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Gaming Fuel: 4-way Shootout
Neil Yates writes "It is 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. You have been up all night, fragging away in a Quake3 clan match. Your early morning schedule wore you out and you never had time to take a nap. The server is resetting between games, and you are starting to get a little sleepy-eyed. Milk is not going to do one bit of good and regular Coke or Pepsi are too run of the mill. The last thing that will keep you awake and at the top of your game is some pansy sports drink. Which of these four energy drinks do you reach for?
Pepsi Blue, Vanilla Coke, Dr. Pepper's Red Fusion, or Sobe's Mr. Green?"
What's wrong with plain old Mt Dew? It did represent 80% of my intake by volume from age 15 to 22.
With all the geeky knowledge of all things science around here, I'm a little surprised that this is even a topic. (I think I hear the sounds of barrel bottem scraping.)
All you're doing is screwing yourself up with all that garbage. Drink water and, on occasion drink other things... and definitely not milk -- it feeds cancer and contains all kinds of hormones you don't want in your body.
Quit eating and drinking shit and you'll find that you'll be more alert, more awake, more intelligent, quicker on the trigger and a damned sight healthier. Oddly, you don't need nearly as much sleep as you're likely getting and upsetting your already imbalanced body chemistry isn't going to help anything at all.
Forget about food and drink as a recreational act for a little while and focus on what you're doing -- then nutrition becomes an easy thing to deal with.
Another thing, slick, is that Sucralose gets metabolized into a chemical used in ... Pesticides! Saccharin may very well be the best substitute. (NutraSweet phenyl ketonurics is the chemical responsible for PKU in babies).
THE POTENTIAL DANGERS OF SUCRALOSE
There's a new artificial sweetener on the block and it is already in a wide range of products, some even sold in health food stores and manufactured by nutritionally-oriented companies. But is it proven safe? Does it provide any benefit to the public? Does it help with weight loss? Are there any long term human studies? Has it been shown to be safe for the environment? The answer to all of these questions is unfortunately a resounding NO.
The artificial sweetener sucralose, which is sold under the name SplendaT, is one of the up-and-coming "next generation" of high-intensity sugar substitutes. It is non-caloric and about 600 times sweeter than sucrose (white table sugar), although it can vary from 320 to 1,000 times sweeter, depending on the food application. The white crystalline powder tastes like a lot like sugar, but is more intense in its sweetness.
Sucralose is produced by chlorinating sugar (sucrose). This involves chemically changing the structure of the sugar molecules by substituting three chlorine atoms for three hydroxyl groups.
Should Sucralose be Avoided? The Holistic Medicine Web Page cites the following reasons to avoid sucralose: Pre-approval tests indicated potential toxicity of sucralose. There are no *independent* controlled human studies on sucralose (similar to 15 years ago for aspartame). There are no long-term (12-24 months) human studies of sucralose's effects. There is no monitoring of health effects. It took government agencies decades to agree that there were countless thousands of deaths from tobacco. Why? Simply because there had been no monitoring or epidemiological studies. Without such monitoring and studies, huge effects can easily go unnoticed.
The fact that Sucralose is made by chlorinating sugar should be a BIG RED FLAG as to its safety. Chlorine is a known cancer-causing chemical...need we say more?