.
I did not believe sugar was the problem until randomly decided to have a try while I was trying to lose some weight. Tried to eat less walk/run around 8km per day for around a year, it helped a little. I did manage to lose more or less 10kg. Unfortunately, problems with the project and had to work over time and thus stopped running, eat lots of junk food for roughly a month, during which time drunk lots of Coke and when it was over, I found my self picked up 15kg. Then I decided to try something new, stopped drinking Coke and eat less carbs in diets by eating more meat and vegs. And the result was much better than I thought: I lost almost 20kg in less than 3 months and the exercise I took actually dropped a little bit.
Refined sugar is fine when used in part to fuel physical activity. Though it's a complete disaster when consumed in excess when sedentary.
140 calories for a can of Coke is pretty modest; I just ate a third of a lemon meringue containing 500 calories - most supermarket food is calorific muck, cheap to manufacture yet tasty enough.
This is absolutely contrary to the evidence. Sucrose is rare in plants in nature (save in tiny quantities.) We aren't evolved to absorb it gradually, it just floods in to the bloodstream; it behaves very differently than either of it's components, or fructose or other vegetable and fruit sugars. It's so evolutionarily weird that even bacteria and fungi generally aren't able to eat it. Therefore, if you're on a FODMAP diet you are allowed to drink Mexican Coca-Cola (has sucrose) but not American Coca-Cola (has liquid invert sugar.) Sucrose won't cause SIBO yeast and bacteria growth because yeast and bacteria haven't evolved to cope with it either.
Tests on athletes (some now decades old) show even moderate sucrose consumption reduces athletic performance and health.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadI agree that corporate lobbying and academic corruption has certainly eroded that trust.
I'm not an antivax climate denier or anything but a single study or a single scientist isn't going to convince me of anything. I just tend to remain unconvinced a bit longer than most.
The important thing to me is to recognize that I'm not an expert in most things and to remain open to having my mind changed in those things.
If the society needs rockets in its arms' race against a foreign foe then said society suddenly "forgets" that the scientists involved are bad by definition (Von Braun was a Nazi, it doesn't get any more "bad" than that, his rockets had killed innocent British civilians) and it starts using their work for its societal needs. When some scientists start growing a spine and start realising the moral conundrum of their trade they're either treated as crazy or as communists (see Oppenheimer).
It's quite obvious that obesity is caused by a bad diet. People should watch their diet. The rest is just politics: politicians don't want to blame people and companies don't want to be used as scapegoats.
We also need to accept that the vast majority of people are neither victims nor stupid. People do make choices knowing that they are not good for their health. I think that at least some of the anti-experts trend we see is a reaction against being told what to do on the ground that people cannot decide for themselves.
Before, fats were demonized. Now it’s carbs and sugars. Who knows what “good” diet will constitute in the future.
That's what addiction is and soft drinks definitely fall into that.
Of course, 'some' people will always do something. This is not an argument because if we go that way we ought to ban everything.
It's a fallacy to conflate both.
Claiming otherwise would require an explanation.
So do we say to society, “Coke would have you believe it’s calories vs. calories out. Run a mile. Drink a Coke. It’s all good. The truth, though, is that it is mostly about diet. However, Coke can say whatever it wants. It’s a free country. If you can’t figure it out, if Coke fights to shape news, medical publications, educational material, and every other way you could find the truth, well, sucks to be you.”?
Or do we say, “Coke misled you. They will be held responsible for their actions corporately and individually. Here is what literature not funded by motivated parties says. It says that if you drink a lot of Coke, whether you exercise or not, you will get fat. If you are ok with that, fine. If not, now you know.”?
Even if that was not obvious, which it is, it becomes so very quickly as you start putting on weight. Similarly, it is obvious and well-known that burning more calories means being able to eat more calories.
People know all that.
Those studies and the attempts at influencing results are mostly political. These studies are tools to influence policy. That's why you have plenty of studies paid for by plenty of pressure groups and which results magically serve the interests of these pressure groups (whatever the side of the argument, or the topic). If you want to have a law passed you need tools to help you. If you want to prevent that you also need tools.
Of course on scientific studies can be very important on many issues, but on this one really they are not to uncover anything Earth-shattering.
Is there a place for the occasional Coke in a healthy world? Absolutely. Life's short, enjoy a Coke once in a while. But does Coca-Cola (the company) need to advertise it literally everywhere while getting massive corporate welfare at the expense of the world's health? Probably not.
Humans are full of exploitable bugs/features.
Society can and should impose costs and penalties for the behavior that is costing everyone. Coca cola is not lobbying for individuals not realizing sugar is bad and stop buying their products, they're lobbying against a sugar tax, or if you don't like taxes, against the insurance companies having justification to implement a coca cola clause.
Marketing does not cause bad parenting.
But, again, politicians find it less risky to tell people (electors...) "Oh poor you, you're doing all you can and you're doing a great job but those companies undermine you with all those ads" rather than "You're a parent, take your responsibilities and do your job". And unfortunately some people buy that because it's also more comfortable than facing the music.
Whatever the people do to fight this, they should do it individually, and not consider any pesky freedom-infringing legislation (such as banning vending machines in schools, or soft drinks in school cafeterias, or a tax on soft drinks). Act alone - there's one of you, and one Coca-Cola. One versus one - fair, right?
It's Coca-Cola's fault not using morbidly obese people in their marketing campaigns and instead choosing physically fit, attractive people, those who realistically will not be drinking much Coca-Cola to get their gym bods because of the sugar it has.
A 375ml can of coke is 161 calories / 40g of sugar. Two 375ml cans a day is the equivalent of a small meal calorie wise with no nutritional benefit, only 80g of sugar.
People are essentially having multiple meals a day on top of their solid food by drinking soft drinks and unknowingly or through ignorance are in massive calorie surplus.
Anyone who goes to a gym and in good shape knows it's 80% food 20% time working out. Your food is more important than the workout.
It's not in Coca-Cola's interest to educate people advertising CocalCola as a very poor liquid meal consisting of only sugar.
It is frankly ridiculous to claim that in 2020 people are ignorant or misled.
I've lived in the southeastern US, various places in California, China and Europe. The type of consumption that is considered normal is so vastly different in all those places.
In the southeastern US, your whole environment is telling you that eating enormous meals, drinking sugary drinks, etc, is totally normal. If you are responsible, maybe you could cut back a little to "watch your health". But you are starting from an unhealthy default setting and you have to dig yourself out of a pit to get back to 'healthy'. This includes Atlanta, the home of Coke (where I went to college and lived several years).
In southern California or even more so in Europe, the norms are vastly different. Meals are much smaller and sugary drinks aren't assumed. Healthier options are available nearly everywhere.
But in Europe, things go much further than even the healthiest parts of the US. The very composition of basic foods is different - brand name foods are less sugary and contain less preservatives than the same brands in the US, staple foods like bread are less shelf stable but contain less additives, and so on. Things like Kraft Mac & Cheese, Snickers bars and Doritos chips are literally illegal in Europe with their original US formulations and are produced with tweaked ingredients. It's in the very DNA of society to default to a more healthy lifestyle. Sure, it's possible to be unhealthy but the default setting of your environment is much healthier so more people are healthy.
The point is that people operate at a default setting that seems normal for their society. Some will be healthy minded and will outperform the norm for their area, but not everyone will. If you want a healthy population, you need a healthy norm and no amount of telling people to take responsibility is going to fix a society if literally every food easily available is bad for you. There is just a mountain of public health evidence that shows this to be true.
The sugar obesity link has been clouded by fat (in food) being the same words as being fat, for quite some time I guess. Probably the same thing about getting a cold from being cold?
A 375ml can of coke is 161 calories / 40g of sugar. Two 375ml cans a day is the equivalent of a small meal calorie wise with no nutritional benefit, only 80g of sugar."
That's the thing, sugar water is not a bad drink for people doing sports. It's common to consume 60-90g of carbohydrates per hour during prolonged endurance exercise (let's say 90min+). Whether that's from gels, sports drinks or Coke doesn't make much of a difference. They are all full of sugar and caffeine. Even glucose-fructose-syrup is fine for sports: there's a limit to how much glucose the colon can absorb in a period of time, because fructose is absorbed via different pathways it helps increase performance.
Outside of sports I wouldn't drink refined sugar myself. But a positive aspect is that a high-sugar diet will not give people diabetes, while a high-fat diet can.
> In fairness, if people drink this everyday, as some do, it's hardly Coca Cola's fault.
It's hardly coca cola's fault that they paid scientists to lie? This article is not about individual behavior.
>It's quite obvious that obesity is caused by a bad diet.
It's less obvious when a company uses its market power to distort science and encourage bad diets.
I’d suggest doing the tourist trap in Atlanta if you find yourself there. You’ll learn than if you have ever experienced a moment of happiness, it was due to Coke. The idea that the company would find a way to convince people that guzzling corn syrup was not that bad is completely unsurprising.
I know many of these people, and they’re not actually against science at all — they just believe that the “science” being preached at them is simply political fodder or, at the very least, is intentionally biased to fit a narrative.
Ideally, they’d be able to mentally allow for different authorities / scientific foundations to exist, and 1 bad Apple shouldn’t ruin the whole bunch. Unfortunately, “scientists == corrupt” is an easier (and more provocative) conclusion when stuff like this happens.
It's kind of with everything else... people are addicted (I certainly still am, after decades of sugar abuse). Then there's a whole culture around that addiction and our natural craving for easy calories (fuck evolution, really).
As with all of those issues (religion, ideology, conspiracy theories) you need to "nudge" people in the right direction so they can "discover" the issues themselves. Facts don't help nearly as much as one might hope and a lot of it is correlation obfuscated by wishful thinking and genetic variability ("but my cousin Joe always drinks a coke a day and still isn't fat!").
Ever tried to convice a smoker of non-smoking? An anti-vaxxer of his narccisistic ignorance? It's always the same pattern.
And usually (micro)nutriments have trade-offs : good for somethings bad for others.
Look at the different kind of diet, they are all based on different researches and can be extremely different while all are using 'valid' research data. The main idea behind them is usually to have 'good' proportions between macronutrients (each diet define a different proportion) while keeping the number of kcal in the range you want to reach your objectives.
For a first rule of thumb that I would use: abusing in any direction is bad. Sugar is ok in 'small' quantities, fat, etc also. However reality is way more messy :)
I did not believe sugar was the problem until randomly decided to have a try while I was trying to lose some weight. Tried to eat less walk/run around 8km per day for around a year, it helped a little. I did manage to lose more or less 10kg. Unfortunately, problems with the project and had to work over time and thus stopped running, eat lots of junk food for roughly a month, during which time drunk lots of Coke and when it was over, I found my self picked up 15kg. Then I decided to try something new, stopped drinking Coke and eat less carbs in diets by eating more meat and vegs. And the result was much better than I thought: I lost almost 20kg in less than 3 months and the exercise I took actually dropped a little bit.
For everything the key is to be reasonable with quantity.
It's fine to enjoy Coca-Cola. It's best to be reasonable with quantity.
140 calories for a can of Coke is pretty modest; I just ate a third of a lemon meringue containing 500 calories - most supermarket food is calorific muck, cheap to manufacture yet tasty enough.
Tests on athletes (some now decades old) show even moderate sucrose consumption reduces athletic performance and health.