You know...Coca Cola...isn't that bad if you look at the ingredients

[Dave131]

That's because it contains phosphoric acid. Kind of like how lemons contain citric acid.

I seriously doubt I could take a lemon, squeeze the juice on some linoleum, and scrub off several layers of floor wax...

[Jevlin]

400 additional calories per day means that you will gain 1.6kg per month or 19.2kg per year.
From a simple drink.

So simple math has it. I've been drinking 1-2 liters of coca cola each and every day for well over 10 years.
That's well above 400 additional calories daily. But to keep it simple we'll go with your calculation of 19.2kg per year and 400 cals.
19.2(kg) x 10(years) = 192 additional kilos+ my 90 Kg from before, that's 282kg.
And lets not talk about my extremely unhealthy food habits consisting of pizza and cheeseburgers, I must surely be a lardo of epic proportion.

Yet here I'am at barely 90 kg and not even slightly overweight, how come? I'm just that awesome I guess.
I also smoke, still I'm healthier than a Ox and only rarely sick, maybe once a year, if even that.

Edit: On second thought... I'm actually doing everything wrong, been doing that for sooooo many years. I should be dead.

[budong]

Ah, another health nut joins the group.
Enlighten us with your all holy opinion.

Haha..I'm not a health nut by any definition. I simply cut out soda and have seen pretty amazing results. Don't pretend to want to hear my opinion when all you really want is to have something to counter. You simply want to argue for something because it makes you feel better. If you want to drink soda then by all means keep doing it. But if evolution decides to remove you from the gene pool don't expect me to be there with a towel.

[Adynos]

So simple math has it. I've been drinking 1-2 liters of coca cola each and every day for well over 10 years.
That's well above 400 additional calories daily. But to keep it simple we'll go with your calculation of 19.2kg per year and 400 cals.
19.2(kg) x 10(years) = 192 additional kilos+ my 90 Kg from before, that's 282kg.
And lets not talk about my extremely unhealthy food habits consisting of pizza and cheeseburgers, I must surely be a lardo of epic proportion.

Yet here I'am at barely 90 kg and not even slightly overweight, how come? I'm just that awesome I guess.
I also smoke, still I'm healthier than a Ox and only rarely sick, maybe once a year, if even that.

400 additional calories to your maintenance level of caloric intake. If you fit those extra 400 calories from a coke into your daily diet you will not get fat. Surplus of calories = weight gain no matter where the calories come from. You can eat only junk food and not gain weight as long as you stay under your body's maintenance level of calories. Each person will be different due to lifestyle/activity/metabolism.

edit: that's not to say that you can be healthy by eating just junk food, it could easily cause other health problems (diabetes) but you will not gain weight if you don't consume an excess of calories no matter where they come from.

[Quetzl]

It's not just about the calories. Sure, there's a lot of energy inside. But what's more important is the method of delivery. Pure sugar spikes blood sugar, which spikes insulin, and so most of the calories become stored as fat. If fructose is used instead of sucrose (fructose-glucose), your liver has to do more work to metabolize the sugar. It's sort of like drinking alcohol in terms of liver damage.

[Jaxsz]

Sugar and HFCS are basically the same thing. Pretending HFCS is remotely more "bad" for you than sugar is just stupid.

Sugar is processed from the sugarcane grass, and HFCS is processed from the corn grain. Both are around 50/50 glucose/fructose. Both affect the body in basically identical ways. Stop acting like HFCS is so evil when the reality is that *both* are probably the worst "acceptable" things a person can consume.

[poogle]

True it might not be as bad as something else, but that's a long way away from not being bad in general. Its all about balance though I suppose, if you eat properly and have this stuff in moderation there is no harm done really.

Surely you don't drink an entire bottle.

But yes there are lots of people out there who do drink the whole bottle over the course of an evening. I know some personally.

[Kasierith]

Haha..I'm not a health nut by any definition. I simply cut out soda and have seen pretty amazing results. Don't pretend to want to hear my opinion when all you really want is to have something to counter. You simply want to argue for something because it makes you feel better. If you want to drink soda then by all means keep doing it. But if evolution decides to remove you from the gene pool don't expect me to be there with a towel.

Natural selection does not apply on an individual level... I really, really don't understand how hard this is for the general populace to grasp. Large portions of the world digest alcohol fairly easily, while people of Asian descent do not, which is the direct result of exposure to alcohol resulting in the formation of alcohol dehydrogenase, signifying that exposure to potentially harmful substances will, over time, cause the gene pool to shift to compensate for said substances. Given this, if soda becomes a continuous aspect of human society, after hundreds or thousands of years as a species we will have adapted to better cope with elevated sugar levels.

Also, are you saying that you don't want to present your opinion because of the possibility of its validity being called into question?

[Jevlin]

snip

I don't count my calories, never have. It's stressful and unnecessary! I eat when I'm hungry and drink when I'm thirsty.
The body is amazing that way, telling you when you had enough food and drink. Such an amazing adaptation

Also, I don't have diabetes or even a slight trace of high blood sugar.

[Quetzl]

Sugar and HFCS are basically the same thing. Pretending HFCS is remotely more "bad" for you than sugar is just stupid.

Sugar is processed from the sugarcane grass, and HFCS is processed from the corn grain. Both are around 50/50 glucose/fructose. Both affect the body in basically identical ways. Stop acting like HFCS is so evil when the reality is that *both* are probably the worst "acceptable" things a person can consume.

Depends on which corn syrup you use, some has 55% fructose and some has 42%. Also, sugarcane>corn in terms of health, partly because genetically modified foods introduce bacterial membrane fragments that could elicit an immune response, and partly because starchy carbohydrates are bad for you in general (because of the way they are digested; has to do with changes in intestinal flora and aerobic bacteria)

[Kasierith]

It's not just about the calories. Sure, there's a lot of energy inside. But what's more important is the method of delivery. Pure sugar spikes blood sugar, which spikes insulin, and so most of the calories become stored as fat. If fructose is used instead of sucrose (fructose-glucose), your liver has to do more work to metabolize the sugar. It's sort of like drinking alcohol in terms of liver damage.

I wouldn't say that fructose is necessarily bad for you because of this... yes, it does use different pathways in things such as energy (http://www.rsc.org/ej/MB/2008/b717340g/b717340g-f2.gif) but it really isn't comparable to alcohol in this matter, especially since it has linear metabolism while alcohol has nonlinear metabolism. Also, doesn't fructose absorption not active the insulin pathway the way glucose absorption does?

[Adynos]

I don't count my calories, never have. It's stressful and unnecessary! I eat when I'm hungry and drink when I'm thirsty.
The body is amazing that way, telling you when you had enough food and drink. Such an amazing adaptation

Also, I don't have diabetes or even a slight trace of high blood sugar.

I never said you had to count your calories, just that if you don't eat more than your body needs then you will not gain weight. You are obviously doing that without trying. I have to eat ~3500 calories to gain weight. If I eat just normal meals and try to get that I have to eat well past being full.

And true too, I just said it "could" lead to other things such as diabetes, not that it necessarily would.

I have never had trouble with gaining weight either, but not everyone is as lucky! :P

[Quetzl]

I wouldn't say that fructose is necessarily bad for you because of this... yes, it does use different pathways in things such as energy (http://www.rsc.org/ej/MB/2008/b717340g/b717340g-f2.gif) but it really isn't comparable to alcohol in this matter, especially since it has linear metabolism while alcohol has nonlinear metabolism.

There have been correlations drawn between non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and egregious fructose consumption, controlling for all other factors:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2423467/

But you're also right to say that it isn't quite the same, because the amount of fructose you would need to eat to be at risk for fatty liver disease is much higher than it is for alcohol.

[Shibuya]

I am going to play devil's advocate here a little and you will read:


Let's disregard the acidic aspect of Coca Cola, we know it is bad for your teeth.

Now let's look at the ingredients in a 1 liter bottle:


We got:

Sugar 10,6 gram per 100ml so the entire bottle contains 106 grams of sugar
Sparkling water
Color add: number e150d (caramel product)
Acidic ingredients for consumption
E338 (phosporic acid)
Plant extracts (which include caffeine)

Now if you compare Coca Cola to some other shit out there which contain about 10 more ingredients or High Fructose Corn Syrup instead of sugar....


It really isn't that bad. The entire bottle is 420 kcal btw.



I am not denying that it is unhealthy, but I am merely saying that there is some worse stuff out there and I would choose plain old
Coca Cola over them.

http://imgur.com/o9zRv

Oh and yes, I am guilty of drinking Coca Cola on occasion, oh what a crime. :P

Tonnes of sugar and E numbers? YEAH, not bad. sigh.

[alturic]

I'm 29 and probably going to die soon by listening to people who say soda is horrible for you. I can probably drink 12 cans a day if not more. I drink at LEAST 6 cans a day. As for the teeth aspect, brush twice a day?

I rarely drink anything but soda... and vodka.

[Reg]

So 1 bottle is the equivalent of an entire meal and you say it's not that bad?

And a meal that is shitty for you. You can make a nutritious great tasting meal for less than 420 calories.

[Jevlin]

I never said you had to count your calories, just that if you don't eat more than your body needs then you will not gain weight. You are obviously doing that without trying. I have to eat ~3500 calories to gain weight. If I eat just normal meals and try to get that I have to eat well past being full.

And true too, I just said it "could" lead to other things such as diabetes, not that it necessarily would.

I have never had trouble with gaining weight either, but not everyone is as lucky! :P

Yeye I know, I'm just being an ass to the guy who I initially quoted as it appeared that what he said was set in stone.
That's what pisses me off really about these health nuts. They keep on insisting that you get fat because of WHAT you eat and not how much you eat.
They seem to believe that even looking at a burger or glass of coke is going to give you an extra tire or heart failure :>

[Rukentuts]

HFCS is not nearly so much worse than sucrose (and sucrose not nearly so much better than HFCS) as folk mythology would have you believe.

In laboratory tests, significantly more weight is gained with HFCS than sucrose. I linked a study in one of the early pages. The results have been replicated.

[budong]

Natural selection does not apply on an individual level... I really, really don't understand how hard this is for the general populace to grasp. Large portions of the world digest alcohol fairly easily, while people of Asian descent do not, which is the direct result of exposure to alcohol resulting in the formation of alcohol dehydrogenase, signifying that exposure to potentially harmful substances will, over time, cause the gene pool to shift to compensate for said substances. Given this, if soda becomes a continuous aspect of human society, after hundreds or thousands of years as a species we will have adapted to better cope with elevated sugar levels.

Also, are you saying that you don't want to present your opinion because of the possibility of its validity being called into question?

I understand how natural selection works, I am currently studying evolutionary biology in college. I was over simplifying the process for facetious purposes. I appreciate your own knowledge of the subject but would advise against taking anything on a gamer message board too seriously.

As for not presenting my opinion...I already did earlier in this thread so there was no point in doing so again. My opinion is based on my own experience. Other peoples bodies process sugar in different ways but I know there are enough people like me who would benefit greatly by not consuming soda that it was worth putting my own results out there. My doctor advised me to eliminate soda and frankly I would rather take the opinion of a trained professional over the opinions of internet gladiators.

[Adynos]

Yeye I know, I'm just being an ass to the guy who I initially quoted as it appeared that what he said was set in stone.
That's what pisses me off really about these health nuts. They keep on insisting that you get fat because of WHAT you eat and not how much you eat.
They seem to believe that even looking at a burger or glass of coke is going to give you an extra tire or heart failure :>

Indeed. Moderation is the key. May not be healthy, but it won't kill you. Honestly, just about everything we eat (unless you grow it in your own back yard or butcher your own livestock) has something about it that is bad for you. Preservatives/additives/packaging/processing etc. So I don't worry about a coke here and there!