Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking

Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by novalis78 on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @03:22PM (#8489264)

That question - in and by itself - gives you away as an American. As a central European who grew up on water, fruit juice (80-60% water thinned) and tea (green, herb and on and off black) it made me chuckle. I have never seen so much soda consumption anywhere on this planet before coming to the US.

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by lazythrowaway on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @03:34PM (#8489333)

America definitely drinks more soda than anyone else: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/map_of_the_.... 3x as much as most central European countries.

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by novalis78 on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @03:47PM (#8489436)

Notwithstanding the golden "correlation != causation" adage, I found that only two things are truly consumed in much larger quantities in America than any other country I know: soda and high fructose corn syrup...at the same time being the only country with a 35% obesity rate...hmmmm

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by vonmoltke on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @05:59PM (#8490386)

Oh really?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/mexico-obesity_n_35...

Relevant numbers from the article:

US obesity rate: 31.8% Mexican obesity rate: 32.8%

Also, Mexican soda exclusively uses cane sugar. I buy Mexican Coke for the new times I drink regular soda for that reason.

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by adventured on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @07:39PM (#8490798)

Not true. Saudi Arabia is the most obese country on earth, at 70%.

Britain, Australia, and New Zealand are also substantially obese. All of those are coming increasingly close to catching America in obesity, with their obesity levels exploding higher.

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by kissickas on Wednesday October 22, 2014 @07:39AM (#8492245)

Here's the latest data I know of on this:

http://www.socialprogressimperative.org/data/spi/components/...

The United States comes in at 8th highest obesity rate, after Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, South Africa, and Mexico.

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by boydjd on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @04:17PM (#8489650)

A lot of the "fruit juice" (in America, at least) contains just as much HFCS as soda.

I don't know if this is the case in the rest of the world or in this study though.

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by shawabawa3 on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @04:47PM (#8489870)

I'm fairly sure in the UK you can't legally call fruit juice with added sugar/sweeteners "juice" - it would have to be fruit drink or something

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by boydjd on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @05:13PM (#8490043)

It's the same in the US ... except you can call it "juice drink" or "juice cocktail", which isn't very clear.

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by TazeTSchnitzel on Thursday October 23, 2014 @04:57AM (#8497261)

Wow that's weird, if I heard "juice cocktail" I'd think Mango and Orange or something. "Juice drink" is plain misleading.

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by Symbiote on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @05:59PM (#8490387)

Of the ~20 countries I've visited I think only the US had HFCS in the fruit juice. (It tastes funny/unfamiliar, so I notice.)

Instead they contain sugar, natural or added, and about as much as cola (~10%). The cola also has sugar instead of HFCS.

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by adventured on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @07:41PM (#8490805)

The US Government's vast, and continued, subsidization of corn is what led to the creation of HFCS. Makes sense, unfortunately, that the US would be drowning in it.

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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by andor on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @05:20PM (#8490097)

That's what we have regulations for ;-) Everything called "fruit juice" in the EU needs to be 100% juice (but it can be made from concentrate).

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