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Two conspiracy theories about cola
- inpdx 5y agoWhen I used to be able to get Kosher for Passover sugar sweetened Coke, I absolutely could tell the difference - did multiple blind tests. It's possible the sucrose hasn't had time to fully break down in recently bottled Coke. The other theory wrt taste differences is the chemicals used in extracting HFCS leave a small but non-negligible taste.
- Blikkentrekker 5y agoNeither of which involve an alleged conspiracy. I must say that I find the word “conspiracy theory” to have rather odd usage in common parlance that does not seem to have much to do with conspiracies but I'm not sure what the actual definition is either. If anything, perhaps it's actual semantics are little more than “allegations of wrongdoing the speaker considers to be false”.
- ncmncm 5y agoA conspiracy requires a crime. Poisoning millions of people should maybe be a crime, but it manifestly is not today, as numerous soda company executives move about freely, just as paint executives did and tobacco executives still do. Killing a dozen people by shooting up a bus station is national news. Killing millions, year in and year out, slowly enough, is just business.
- tsimionescu 5y agoThat's a needlessly specific definition for "conspiracy" in common usage, and it's wrong. A conspiracy is a secret plot by more than one person to do something that the speaker (and presumably listener) considers nefarious. Whether that nefarious thing is illegal or not doesn't enter into it, unless you're looking at the specific legal term 'conspiracy to [...]'.
- ncmncm 5y agoThere is anyway nothing secret about the amount of sugar is sodas.
- xboxnolifes 5y agoPretty sure conspiracy only implies harm, not crime. Otherwise "criminal conspiracy" is pretty redundant.
- amelius 5y agoWait, so if you're in a bar and about to vomit from having had too many drinks, you should order a cola?
- ryanmarsh 5y agoOkay but Saudi Arabian Pepsi tastes better than American Pepsi and you can’t convince me otherwise.
- gfosco 5y agoGreat piece. This starts out talking about a silly conspiracy theory, and after solving that, causes me to question a few things I have believed about sugar/hfcs/coke.
- ncmncm 5y agoIt utterly fails to note the massive public health crisis caused by fructose unmoderated by dietary fiber.
- kafkaIncarnate 5y agoAll this information is just taking the fun out of life. /me cracks open a Mexican Coke.
- giantg2 5y agoMaybe Emetrol is placebo, but it has worked for me in the past on a couple of occasions. This included 8 hours of vomiting no mater how hard I willed it to stop or other remedies I tried, and it didn't work on the first dose. It didn't seem like placebo to me, but I am grateful it worked either way. One thing to note that isn't in the article, is that concentration can matter, so comparing one can to a 30ml dose of medication might not be a great comparison (although this still supports for the author's position that phosphoric acid is not added to cola to prevent vomiting). Is the placebo effect applicable in infants? I would think that infants would not be capable of the understanding that something will make them better, and thus placebo wouldn't apply to them. Unfortunately this paper is pay-walled so we dont have details about the methods used, but the summary seems relevant. https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(51)80084-2/pdf https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(51)80084-2/pdf
- silviot 5y agoApparently placebo works even with dogs: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19912522/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19912522/ Given that I would not find surprising if it worked for infants too
- giantg2 5y agoThat's interesting. Yeah, I couldn't find anything about it for infants. I wouldn't put too much stock in this study you linked. It's a meta analysis of other studies. These other studies were not designed to test placebo effect. The P value also seems quite large to me (.17). Seems to me like any benefit may have been the conventional drugs they were on... "In each study, the treatment group received the experimental therapeutic intervention in addition to conventional antiepileptic drug treatment, and the control group received a matching placebo in addition to conventional antiepileptic drug treatment."
- ushakov 5y ago> Unfortunately this paper is pay-walled not when you use sci-hub https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1016/s0022-3476%252851%252980084-2.pdf?download=true https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1016/s0022-3476%252851%252980084...
- csydas 5y agoKind of tangential to the article but regarding phosphoric acid and its use as anti-nausea, is this why bubbly white sodas are a household cure for upset stomachs? This was a go-to for my family in the US as a kid when I had a stomach flu (saltines and 7-up), and i guess it was pretty common
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago7-up doesn’t contain phosphoric acid.
- jay3ss 5y agoNeither does Sprite
- djbusby 5y agoSaltines for substance, 7-up for sugar and bubbles. Easy filler, energy and helps you burp out the bad feels.
- teh_klev 5y agoAs a kid in the 70's growing up in Scotland we were given Lucozade (long before the "energy drink" fad) and quite often Ferguzade (a similar product but made in Scotland) when we were ill. Both had pretty odd tastes back then, almost salty if I remember.
- scoot 5y agoI don't remember Lucozade being anything _but_ a drink for recovery from illness. (Remember the yellow cellophane wrapped bottles?!) I have no idea how it attained this reputation. These days, Lucozade Sport (in multiple flavours) has taken over, but being "isotonic", presumably has various salts.
- joosters 5y agoSame here (as a kid growing up in the 80s) - it was always a drink for when you were ill. Lucozade also had a reputation as being even more sugary than other fizzy drinks. I'm sure it was even marketed back then as an 'energy' drink. I see that nowdays even the sugar-free lucozade is advertised as an energy drink, I'm not sure quite how that works, though!
- h2odragon 5y agoI wonder how much phosphorus in the wastewater stream can be laid at the root cause of soft drinks instead of the fertilizers usually blamed.
- toomanybeersies 5y agoIf I drank a can of Coke every day, that would equate to 21 g of phosphorus. Grain fields get fertilised with around 250 kg/ha of superphosphate, which contains 20 kg of phosphorus.
- h2odragon 5y agoAll the human waste gets specifically concentrated for treatment, usually; so presumably they'd be mitigating larger levels at that point. I'd assume. My experience in that field ends at leech fields and septic lagoons.
- readflaggedcomm 5y agoGinger is also anti-nausea, but I eat it with sushi just because it tastes good. From their study link: >And, the reason most people say that they prefer Mexican Coke is that it contains real cane sugar instead of corn syrup. But according to this Time article, a study done by Obesity journal found that Mexican Coke did not contain sucrose What does this mean? Last I looked many years ago, Mexican coke has two formulations you can notice *just by looking at the ingredients*: sugar or corn syrup. Did they not look? Did they not trust it? The taste difference is noticable, because less-refined cane sugar is very tasty.
- littlestymaar 5y ago> conspiracy theories Aren't those “urban legends” more than conspiracy theories? (Non-native English speaker here)
- hairofadog 5y agoI’d say conspiracy theories are just urban legends but with the qualification that the antagonist is a large, powerful, and malicious organization, either a real or fictional.
- MichaelMoser123 5y agoYou can use Coca Cola for jail breaks: see this article about a recent jail break in Israel, where the inmates used cola to get through eight inches of concrete floors. So much for the acids that they put into this 'soft drink'... https://www.timesofisrael.com/captured-fugitives-from-gilboa-jailbreak-said-dispersed-to-5-different-prisons/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/captured-fugitives-from-gilboa... https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3222116/palestinian-prisoners-used-coca-cola-escape-gilboa-prison https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3222116/palestinian-...
- varjag 5y agoA number of natural juices (e.g. grapefruit) are more acidic than Coca Cola, so that's not telling much.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThere needs to be much greater emphasis on teaching physics and chemistry in middle school and high school.
- smnrchrds 5y agoAcids are certainly bad for teeth, but is it bad for anything else? I imagine stomach acid is more powerful than any soft drink and the drink ends up there a second after being swallowed. Is there any risk of downstream harm from food acids?
- ncmncm 5y agoThere is nothing harmless about liquid fructose, or liquid sugar (which is half fructose). The people who know the most about fructose blame it for the huge public health crisis that the US (and UK, Pakistan, India, and some other countries) are suffering, manifested as insulin resistance and type #2 diabetes, "metabolic syndrome". It kills way more than COVID. Specifically: fructose is mostly processed only by the liver. (The liver's main job is neutralizing toxins.) Excess fructose is processed on the same metabolic pathways as alcohol, a major toxin. Large amounts of fructose are turned into fat and stored in the liver, like alcohol, and generate uric acid, which causes gout and numerous other problems, like alcohol. (Your kidneys work to try to clear uric acid, but the spikes are harmful.) Today, American children are getting cirrhosis, like alcoholics. Taken with enough fiber, fructose absorption is delayed long enough that gut bacteria get most of it, instead, where it causes them no problem. Fruits have fructose and fiber, but juice and soda have no fiber. Fructose without enough fiber is slow poison. A good place to start learning about fructose metabolism is Robert Lustig vids on youtube. (I watch them at 1.5x-2x speed with subtitles, to save time.) Or read his books. Lustig is a respected endocrinologist.
- latchkey 5y agoI stopped reading after the covid mention. [1] https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Faulty-Comparison https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Faulty-...
- ncmncm 5y agoDeath is death.
- latchkey 5y agoExplain your reasoning for mentioning covid vs. car accident, cancer or heart attack.
- ncmncm 5y agoCOVID is not, unlike fructose, a known contributor to both cancer and circulatory disease[1]. To compare fructose to heart disease would be to compare fructose to one of the ways it kills. Car accidents are not seen as a current public health emergency meriting massive interventions; and anyway cause way too few deaths to make a meaningful comparison. [1] Temporary myocardial inflammation notwithstanding
- H8crilA 5y agoPretty much all sweet drinks, including natural juices, have approx 10% sugar(s) in it. Pretty cool fact that there's a universal sweet spot for sugar (pun!).
- ncmncm 5y agoThus, all are slow poison. Fruits in nature have enough fiber to slow absorption long enough that intestinal bacteria get most of it. Stripping necessary fiber out of food and discading it is the major task of the food industry. Juice is wholly as bad as Coke.
- pirate787 5y agoFor context on the Mexican cola, US cola had sugar as well until the mid 1980s. The US sugar program restricts imports and keeps the domestic price for sugar high, which created a new market for milling corn into HFCS. HFCS is uniquely an American invention that's the result of massive government subsidies for corn and price support for sugar. If the government did not intervene in American sugar markets, cola would still be made with sugar imported from outside the United States.
- dghughes 5y agoCanada has no such requirements but even so we still get stuck with pop sweetened with HFCS.
- smegger001 5y agobecause many corps look at Canada as a just another smaller less profitable part of the US market and simply swap Spanish print for French.
- throw63738 5y agoEveryone argues about sugar, but the true original is in Peru :)
- zionic 5y agoAnd recent studies show HFCS alters the folds in your gut, lengthening them. This increased surface area significantly increases the amount of calories your intestines can extract from the same volume of food.
- adamiscool8 5y agoIn case anyone else is curious about this: >The research, published August 18 in Nature, focused on the effect of a high-fructose diet on villi, the thin, hairlike structures that line the inside of the small intestine. Villi expand the surface area of the gut and help the body to absorb nutrients, including dietary fats, from food as it passes through the digestive tract. The study found that mice that were fed diets that included fructose had villi that were 25 percent to 40 percent longer than those of mice that were not fed fructose. Additionally, the increase in villus length was associated with increased nutrient absorption, weight gain and fat accumulation in the animals.[0] [0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210818135218.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210818135218.h...
- antonzabirko 5y agoDynm, i can tell the difference between hfcs and non-hfcs soda. I get blockage near the vocal cords about 5 - 15 minutes after consuming it, so there's definitely something worse than sugar about it.
- ncmncm 5y agoSounds like allergy. (I am not a physician. This is not medical advice.) Difference in trace constituents, triggering allergy, is completely plausible. But either way, it is the fructose identical in both that is actually poisoning you.
- antonzabirko 5y agoNah, more like I can feel the side effects of hfcs more easily. I can still eat it and be fine, just have that plus a bit of indigestion.
- ncmncm 5y agoApparently you are not aware of the wide range of allergic effects. For myself, I get tiny blisters on the backs of my hands and neck from cranberries. And, onions make my sinuses bleed. Indigestion is more common.
- antonzabirko 5y agoI am indeed, i know allergies vs non-allergies. Consider the reactions people have to fried food. You would bin that all under allergies with your logic.
- ncmncm 5y agoAllergy is defined as an anomalous auto-immune reaction to an introduced substance. Indigestion from a common foodstuff is a good candidate. You would of course need a medical examination to reliably determine that your particular intolerance is allergy. But that's the way to bet.
- curiousgeorgio 5y agoGood article, but I'm skeptical of the point raised in the "P.S." section (which leads me to doubt some of the other points in the article): > aspartame has basically zero negative effects ...diet cola is much safer than real cola. I won't argue that sugar isn't bad for you, but I don't think the science (and my own observation) agrees that diet cola - specifically aspartame - is "much safer" or somehow healthier. The linked WebMD page mentions this: > The study found that consuming a low-calorie sweetener was not, by itself responsible for slowing metabolism. However, when combined with other carbohydrates, or fats, the consumption of the non-sucrose sweetener did lead to a significant drop in metabolic rate. We don't generally ingest things in isolation, so you have to account for what an ingredient does in the context of an average diet accompanying the ingredient, and in that sense, aspartame absolutely does have significant negative effects. Those effects may or may not be worse than real sugar, but after the whole switch from "margarine is a healthier butter substitute" to "turns out margarine might be worse for you than butter" (and other similar upended dietary advice), I'm personally included to prefer sugar - in moderation - over sugar substitutes. And that's another problem with sugar substitutes: claims that they have no negative effects encourage people to consume "diet" products in very high amounts - often more than the products they replace, so you're no longer comparing equal amounts of the substances. For me, drinking a sugary soda is an infrequent, deliberate decision - one I don't take lightly. There's a guilt that comes with it, but I think that's a good thing to make me think twice. But I also see people drinking diet soda all day, every day, thinking there are essentially no negative consequences (when there obviously are).
- pella 5y agorelated: 2021: "Artificial Sweeteners Negatively Regulate Pathogenic Characteristics of Two Model Gut Bacteria, E. coli and E. faecalis" https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/10/5228/htm https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/10/5228/htm
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThe article’s claims of non sugar sweetened soda being healthier than sugary sweetened seems to be a fair claim. > For me, drinking a sugary soda is an infrequent, deliberate decision - one I don't take lightly. There's a guilt that comes with it, but I think that's a good thing to make me think twice. But I also see people drinking diet soda all day, every day, thinking there are essentially no negative consequences (when there obviously are). I notice people eating excess sugar and carbs all day. Even without drinking a sugar sweetened soda, more people are consuming excess sugar and carbs. Therefore sugar sweetened soda is still worse than non sugar sweetened soda. But that’s neither here nor there when comparing the consumption of just sugar sweetened and non sugar sweetened soda.
- 323 5y agoFanta contains exactly as much sugar as Cola, yet it doesn't contain phosphoric acid, nor does it cause people to throw up. Q.E.D. Also, the whole premise (sugar causing people to throw up) seems a bit weird. Think about honey, cakes, ...
- throw_away 5y agoFanta & other non-colas do contain citric acid, however, as mentioned under fact #4. If willing, one could simply try the sugar water experiment explained in that same section. I don't drink soda, so I am not willing, but I am interested as to whether I could just use any food-type acid mixed in water to ease stomach discomfort and dodge this whole sugar/hfcs/fructose/sucrose question entirely.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nemo44x 5y agoIs it just me or does soda taste better out of a can than out of a plastic bottle? I’ve felt this for many years and have even tested by pouring into glasses. I like the can one better. Is this just me?
- musicale 5y agoDefinitely tastes better in a glass. Canned and 2 liter seem more carbonated to me than glass or smaller plastic bottles, so maybe decanting/decarbonating helps a bit.
- jwilber 5y agoAs part of my undergrad statistics course on experimental design I tested this very hypothesis among about 60 students and found no significant difference in preference between cola poured from plastic, canned, or glass bottles. Still, there’s nothing better to me than a cold glass bottle if I had to drink soda.
- saila 5y agoThere must be a perception-over-time element to this. Fresh from the container, there's probably not much difference, but the size of the container, whether it's re-closable, how well it conducts heat, how fast the individual drinks, etc must have an affect on overall perception of quality/tastiness. I'm wondering at what point quality is "sampled." There's the first sip ... and then the last. Maybe overall perception is tied more strongly to the last sip?
- Nasrudith 5y agoI notice it and I always thougut it is a combination conduction related coldness (making you feel it as colder at very least) plus small package size meaning it is "fully carbonated" as opposed to plastic bottle screw on.
- joecool1029 5y ago>Is this just me? I don't think so. Bottles impart a small amount of flavor that's almost imperceptible to most people except for warm bottled water. Canned water exists but is a little unusual, that liquid death company with the energy drink looking cans is the only one I could find around here easily. The few times I've had it I wasn't able to detect any plastic flavor, even when warm. My guess is the lining is way more inert than the bottle, or that because the aluminum is blocking light, there's no ability for photodegradation of the liner to happen.
- toomanybeersies 5y agoInterestingly, my go-to hangover/nausea remedy has always been Coca Cola. I had no idea that OTC anti-nausea medication also contains phosphoric acid, or that it was even an antiemetic (or not, as it seems). I've always put it down to the fact that Coca Cola is very effective at washing out the taste of vomit.
- teh_klev 5y agoBeing Scottish, Barr's Irn Bru (full fat) was my go-to as a pick-me-up after a night on the sauce. Sadly now ruined by artificial sweeteners replacing some of the sugar due to government sugar taxes on pop.
- mypalmike 5y agoAh I haven't had Irn Bru in ages. I used to find it at some supermarkets in the US, but I haven't seen it in around a decade. Sad to hear they've changed the recipe.
- teh_klev 5y agoSadly it's not just Irn Bru they ruined. Many soft drinks now taste completely off because of the sugar tax thing here. Another favourite treat was "Old Jamaica Ginger Beer" and that's now undrinkable. Sad days for those of us who enjoyed these things as an occasional pleasure and not as part of our daily diet.
- bluedino 5y agoCoke slurpees and greasy pizza from the gas station got me through a lot of mornings after I had been out drinking
- mooneater 5y agoBuffet openly brags about the anti vomiting effect. Saw this in a talk he gave to Indian MBA students and I was shocked.
- transfire 5y agoGood analysis but the conclusion that people should drink diet cola instead is terrible. For starters just read the warning on the aide of the can.
- likpok 5y agoWhat warning? About phenylalanine? That only applies to people with a specific dysfunction; phenylalanine is found in lots of food like meat or cheese or beans.
- ab3rC1te 5y agoCoke Cola use to be based off cocaine. Like playing Red Dead Redemption with the tonic drink mixes back in the day. Was based off herbial and natural ingredients, compared to today's standard of processed and further processed refinement. I'd rather have the damn cocaine to keep me addictive to a drink instead of all the bullshit that's processed into a cola drink now a days. You open one up and it can't stay fizzy no more then 20 mins. Which in reality all soda drinks are root causes of modern day deseases.
- LinAGKar 5y ago>Mexican Coke contains sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup You mean US coke contains HFCS rather than sugar? Because it uses regular sugar in most of the world. The USA is the outlier here, not Mexico.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- muthdra 5y agoI thought they were going to mention the "new coke" conspiracy theory which states that coke ditched the old flavor for a new one in 1985 and then changed it back later but this time with corn syrup instead of sugar in just enough time for people to forget what exactly it tasted like before and not complain about the change.
- guilhas 5y agoConspiracy theories only cool to be discussed when it is a completely irrelevant topic for people lives