The Perils of Pop, or Why Our Economy is Killing Us

A while back Markadelphia asked why everyone is down on soda. Here are some reasons.

Empty calories: 12 ounces of sugar- or corn syrup-sweetened soda can contain 140 or more calories. If a person drinks only 3-5 cans a day, that's a quarter to a third of the recommended daily caloric intake for an average sedentary American. This provides absolutely no nutritional value, which means that its either displacing real food, or people are consuming that many additional calories from real food that provides protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals.

Artificial sweeteners: sugar-free diet sodas may not be any better. Studies have shown an insulin reaction to aspartame in rats, and while this may or may not carry over to humans, it's quite likely that artificial sweeteners promote overall increased caloric intake, as aspartame appears to cause carbohydrate cravings. Sweeteners like cyclamates and saccharine have also been linked to cancer, and aspartame is a serious hazard for those who have phenylketonuria. It has also been linked to severe headaches in some people. Breakdown products of aspartame include phenyalanine, methanol, formic acid, and formaldehyde, which is stored in fat cells and is probably carcinogenic.

Thus, both diet and sugared soda are linked to weight gain and diabetes, which both lead to heart disease, stroke, and a whole host of other medical problems.

Phosphoric acid: many soft drinks contain phosphoric acid, which causes calcium excretion and bone loss, especially in older women who are already predisposed to osteoporosis. Some researchers believe this is simply due to the replacement of milk in the diet; in either case it means women soda-drinkers are more prone to broken bones.

Citric acid: citric acid, which is present in many types of soda, including Mountain Dew, erodes tooth enamel. A popular high school experiment is to place a tooth or mouse in citric acid, which then dissolve away in a couple of weeks. Someone who sits at a keyboard all day sipping Dew — regular or diet — is not doing their teeth any favors.

Caffeine: caffeine is an addictive substance which is generally considered harmless. But it's a full-fledged drug addiction: withdrawal symptoms include headache, muscle pain, stiffness, vomiting and depression. There are also many instances of people dying after consuming too much caffeine. France outlawed Red Bull after an Irishman died from drinking four cans. A fourteen-year-old Maryland girl recently died after drinking two Monster energy drinks over a 24-hour period.

In short, soda consumption has absolutely no positive benefits.

When I was a kid soda was a treat, like a cookie or a piece of cake. But over the last forty years people have begun treating soda as a staple food, replacing juice and milk. This is especially problematic for women and children, who need that calcium. Milk has its own problems with BGH and excessive antibiotic use, but soda is the worst possible replacement. Plain water is far superior in every way.

Going to a fast-food place like McDonald's used to be a treat as well: we would eat there a few times a year, when out shopping or on a long road trip. Today many pork out on pizza, burgers, fries and sodas every day. Even worse, parents regularly bring that stuff home to feed their kids. This diet is the main cause of the epidemic of obesity that is sweeping across the world, but is hitting the United States particularly hard.

When I was a kid, you either brown-bagged a sandwich to school or you ate the school lunch, which was an institutional version of the square meal you got at home. You drank government-subsidized milk for 2 cents a carton. These days most schools have pop and candy machines and some even have fast-food outlets on campus.

The truly awful part is that our economy requires this. Investors demand high returns, and businesses that don't experience at least 5-10% annual growth are viewed as losers and hammered on the stock market. Companies like Coca Cola, McDonald's, Burger King, Pepsi, etc., have experienced growth for years, mostly at the expense of sit-down restaurants and grocery stores.

The push for growth in profits has forced these companies to adopt tactics of relentless advertising, callous indoctrination of the young, increased convenience and ubiquity, and product reformulation to maximize addictiveness. In the process they have completely altered our behaviors and degraded the health of the nation.

But for that kind of domestic profit growth to continue, Americans have to increase their consumption of products that are bad for their health (costing us hundreds of billions more in medical costs), or our population has to increase (unlikely, since that will only happen through immigration), or the price of these products has to increase (unlikely, since the main draw is the cheapness of fast food).

The economic model of endless growth in consumption — and our waistlines — is literally killing us.