{Though why anyone would want to follow that creepy looking "doctor" in his rickety car just to see him smoking is beyond me... unless you are a shoddy-noir fan.}
Fast forward to 2010 and this is what is happening, quite literally, in our backyards.
From
We saw a similar disturbing story last year:
Full marks to whoever sees the ominous similarities here.
I was going to preach on pedantically about how the Center for Disease Control (and Prevention) -- CDC has come out with findings that show that 1 out of every 3 of us are going to get Type II diabetes in 2050 (1) and how eerily similar is the fact that, currently, 1 out of every 3 of us is clinically obese (2) - 5% of which is directly and squarely attributable to soft drinks, colas and other dodgy carbonated what-nots (3, 4). I was also going to throw in research findings about how sweetened beverages cause diabetes, metabolic syndrome (5), hypertension and cardiac diasease (6) and finally, how obesity and diabetes are increasingly being linked to an increased risk of cancer as well as poorer cancer-related outcomes (7, 8).
But I guess, we will all be cold in our comfy plus-size graves by then. So, I am just going to splash this post with some time-machine acccelerant and serve up the punchline from 2050.
However, feel free to ignore this post and all the evidence and drink up those colas. Because you see, history does repeat itself and it will probably be 2050 before we will get to see the surgeon general's message on cola cans, pepsi cans and other members of this aggressively marketed ilk.
The full-text of all the references for the pedantically inclined:
1. The CDC diabetes prediction making news-waves: Boyle J et al. Projection of the year 2050 burden of diabetes in the US adult population: dynamic modeling of incidence, mortality, and prediabetes prevalence. Population Health Metrics. 2010;8(1):29+. Available from:
. PDF Link: 2. The dramatic obesity charts, statistics and trends in the US:
3. National Cancer Institute's report on where all the excess energy-intake in the US population is coming from. PDF Link:
4. A systematic review of all the epidemiological studies, clinical trials, prospective studies and retrospective studies that have investigated the associations between obesity and the consumption of carbonated drinks (and yes, the vast majority of the reliable studies have very consistently damaging findings against cola): Woodward-Lopez G et al. To what extent have sweetened beverages contributed to the obesity epidemic? Public health nutrition. 2010 September;p. 1-11. Available from:
. PDF Link: ::READ PDF::5. Hu FB et. al. Sugar-sweetened beverages and risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes: Epidemiologic evidence. Physiology & Behavior. 2010 April;100(1):47-54. Available from:
. PDF Link: ::READ PDF::6. Chen L et. al. Reducing Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Is Associated With Reduced Blood Pressure: A Prospective Study Among United States Adults. Circulation. 2010 June;121(22):2398-2406. Available from:
. PDF Link: ::READ PDF::7. Renehan AG et. al. Interpreting the epidemiological evidence linking obesity and cancer: A framework for population-attributable risk estimations in Europe. European Journal of Cancer. 2010 September;46(14):2581-2592. Available from:
. PDF Link: ::READ PDF::8. Pal SK et. al. Impact of Age, Sex, and Comorbidity on Cancer Therapy and Disease Progression. Journal of Clinical Oncology. 2010 September;28(26):4086-4093. Available from:
. PDF Link: ::READ PDF::
Gaaahhh spellos spellos and omissions!
What I meant was:
Poor eating habits quantitatively/qualitatively change your brain so much that smoking cessation become THAT much more difficult in a smoker who eats junk food compared with a smoker who is eating healthier food.
(e:metalpeter), yes, exactly. It's a bunch of cumulative unhealthful behaviour that is throwing the main spanner into the works of disease prevention in this country... or any country for that matter.
(e:Paul), I was at this tobacco control talk given by Dr. Giovino :::link::: recently. Interestingly, he believes that the common notion that smokers are poor eaters is not true. His hypothesis is that the poor eating habits cause changes in receptor biochemistry and kinetics in the brain and this in turn, prevents smokers from quitting successfully and for long. So the poor eating habits quantitatively/qualitatively change your brain so that smoking cessation become THAT much difficult that in a smoker who is eating healthier food.
I thought it made so much sense. We are fostering a generation of easy addicts with no public awareness of what healthful food actually is.
Maybe I need to go out of control on a post about the dietary guidelines next.
lol, it this looks like out of control, I wonder what you would have said had you seen the emails, docs etc I threw at this workplace faux pas.
Unfortunately, "the man" didn't think it was worth his time though.
You know whats crazy is the warnings on the cigarette boxes in canada even have those explicit photos on them and people still smoke.
i love me my doctor pepper or pepper md as i like to call it
you're out of control
First of all Hope some other people jump into this.....
Where we agree: Soda is Bad for you. Any science that is funded by someone who could benefit from that science should never be trusted completely and is most likely biased towards one of there causes.....
Where we disagree (I think): I think most people know that it is bad for you (or at least a lot of people). There has been a big movement to get it out of schools.. But what I see is that it isn't the Soda. It is the lifestyle. Drinking pop is part of the unhealthy way of living. It goes with all the bad for you snacks and all the bad for you food. Most people who eat healthy and good know to cut out or keep the Soda Pop.
It is kinda like when people at bars didn't smoke but once they had a drink they had to have a smoke. That both things are bad but they go together for a cumulative effect and make two things that are bad a lot worse....
Distractions made me lose my train of thought.....
(e:metalpeter), I just want to emphasize that soda:
-- is PURELY responsible for more than 5% of calorie intake of the US population today.
-- is the STRONGEST indicator of impending clinical obesity
-- CAUSES hypertension and cardiac disease (yes, CAUSES, in a controlled, prospective, randomized clinical trial)
-- is strongly implicated in temporal pathogenesis of Type II diabetes.
Please don't be under the misconception that soda is harmless - because it is not.
In the 1940s, people said much the same thing for smoking that it is just "linked" to lung cancer and doesn't cause it. I don't know how much more proof does public policy need to convince people that it is not really a harmless little treat. I am so disappointed that people are encouraged to treat sodas as if they were just a little indulgence. Please take a look at the last book link from Harvard written by Dr. Walter Willett. It is written very well and lays out clearly why colas are such an insidious evil.
Giving money and accepting money leads to conflict of interest. This is a BIG issue in medical science. Take a look at all these studies that were published when the authors and their parent institutions were funded by the American Beverage Association, Coca Cola and Pepsi: :::link:::
As you can see, most of the studies conclude that there is no link between sweetened beverages and obesity and even argue against changing vending machine contents in schools. However, when a research team from Harvard pulled down most of these studies and re-analyzed the meta-analysis conducted by the coca-cola funded authors, they found that they had mis-analysed all data to favour coke and other sodas. The coke-funded authors responded to the Harvard team with a very weak reply --> :::link::: , but by that time, one of the authors was actually under the PAYROLL of the American Beverage Association. Since the Harvard rebuttal was published in a reputed journal the coke-funded team were forced to declare their conflicts of interests:
"The original research was conducted while all of the authors were affiliated with the University of Maryland and was supported with funding from the American Beverage Association (ABA). RAF is currently a Senior Risk Assessment Expert with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. MLS is currently a Senior Vice President for the ABA. PAA is a consultant for the ABA. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and may not represent those of the University of Maryland, the ABA, the FDA, or any other organization with which any of the authors may have been affiliated in the past. RAF declared no conflicts of interest other than the original source of funding for the project. MLS is employed by the ABA but had no other conflicts of interest. PAA is a consultant for the ABA but had no other conflicts of interest."
You don't want to be working somewhere that takes money from the cola industry - that will put any future work of yours under the cloud of conflict. This is exactly how science is diluted and distorted.
And they have been successful. The public at large still believe that coke is so harmless when a good 500+ well-carried out studies squarely assign blame to soda. :/
this study which got published in peer reviewed journals. It completely clears coke of any harmful effects - the ONLY study to do this in the face of 70+ studies that show just the opposite.
A couple of things ok maybe a few....
1. That first ad is great cause doctors don't say they are good for you (there are ones where they do) they just say that most doctors use that brand so people may think they are good for you.
2. I like coke and Pepsi and love how it tastes....
3. There is nothing wrong with drinking some Soda Pop but it shouldn't be all you drink.....
4. Soda Pop may be linked with obesity but that doesn't mean it causes it....
5. I don't think soda causes it at all. It is that people who have it as there drink of choice also have the big mack and the big plate filled with all other kinds of food like Bacon Burgers and things like that....
6. In Terms of the giving money thing you have to remember that giving money alone doesn't make them guilty of anything, they also Own Minute Maid and have Dasani Water. Pepsi owns Sobe and at one time not sure if this is still true the same company that is lays/doritos ....
All that being said there is the mentality that Diet pop is good for you so if you have all this high calorie high fat food and a big giant diet soda that off sets it... Yes there is stuff in Cola that Kids should not have more importantly girls. I forget what it does something about pulling calcium away from bones so you then need even more or something I can't remember.....
The thing with Soda Pop is that it is fine as a treat or to have sometimes but it shouldn't be a what you drink with dinner every night thing. On a side note is one good thing it does do is keep Dentists in Business ......