Sodas Are Bad for You — Gee

I just (really, just now) read a new scientific study suggesting that sodas might be bad for your health.

Gosh, what an idea. [That’s sarcasm…]

Let me see:

1. Carbonation leaches calcium from your body, leading to osteoporosis and various other conditions.
2. The grotesque amount of sugar in them is damaging to pancreas, liver, small and large intestines and is the leading cause of diabetes in America and other parts of the world
3. The levels of sodium in [some of them] is down-right alarming, also and can lead to high blood pressure, kidney problems and fluid imbalances of all sorts.
4. The “sugar free” variations have their own long, long list of health damages, including diabetes(1), headaches, blurry vision, tinnitus, memory loss, depression, etc, etc and besides that, etc(2)
5. Dehydration: some people drink only sodas and almost never anything else; this will lead to chronic dehydration and that carries its own innumerable health problems.
6. New studies show high-fructose corn syrup is very hard to digest and causes strange growth of and adaptations in the large intestine. It doesn’t get digested in the small intestine where one might expect.

That’s just off the top of my head.

These things have been known generally and world-wide for 40 years and more (item 6 is actually fairly new data, though). So why am I reading a “new study” suggesting that soda might be bad for one’s health?

And we have legislators running around crying with loud voices over the Huge Cost of Health Care in this country (USA, of course — most other countries are not that flat-out stupid with these “foods” [though they may have their own idiosyncrasies, of course]), and wondering why health care costs what it costs(3).

Don’t legislators have technical staffs to keep track of such facts?(4) Well, actually, no they don’t.

So a new generation of researchers is simply left to discover the basics all over again as if it wasn’t already known and well proven. Apparently the (so-called) scientists have forgotten how to read what’s already in print; so one can’t blame only the Legislators, though they have systematically (albeit unknowingly) laid the ground work for this stunning level of ignorance among the people trusted to keep us safe nutritionally and medically.

The dancing cigarette box really was an advertising ploy on TV some years ago. We haven’t changed that much.

Why do we tolerate the enormous rates for Diabetes, Cancer and neurological diseases that come simply from life-style abuses and the really bad pseudo-food supply? And we do tolerate them(5). Educate the consumer, give him a chance to make his own decisions. Stop with the dancing cigarette boxes selling poison as if it’s how you have a fun and fulfilling life.

Sheesh…

NOTE: I am not a doctor, your mileage has already varied, and this website may be hot after heating. No user serviceable parts inside. This is not advice. It is strictly opinion (like most “news” since the truth in news-casting law — the Fairness Doctrine — was repealed in the 1990’s). Make up your own mind, but do some research first, eh? Get some facts, but not from TV, or internet infomercials, or from advertising of any sort.

Especially beware the infomercial in encyclopedic
or scientific report clothing. Get real facts, though
you may have to dig for them

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(1) Yes, really. Some of the “diet sweeteners” actually contribute to adult onset diabetes. Look it up!

(2) Mostly I’m talking about the aspartame-based “sweeteners” such as NutraSweet. [that’s a discussion in itself, but short version is it breaks down in the 3 toxic substances in the body, including one that can exacerbate diabetes, and another that can cause all sorts of neurological ailments, blurry vision, memory loss, etc]. There actually are some alternative “sweeteners” that are not Great Bad News for your body, though very few. There’s even one that has been shown (in now buried reports) to reverse some of the effects of diabetes. (Look up Stevia, but the plant, not the pre-packaged sugar substitute whose first ingredient is simply another sugar and not even Stevia. It’s a plant, you can grow it yourself.)

(3) That’s not the only of the reason health care costs what it does. There are other even more disturbing reasons, but that’s outside the scope of this present rant.

(4) That’s a rhetorical question. They do not. Congress even dismissed the department that was advising on technology impact; they kept making statements legislators didn’t like — true statements, as it has turned out — over and over again. Sometimes I think all of Congress should be fired and started over with a clean crew. That would have other problems, though…

(5) There’s a simple answer to that: diabetes makes money. Lots of money, every day. But maybe that explanation is not correct. Maybe. Oh, and to be clear, there are other causes for these things, too, but life-style abuses are beyond any doubt the leading cause of most of our modern ailments.