Soda Pop Damages Your Cells' Telomeres

BarbaraHudson writes Those free soft drinks at your last start-up may come with a huge hidden price tag. The Toronto Sun reports that researchers at the University of California — San Francisco found study participants who drank pop daily had shorter telomeres — the protective units of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes in cells — in white blood cells. Short telomeres have been associated with chronic aging diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and some forms of cancer. The researchers calculated daily consumption of a 20-ounce pop is associated with 4.6 years of additional biological aging. The effect on telomere length is comparable to that of smoking, they said. "This finding held regardless of age, race, income and education level," researcher Elissa Epel said in a press release.

Comments

Overly broad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can they be a little more specific as to what it is that's in the soda that is causing this?

Re:Overly broad?

[Teresita]

Next they'll go, "People who consume quantities of glucose in Snickers bars and donuts equivalent to drinking a bunch of soda pop daily also have diabetes and short telemeres. Never mind!"

Re:Overly broad?

[ColdWetDog]

Can they be a little more specific as to what it is that's in the soda that is causing this?

Nope, it's only an observation. No causation at all. And, of course, without any useful info from TFA, one can't tell if this is just another crap study done by some medical student or something with a degree of actual thought behind it. Off to see if the 'American Journal of Public Health' is accessible.

Re:Overly broad?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd go with 'no' and 'no'. Yes, the end goal is to discover the cause, the mechanism, and the effect as precisely as possible; but the universe of possibilities is absurdly gigantic, easily larger than you could ever afford to study.

So what do you do? You start by trying to cut the search space into more manageable chunks with this sort of study, which doesn't provide the level of precision you ultimately want; but can (relatively) cheaply and easily provide some leads on what is worth looking at in greater detail and what isn't.

Re:Overly broad?

[kwiqsilver]

Is it real sugar or HFCS?

I've seen other studies that claim a much stronger link between HFCS and diabetes than between cane sugar and diabetes.

Re:Overly broad?

[Dzimas]

From the study abstract: "After adjustment for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, sugar-sweetened soda consumption was associated with shorter telomeres (b=–0.010; 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.020, 0.001; P=.04). Consumption of 100% fruit juice was marginally associated with longer telomeres (b=0.016; 95% CI=0.000, 0.033; P=.05). No significant associations were observed between consumption of diet sodas or noncarbonated SSBs and telomere length."

More: http://ajph.aphapublications.o...

Re:Overly broad?

[LordLimecat]

I have never seen any study suggesting that, except the single widely ridiculed Yale study. Not surprising given how nearly identical sucrose and HFCS are in the gut.

Re:Overly broad?

[agm]

Sugar is poison. A 1.5l bottle of Coke has 5 days worth of recommended sugar in it. It's shocking to see children drinking this stuff.

Re:Overly broad?

[CanarDuck]

A p-value of 0.04? This is a rather meager statistical significance. Mark me skeptical until the study has been reproduced independently.

For all I know they might have been looking at a lot of different nutrition factors and only reported those which appeared significant after the experiment (obligatory xkcd reference: http://xkcd.com/882/ )

Re:Overly broad?

[Curunir_wolf]

Can they be a little more specific as to what it is that's in the soda that is causing this?

You think a beverage that can be used to degrease objects is healthy ? Coca-Cola is about as effective a degreaser as you can find.

It's really good at cleaning stubborn water stains on toilets and sinks, too.

Re:Overly broad?

[ArmoredDragon]

You think a beverage that can be used to degrease objects is healthy ?
Coca-Cola is about as effective a degreaser as you can find.

Not only is that stupidly wrong, (it just so happens mythbusters actually found that while it can remove rust, it doesn't remove grease) but it's also meaningless.

Alcohol is by far more effective for degreasing, yet drinking it in moderation is proven to be healthier than not drinking it at all.

Re:Overly broad?

[AthanasiusKircher]

I have never seen any study suggesting that, except the single widely ridiculed Yale study. Not surprising given how nearly identical sucrose and HFCS are in the gut.

Yeah, most of the HFCS criticism is built on "natural foods" lore and wacko hysteria about chemicals. It *could* be that HFCS is worse than some other sugars, but the vast majority of studies have shown no significant difference in response to HFCS vs. sucrose.

Just to be clear what we're talking about here, HFCS is not the same as pure fructose, and a lot of the lore about HFCS compares studies on fructose with sucrose or other things, rather than HFCS. Commercial HFCS is generally either 42% or 55% fructose, and almost all glucose otherwise. Sucrose, on the other hand, is a molecule that breaks down in the first stages of digestion to 50% fructose and 50% glucose -- so, as the parent said, they are basically identical in most of digestion. (It's called "high fructose" corn syrup, by the way, because it's much higher than normal corn syrup, which has very little fructose. But acting like pure fructose and HFCS are the same thing in studies is highly misleading.)

Also, for the natural foods buffs, please note that honey is mostly fructose and glucose in almost the same concentration as HFCS, so if HFCS is bad for you, "natural" honey is probably not a solution to this problem.

For further details, here's a link to a recent (2013) metastudy that summarizes what is known. From the abstract:

[A] broad scientific consensus has emerged that there are no metabolic or endocrine response differences between HFCS and sucrose related to obesity or any other adverse health outcome. This equivalence is not surprising given that both of these sugars contain approximately equal amounts of fructose and glucose, contain the same number of calories, possess the same level of sweetness, and are absorbed identically through the gastrointestinal tract. Research comparing pure fructose with pure glucose, although interesting from a scientific point of view, has limited application to human nutrition given that neither is consumed to an appreciable degree in isolation in the human diet. Whether there is a link between fructose, HFCS, or sucrose and increased risk of heart disease, metabolic syndrome, or fatty infiltration of the liver or muscle remains in dispute with different studies using different methodologies arriving at different conclusions.

In general, our dietary issues are probably a result of excess sugar consumption in general. Switching from HFCS to cane sugar is probably not a significant improvement unless you simultaneously decrease overall sugar consumption.

Re:Overly broad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fructose is a problem only if you get too much. Honey is not a problem to the same extent - it has much more taste and you get sick if you try to match someone's fructose consumption with honey. Most foodstuffs are bad if you eat "way too much" of them. Even completely natural stuff - but that doesn't happen as often. Natural food satiates, and you stop eating. Heavily processed food sell better, they don't satiate and people keep eating. You getting fat is a side effect the corporations can live with - and then they sell you a dieting plan for even more profit.

Captcha: unfair

Re:Overly broad?

[X0563511]

From my understanding, HFCS does something to inhibit ghrelin's function, so your gut doesn't tell your brain you're not hungry anymore until you've eaten/drank a lot more.

In other words, if you're consuming the same stuff as someone else but yours has HFCS instead of sugar, you're going to want a significantly larger amount of it before satiation.

Re:Overly broad?

[mysidia]

You have it wrong... there's no recommended daily dose of Refined sugar for sure. You definitely need to eat products that contain sugars, or you will die.

Keep in mind.... meat, all fruits and vegetables, milk, yogurt, butter, contains sugars, bread, raw potatos, rice, corn, wheat, all contain sugars.

You don't need any sucrose or artificially refined sugar products in your diet, but you do need simple and complex sugars, you just get them automatically, because all nutritious foods contain them.

Re:Overly broad?

[AthanasiusKircher]

Troll much?

I normally wouldn't even bother to respond to this, but I just want to be sure no mods are confused.

And here's another study that's not from Yale and doesn't use a red herring to confuse people.

And yet that's precisely what you are doing: introducing a red herring, actually the specific one I addressed in my post, namely:

HFCS != pure fructose

Your study is about consumption of pure fructose. Metabolism of fructose by itself has been shown in numerous studies to be very different from how human metabolism deals with a mixture of sugars, particularly the 50/50 mixture of fructose and glucose found in honey, HFCS, and sucrose (the latter after the one main bond in sucrose is broken up very early in digestion).

And yes, eating a lot of fructose by itself seems to do weird things to metabolism. But, ya know, mixtures make a difference.

What gives you two away as shills is that you use strong, unscientific words.

Yes, "shill" isn't a strong word or anything. Look -- you have one study that's not even on the substance in question. I referred to a metastudy which considered a multitude of research on the actual topic and talked about the current scientific consensus.

I think HFCS is bad, but mainly because its use is propped up by crappy agricultural policy that supports growing too much corn for no apparent reason other than stupid lobbying. I also think HFCS consumed in excess is bad, just like consuming too much sucrose or honey or whatever.

If you know how to use PubMed, then you can't play up ignorance as an excuse.

Funny, given your ignorance of the actual substance to be studied seems to have determined your choice of citations.

Go tell your bosses at Coca-Cola or wherever that we're not buying it.

Yeah, the overall message of my previous post was -- excess sugar consumption in general is bad for you, i.e., even the Coke with cane sugar is crap, even if it doesn't have HFCS. I obviously must be a shill for an industry trying to sell sugary products with my whole "we need to consume less sugar" posts....

Cheers!

Re:Overly broad?

[v1x]

And here is the author's disclosure from the article, available on PubMedCentral: "Author disclosures: J. M. Rippe, consulting fees from ConAgra Foods, PepsiCo International, Kraft Foods, the Corn Refiners Association, and Weight Watchers International." Still think the study is credible?

Re:Overly broad?

[AthanasiusKircher]

Full disclosure: I just read the full study I linked to in my first post. At the conclusion of the article, the first author does declare that his research was in part funded by lobbyists. I didn't read this full study until now, which I only found this evening when writing my first post -- but it came up in the top hits in a search for "HFCS vs. sugar" and its abstract agreed well with what I've researched myself over the years.

So, I don't know what to say about that -- but once I noticed that, I'm coming clean and noting there was a conflict of interest with one of the two authors.

On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time in the past trying to sort through these issues, and I've come to similar conclusions as those expressed in this article. So, it sort of pains me to be somewhat in agreement with research funded by corn growers. But, once again, let me reiterate my feeling that HFCS is way overused, the excess sugar/HFCS thrown into all sorts of processed foods is a bad thing, and I wish the U.S. government would stop subsidies manipulating agriculture in bad ways (like supporting the corn lobby).

But none of this means that HFCS is so much more evil than table sugar. It's just overproduced and overused, as most sugars are these days. Obesity has risen as more "hidden sugar" has been put into more products, and HFCS has partly enabled that... that's the evil (if there is one), not some sort of weird metabolic effects so much different from sucrose or whatever.

Anyhow, downmod me and my posts if you feel it's necessary. I really was just looking for a recent study on the topic, and despite the conflict of interest, I think the article is mostly a pretty accurate assessment of the literature. (And there are other studies, some of them cited in the article, which don't have conflicts of interest and come to supporting conclusions.)

Re:Overly broad?

[Wycliffe]

It's not just that honey possible has more "flavor", it's that processed foods in general are playing multiple flavors against
each other to neutralize flavor. The FDA has recently outlawed caffinated alcohol because the caffeine and the alcohol
counteract each other's effects. Well, soda has been doing this for years. The salt and the sugar are designed to
counteract each other. Even the fizz is used to that effect. Ever notice how sweet "flat" soda is? If they took the salt
out of soda, noone could stand to drink it as it would be way too sweet.

Re:Overly broad?

[Anonymous Coward]

HFCS is bad because it's associated, causally, with the over-sweetening of processed foods in general.

Take Yoplait, for instance. The top-selling yoghurt brand in the US. In the US version, according to its own label, the product is 16% sugar. The same product sold in the UK is 11% sugar.

Wonder Bread? 6% sugar. Warburtons (top selling UK sliced loaf)? 2-3%.

What you should really be asking yourself is "Why has the (particularly lower-class) American palate been educated, over decades, to crave oversweetened crap?" And the answer to that would involve a solid guest appearance by farmers' lobbies pushing a market for HFCS.

Re:Overly broad?

[Artifakt]

The 40 to 55% of HFCS that isn't Fructose is Glucose, which triggers insulin production immediately when it reaches the small intestine and is transported into the bloodstream before the insulin reaches it - Insulin is then needed to transport the glucose out of the bolldstream and into muscles and other tissues. Sucrose has to be cleaved first into glucose and only starts triggering insulin production after cleavage by other enzymes. This means, qat the very least, that Sucrose gets farther into the intestine before triggering insulin production, and that the rate of production is limited by the rate at which the sucrose is split and not the much faster rate at which glucose enters the bloodstream. I really don't see how you can call those two processes identical. Note I'm not saying that its been proved the differences in how high and low insulin levels and blood sugar levels get necessarily means there's a difference in health consequences, but its certainly not impossible just because of the fact both forms of sugar get to the same organ before digestion. And what about the part that is Fructose? That's certainly dealt with separately.

Re:Overly broad?

[Strangely Familiar]

There is at least one other study from Princeton directly comparing HFCS to sugar, and finding that rats gained significantly more weight when they had access to HFCS. (I also remember reading about a study from Sweden).

http://www.princeton.edu/main/...

I have puzzled about this myself for a long time. I have come up with two possibilities for why there might be a difference. First, speed matters when forming addictive behaviors. It doesn't matter that cocaine and crack cocaine are the same chemical. It matters that crack goes into your system much faster because it is smoked. I learned in my first year psychology course in college that people taking cocaine reported feeling the highest not when they had the most cocaine in their system, but when the level in their bloodstream was rising the fastest. THAT is when they feel high, and that is the feeling they crave. Rate of change into the blood stream is addictive. So, even though the metabolism may first break down sucrose into fructose and glucose, that speed difference might be akin to the speed difference between cocaine going in your nose or in your lungs. It might be just enough of a difference to make you more obese than sugar, over a long period.

Second, I have heard that HFCS is not merely fructose and glucose. It also has impurities from the process of making it, specifically enzymes that convert starches in corn to fructose. You are eating those enzymes with HFCS. Might it not affect your metabolism? Don't rush too quickly to ideological conclusions based on assumptions. Real world testing does matter.

Anyway, I gave up sugar and HFCS in May. I began to think of them as the addictive equivalent of cigarettes (which I quit ten years ago). Cutting back doesn't work, and never worked for me. Cold turkey is the only way to deal with nicotine, and now sugar. Since May, I no longer have heart burn, I have more energy, better concentration, I don't get the blues very often, and I have lost 20 pounds. From the way my body feels today, I *know* I'm going to live longer.

Re:Overly broad?

[duck_rifted]

Yes, anybody who cites peer reviewed research to disagree with you is a troll; especially when you tried to give the impression that the research doesn't exist.

The overall message of your previous post was that the HFCS lore and "wacko hysteria". So, you basically begin by calling anybody who disagrees with you a "wacko" and conclude by calling anybody who provides counter-citations a "troll". Do you have any arguments that don't begin and end with insulting those who disagree with you?

An actual troll (unlike your use of the term) is somebody who appeals to emotion for negative effect, for sadistic enjoyment or for manipulation. You are, by definition, a troll. Though I get that the term is bastardized to the point that it doesn't mean anything these days.

Metastudies are bullshit. Unless they consider ALL peer-reviewed literature on the topic, they're just a fancy way of cherry-picking to make an idea look more credible. Nobody with any academic training in science takes metastudies seriously because they're nothing more than over-glorified book reports.

Re:Overly broad?

[ozmanjusri]

It's far more likely it's the caffeine, but they aren't being specific enough. If it was just sugar, then pretty much everything would be doing it and I wouldn't see how they could possibly have a control group.

Not so likely, given caffeine is widely available in other beverages that don't have the same affect.

Most likely is the phosphoric/carbolic acid content.

The most popular cola available is highly acidic with a pH of about 2.5 (which is why it needs so much sugar to taste good). Healthy digestive systems can buffer the acid so that blood acidosis doesn't occur, but they mobilize calcium phosphate from bones and teeth to do so. Several studies have already shown links between telomere shortening and blood calcium levels, so while there's no smoking gun, there's a known mechanism for the result.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Re:Overly broad?

[jnork]

There are rational explanations for God. There is no rational explanation for Australia.

Re:Overly broad?

[sodul]

You have it wrong... there's no recommended daily dose of Refined sugar for sure.
You definitely need to eat products that contain sugars, or you will die.

I know that not eating fats and proteins will kill you, but not eating sugars (or at least extremely low quantities) will not kill you (I might be wrong, I'm not a doctor). For example Ketogenic diets have been studied for almost a 100 years by modern medicine, and is used very effectively to control epilepsy. A general public version is known as the Atkins Diet.

There are even some studies that suggest that such diets can protect against Alzheimers:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

The ketogenic diet is a high-fat content diet in which carbohydrates are nearly eliminated so that the body has minimal dietary sources of glucose. Fatty acids are thus an obligatory source of cellular energy production by peripheral tissues and also the brain.

In the absence of glucose, the preferred source of energy (particularly of the brain), the ketone bodies are used as fuel in extrahepatic tissues.

there is evidence from uncontrolled clinical trials and studies in animal models that the ketogenic diet can provide symptomatic and disease-modifying activity in a broad range of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, and may also be protective in traumatic brain injury and stroke

I don't have any specific citations but some believe that Alzheimers is like a form of brains diabetes, where the brain cells are no longer able to absorb sugars, which might be caused by modern high sugar diets. Switching to a Ketogenic diet, bypass the brain inability to feed on sugars and is fed ketone bodies instead, potentially reversing the symptoms.

Re:Overly broad?

[Anonymous Coward]

You definitely need to eat products that contain sugars, or you will die.

A very broad and factually untrue statement. We underestimate the metabolic pathways available to us for survival.

Gluconeogenesis + Ketones anyone??

Gluconeogenesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis

Ketones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenesis
Gluconeogenesis

Re:Overly broad?

[itzly]

Your body only needs a little bit of glucose to survive, and that little bit can be synthesized in the liver from protein and/or some types of fat.

Re:Overly broad?

[dbIII]

It *could* be that HFCS is worse than some other sugars

The mechanism is well understood - it's twice as bad for the liver as sucrose and the same as fructose from apples etc. As for the pancreas, it's not so clear but the liver situation is bad enough.

Switching from HFCS to cane sugar is probably not a significant improvement

Beyond a certain level you are absolutely right and there are plenty of people with a vast amount of sucrose or fructose in their diets. However below that obvious level of overconsumption it appears that HFCS is causing liver damage in children. That's not a "think of the children" plea, it just hits kids harder since their livers are smaller so that's where it's being noticed.

It's a pretty nasty unintended consequence of protecting cane farmers from the free market - previously more expensive HFCS became the cheap sweetener of choice and you need a lot more of it to get the same sweet taste as cane sugar.

Re:Overly broad?

[LordLimecat]

Talking about pure fructose in a discussion on HFCS is, as AthanasiusKircher has said, a red herring. We're not talking about pure fructose, we're talking about a blend that is almost chemically indistinguishable (by a few % points) by the body from sucrose.

The comparison of "natural" to "processed" also makes me uncomfortable, as it strikes me as way too similar to the HFCS scare: ambiguous language, unclear definitions, vague claims, and no suggested mechanism of action. Theres plenty of natural things that are just plain bad for you, and plenty of synthetic that are quite good. Ill take a synthetic Vitamin D supplement over bitter orange any day; one prevents rickets, while the other can cause death. Guess which is which?

Re:Overly broad?

[BarbaraHudson]

It's a myth that Sugar causes diabetes. I'm so tired of that FUD being spread around.

There is no direct link between sugar and diabetes. Sugar causes weight gain and obesity, which can lead to diabetes.

I have a sister who has never been overweight. She has type 2 diabetes. Insulin resistance (type 2) is caused by the body being repeatedly forced to produce high levels of insulin - such as her 2 liters a day Pepsi habit - over a lifetime. Those May Wests and chocolate bars didn't help. So, her tissues developed resistance to her body's insulin, and now she has to take pills to help her tissues utilize the insulin she produces.

Same story with one of my nephews, who was always a bit skinny, but guzzled soft drinks all his life.

Ask any endocrinologist. Type two diabetics come in all shapes and sizes.

Given that type 2 diabetes represents more than 90% of all diabetes, we really need to cut the crap (including soft drinks). There was a time when soft drinks weren't a regular part of lunch or supper meals. Now people are drinking them at breakfast.

Re:Overly broad?

[TheCarp]

The real problem is not the deamonization of Fructose but that the "processed" vs "natural" red herring is being used to ignore that sucrose is processed by the body into fructose and glucose. Meaning the body turns sugar into the exact same sort of mixture as HFCS. So in reality, as bad as HFCS is, sucrose is JUST AS BAD.

That said, I can't speak to this current study of telomeres but there is plenty of mechanism of action known for fructose. Fructose (unlike glucose) is processed exclusively in the liver, through many of the same pathways as alcohol.

Whether bound into a sucrose molecule or free floating in an HFCS mixture, 90% of fructose is processed int he liver (the rest is just excreted). The liver makes a number of things out of it, including hormones that suppress feelings of fullness (causing you to eat measurably more), but it also makes some of the worst kinds of cholesterol, VLDLs.

But you are right, the natural vs processed comparison is kind of bunk, especially when its "processed natural" anyway. The only natural vs processed argument that makes any sense is this: In nature sugar is found with fiber. Just try eating anywhere NEAR the sugar in a soda by eating apples or sugar cane....and then try doing it with a full meal. Good luck.

Pressing apples into juice....is processing. If you think of processing as primarily "Removing fiber from food" then it makes a lot more sense. In the end that is mainly what a lot of processing does. It removes the main constituent of food that limits how much and how fast we can eat.

Then to top it all off, with the "low fat" kick, they then remove the fat as well, which makes the food taste reminicent of cardboard, so to fix that, they add sugar. Its like an assault from all sides.... remove both fat and fiber, both things that moderate apetite and fullness, and replace with sugar, which suppresses fullness and gets turned into the worst kinds of cholesterol.

Cumulative? How about other quantities?

[TWX]

I spent a few years drinking 128oz of Mountain Dew every workday. I'm down to 24oz now of Throwback, but I'd like to know more about what I've done to myself...

I had to quit. I was starting to have heart palpitations.

Soda Pop?

[albinobluerhino]

Does this mean coke is ok?

Telomeres, tiny 'hairs' that split DNA for duping

[Anonymous Coward]

When they get shorter you get irregular errors in DNA duplication, cancer, eventually death. Telomere shortening is a large % of what 'causes' 'aging' on a cell level.

So it's not just obesity related health risks, this is a fucking big deal. I wonder when we'll find out if it's the carbonation or the sugar or something else unexpected.

Re:Cumulative? How about other quantities?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I have your stereo?

Research Paper Link

[Guppy]

1) What is the name of the paper?

Found it: http://ajph.aphapublications.o...
"Soda and Cell Aging: Associations Between Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption and Leukocyte Telomere Length in Healthy Adults From the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys"

Objectives. We tested whether leukocyte telomere length maintenance, which underlies healthy cellular aging, provides a link between sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption and the risk of cardiometabolic disease.

Methods. We examined cross-sectional associations between the consumption of SSBs, diet soda, and fruit juice and telomere length in a nationally representative sample of healthy adults. The study population included 5309 US adults, aged 20 to 65 years, with no history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease, from the 1999 to 2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. Leukocyte telomere length was assayed from DNA specimens. Diet was assessed using 24-hour dietary recalls. Associations were examined using multivariate linear regression for the outcome of log-transformed telomere length.

Results. After adjustment for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, sugar-sweetened soda consumption was associated with shorter telomeres (b=–0.010; 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.020, 0.001; P=.04). Consumption of 100% fruit juice was marginally associated with longer telomeres (b=0.016; 95% CI=0.000, 0.033; P=.05). No significant associations were observed between consumption of diet sodas or noncarbonated SSBs and telomere length.

Conclusions. Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened sodas might influence metabolic disease development through accelerated cell aging. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print October 16, 2014: e1–e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2014.302151)

Re: Research Paper Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Juiced fruit doesn't have the fiber. The complaint about 100% fruit juice is that you're probably drinking way more juice than you'd eat (I know people who juice 5 apples at a time. When was the last time you ate 5 apples in the span of 10 minutes?) and that it hits your system all at once instead of slowly being released as your body breaks down the fruit fiber.

Re:Not a surprise, but is it just one ingredient?

[Guppy]

Sodium benzoate

My money is on the sugar/syrup itself, acting through the insulin-like growth factor system. There is substantial evidence that decreased IGF activity lengthens lifespan and reduces cancer risk, while increased activity drives increased cell-division activity and apoptosis.

Link to the study.

[DeadDecoy]

Here's a link to the study: study. They performed a cross-sectional study across some 5000 adults, looking at the effect of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), non-carbonated SSBs, diet soda, and fruit juices. They adjusted for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics, and found that SSBs are correlated with shorter telomeres (b=–0.010; 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.020, 0.001; P=.04); fruit juice with longer telomeres (b=0.016; 95% CI=0.000, 0.033; P=.05), and no difference for diet sodas and non-carbonated SSBs.

I'm not sure how to interpret the results, as the study does not explain what the effect size is, or how impactful it is to general health. If there are any biologists in the crowd who can explain this, that would be super helpful.

Re:Link to the study.

[AK Marc]

no difference for diet sodas and non-carbonated SSBs.

No difference from the SSBs, or no difference from the fruit juice?

Based on that, it requires sugar and carbonation. Diet carbonated beverages are the same as non-carbonated SSBs. The problem isn't the sugar. The problem isn't the carbonation. It's the mix of both.

At least thats what I think you are saying. I don't have time to read it all at the moment.

Re:Link to the study.

[KreAture]

I wonder if the discovery is a cause or an effect.
People with shorter telomeres may simply prefer a sweeter drink.
Show me a study that compares the peoples telomeres before and after a experimental change in habits/intake and I will listen.

Re:Link to the study.

[LordKronos]

No difference from the SSBs, or no difference from the fruit juice?

Neither. Read that sentence again, and I think it's pretty clear they are comparing all 4 to a baseline level (not sure what that is or how they get it). Think of it like:
basline = x
carbonated SSBs = x-1
fruit juice = x + 1
non-carbonated SSBs = x
diet carbonated SSBs = x

And just to be certain I am interpreting it right, I took the 15 seconds (literally, that's how long it took me) that you couldn't to click the link, skim the 1 page summary, and find: "No significant associations were observed between consumption of diet sodas or noncarbonated SSBs and telomere length."

Re:Link to the study.

[AK Marc]

I didn't think it made sense that juice had benefits over control (whatever that is). What would "control" be? Water? Milk? Blood?

Re:Link to the study.

[Tough Love]

In Germany, EVERYBODY drinks carbonated water all the time, so this would spell doom on almost the whole population, hence i am a bit sceptical?

Notice that Germany lies well down the list of life exectancy by country.

Re:'Regardless of... income and education level' ?

[AthanasiusKircher]

My bullshit meter always starts kicking into life when the hyperbole starts flowing, like the reading comprehension or random amount of payment received having a causative effect on the function of an organic process.

Well, the other things that are mentioned here were age and race, which could conceivably have biological differences that could have an effect.

I suspect that income and education level could be relevant here as a proxy for other dietary trends. People with higher incomes tend to eat better quality food overall than poor people. People with higher education levels also tend to make different dietary choices (and are probably more likely to seek out more "natural" foods or whatever the current research is pointing toward).

So, it's not so much that these aspects are causative as that they are indicative of perhaps a wider variety of potential dietary choices. This study seems to be based on general survey data, so it's not clear that they could rule out various confounding factors, though I'd have to read the study to know for certain.

Showing the trend is consistent is at least a step toward confronting a rather obvious objection that could come up if they only looked at poor folks whose diet is already likely to have a bunch of bad junk in it (and who probably tend to consume the most soda). If they see the same effect in rich, educated folks who drink soda, then it may not be a general "poor disease" issue. (Medical studies have often been plagued by these problems if they only have subjects who are not representative of the general population.)

I'm just guessing here, but that's one reason I could imagine for mentioning this.

Sugar only - not diet

[Animats]

The actual study only applies to sugar-sweetened drinks.

Re:Sugar only - not diet

[martas]

You just said "Sugar hasn't been used in most sodas for years. Sugar on the other hand.".

Re:Sugar only - not diet

[drinkypoo]

Plain old sugar, as others point out, is glucose+sucrose. HFCS is ~sucrose+sucrose+glucose+other. Even if you discount the "other" as fear mongering, the different ratio of the 'oses results in different metabolic by products.

HFCS differs from regular CS by 5%. Build a bridge and get over it. HFCS is not the problem, the use of HFCS to replace vegetable oil in processed foods is the problem. It has a similar effect on final texture, believe it or not. So then they load it up with a shitload of citric acid, which also isn't good for you in excess! It's fine and even good in smaller amounts, but not in the wads necessary to kill the sweetness of the HFCS when you abuse it.

Re:'Regardless of... income and education level' ?

[blueg3]

They generally don't know that it's an organic process without controlling for those factors. You can't shove a microscope up someone's ass and just observe why a particular diet is having a particular effect.

Remember how people always like to harp on how correlation is not causation? Well, it's said too often and too zealously, but it's still true. One of the most important lessons is that you need to control for confounding factors, or the effect you observe could simply be a correlation. It's very, very hard to control for the entire set of a human's behavior, though -- which is what you'd want to do in a classic, traditional experiment.

There are a handful of confounding factors that are constantly problems -- they correlate with tons of things. Any good study about humans will control for them. Income and education level are two of them. So you will always see a paper controlling for these and, if they find an interesting effect, you will see a statement about how the effect is independent of income and education level -- because if that wasn't true, it's not a very valuable finding.

Re:'Regardless of... income and education level' ?

[cas2000]

spoilt white boys often have a huge chip on their shoulder and are obsessed with denying their priviledge. it's why they make absurd strawmen and rant about them at any opportunity, regardless of whether it's relevant in context or not.

i.e. "white boys burden".

this particular spoilt white boy seems to be suffering from the idiotic meme that white males are really the oppressed victims in modern society.

Re:Not a surprise, but is it just one ingredient?

[LordLimecat]

No, Im someone who bothered to look it up before loosing my marbles.

Sucrose is glucose+fructose joined by a single bond, which is cleaved by sucrase into its constituent sugars.
HFCS is a mix (roughly 50-50, depending on which variety of HFCS you get) of fructose and sucrose.

One of those varieties has some 3% "other" (could be other types of sugar, not sure). But generally, if you were to say that HFCS and Sucrose are processed 97% the same in your body, you would be correct. The only real difference is the sucrase step. Is speaking verifiable chemistry fact now the sign of shilling?

Re:Not a surprise, but is it just one ingredient?

[Jane Q. Public]

I didn't see an actual link to the study anywhere, but TFA at least appears to assume correlation = causation. I am very skeptical.

People who consume lots of soda are also (at least in my experience) prone to other bad dietary habits as well. So the causative factor could easily be something else.

They said they compared against (but did not say they specifically corrected for) "age, race, income and education level", but there are a great many other factors that could be involved.

For just one example: if you drink one or more sodas a day, I'd be willing to bet you are also likely to eat more fast-food hamburgers.

Re:Cumulative? How about other quantities?

[ArmoredDragon]

A lot of things can cause heart palpitations. One example I can think of is too much potassium in your blood, which is certainly possible if you eat a lot of potatoes, bananas, avacadoes, etc, at a faster rate than your kidneys can filter them.

Re:Telomeres, tiny 'hairs' that split DNA for dupi

[ArmoredDragon]

I highly doubt it's the carbonation. Carbonation is literally just CO2 compressed into the water. Your body not only already has a large quantity of CO2, but depends on it as part of your blood's buffering solution for maintaining a specific PH level. If there's too much CO2 in your blood, your kidneys will simply remove it without consequence.

Well, that is not the only reason they go down

[houghi]

My Great aunt, who donated her body to Science (Also in an Open Source way(1)) never drank any Cola, yet they were still way down when she died at the age of 115.

A search on van andel telomeres will give more detail. I have the study somewhere around here, but am not able to find it just now.

(1) Not only did she donated her body to science, she wanted the science to be used for people to learn AND have her name linked to it. To be honest, she thought she would end up on a shelf somewhere after they cut her up. She never thought it would result in so much results in research.

Also because of her, they now have proof that alzheimers is not a given with old age thus a solution is at least possible. There were no traces of Alzheimers found anywhere.

Re:Not a surprise, but is it just one ingredient?

[AK Marc]

Carbonation is an acid. The effect on teeth is three-fold. The sugar is bad (Feeds the bacteria). The acid level rise damages teeth directly. The acid level rise is beneficial for the bacteria. The bacteria raise the acid level, and the acid ends up eating the enamel. So a sugary carbonated beverage is worse than a sugary drink with no carbonation, or a carbonated drink without sugar.

There are many such interactions we don't count. We think of everything on a "yes" or "no" basis, when often it could be more complex than that.

Re:Not a surprise, but is it just one ingredient?

[MtHuurne]

Fruit juice contains a lot of sugars as well and consumption of fruit juice was associated with longer telomeres.

Re:Big fucking deal.

[reboot246]

I don't mind people leaving this existence whenever they please, but let me be the judge about my own "quality of life". I'm not at all comfortable letting other people tell me when I need to die. Are you?

I'm 61 and quite healthy. My mother is a healthy 79, sees a doctor once a year, and she drives nearly everywhere. My next door neighbor is an 83 year old widow who lives by herself and drives every day. Last year I worked with a Korean War veteran who could out-walk me (had lunch with him just last week).

Then there are children and young adults in wheelchairs who will never be able to care for themselves. Would you propose killing them because their "quality of life" isn't up to some arbitrary (read: government) standard?

Everybody is different. That's what makes life so interesting. Enjoy every day you can.

Re:Telomeres, tiny 'hairs' that split DNA for dupi

[RubberDogBone]

As someone who has invested a fair amount of effort and money into making a machine to make his own carbonated water, because I LOVE it and drink a lot of it, I can firmly tell you any excess CO2 you might consume in beverages leaves the body one of two ways: you burp it or fart it.

The kidneys are not involved in handling food CO2 because the process of digestion will free the gas and it will then vent directly in which ever way is easiest. Even if the gas stays in solution deep into the gun, it will not be absorbed by the body in gas form so it won't enter the blood.

Further evidence of this is from normal food digestion. The microbes in the intestines are always making CO2 and other gasses as they do their thing and likewise those gas products are vented directly as gas rather than being absorbed into the intestine membranes and then into the blood. Otherwise you would not fart. And everybody does.

Now, any CO2 that IS in the blood from normal biological processes (exercise, burning calories, etc) is cleaned out by the lungs, not the kidneys. Whatever you don't burp or fart is just whisked away when you breathe. You won't notice it.

So the bottom line is that consuming CO2 in food is fine. Harmless.

Re:Not a surprise, but is it just one ingredient?

[MorePower]

I think the problem is that 2 different anti-HFCS campaigns reached the public conscience at about the same time.

One was the Passover Coke crowd, they were complaining that sucrose tastes better than HFCS in Coca-Cola. They were calling for sucrose to replace HFCS for taste (and nostalgia) reasons.

The second was the HFCS is causing obesity crowd, who were against HFCS because it was being added to everything, even stuff you wouldn't expect to be sugary. They were really calling for an end to adding sugar to everything, HFCS just happened to be the type of sugar that was being added. Their point was not that HFCS was somehow worse than sucrose, but rather that HFCS was AS BAD as sucrose (which you should only be eating as an occasional treat). They wanted the HFCS (and any other added sugars) removed from food and not replaced with anything.

These 2 movements collided in the public consciousness and led to people thinking "HFCS makes you fat, and it should be replaced by sucrose."

Re:'Regardless of... income and education level' ?

[danomac]

You can't shove a microscope up someone's ass and just observe why a particular diet is having a particular effect.

Aww, really? I think everyone would like to get to the bottom of this!

My stubby telomeres

[PopeRatzo]

participants who drank pop daily had shorter telomeres

I didn't know I had telomeres until about five minutes ago.

And wait a minute, when they say, "pop", are they talking about any carbonated beverage? Is the problem the carbonation or the crap they put in pop to make it sweet and neon-colored and buzz-causing and impervious to going bad for 500 years?

I need to know, because I've become enamored of my Sodastream machine, which turns water into fizzy water. I can't drink pop because I play the chromatic harmonica and any kind of drink with sugar or caramel color will foul up the reeds and valves. But fizzy water is perfect because it's refreshing, and it wets my whistle (which is important for playing the chromatic harmonica) and allows me to belch "When the Saints Go Marching In". Seriously, I love those carbonated belches. I keep them on the down-low when I'm around others, but I've scared the hell out of the cat a few times with a belch that registers 6.4 on the richter scale. It doesn't startle the dog, but she does wag her tail as if to say, "nice rip, bro".

So, does this research mean that the fizzy water I drink (no added flavor, except occasionally I'll add a little spearmint or hibiscus tea) is going to give me stubby little telomeres? And does the length of my telomeres matter as long as they have sufficient girth? I need to know right away.

Headline is misleading (causation vs. correlation)

[chrismarch]

I propose changing the headline, as it makes the claim that soda pop directly damages telomeres, while the study found no such causation or mechanism. It is fairly common for web articles to misrepresent and misunderstand second hand information about science studies, where authors don't link to the original study, but I had hoped that Slashdot aimed for science education, as opposed to misrepresentative sensationalism. The website of the university associated with the study paints a clearer picture: "The authors cautioned that they only compared telomere length and sugar-sweetened soda consumption for each participant at a single time point, and that an association does not demonstrate causation. Epel is co-leading a new study in which participants will be tracked for weeks in real time to look for effects of sugar-sweetened soda consumption on aspects of cellular aging. Telomere shortening has previously been associated with oxidative damage to tissue, to inflammation, and to insulin resistance." http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/...

Re:Not a surprise, but is it just one ingredient?

[MtHuurne]

Here in the Netherlands, if something is named "juice", it can by law only contain actual juice. The water + sugar + juice mixes are named "nectar". The real stuff is more expensive (by about 50%; depends on the type of fruit), but it's available in any super market.

I'll stick with coffee and beer

[DaveAtFraud]

Actually there have been quite a few studies regarding coffee, caffeine and health:

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd...

The general consensus is that coffee is GOOD FOR YOU unless you have specific health issues like hypertension, high blood pressure, etc. Go troll on a different subject. You'll lose on this one.

Beer! Now that's another subject. Dark and thick is the best. Just had a Left Hand Brewing Company Nitro "Wake Up Dead" Stout. It almost doesn't need a glass. Yummy.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Telomeres, tiny 'hairs' that split DNA for dupi

[ArhcAngel]

Consuming CO2 rapidly, as happens when drinking carbonated beverages, leads to stomach expansion. The stomach is capable of increasing in size to accommodate a large meal but if the practice is habitual the stomach will actually grow in size permanently. There is a nerve where the esophagus meets the stomach that triggers when the stomach is full. When triggered it tells the brain to stop eating (you are no longer hungry). Studies have linked an enlarged stomach to overeating and thus obesity. So while it may not have a direct link to obesity there is evidence it may be indirectly linked.

Re:Telomeres, tiny 'hairs' that split DNA for dupi

[denzacar]

leaves the body one of two ways: you burp it or fart it.

What happens with the energy in a system with the increase of pressure or heat, i.e. by pumping in gas?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

Which, when released from a carbonated liquid, heats up and expands further, thus increasing the pressure, speeding up the reaction (digestion) AND expanding the walls of the organs - which absorb nutrients from the food.
There's a reason why it takes longer for caffeine from coffee to "give you a kick" than it takes for caffeine in soda.

Re:'Regardless of... income and education level' ?

[skine]

Describing white males as "spoilt white boys" (disparaging and infantilizing a group based on gender and skin color) isn't really helping your argument that white men aren't oppressed in modern society.

It appears that you are suffering from the idiotic meme that white men never get discriminated against (treated differently based on aspects out of their control, such as race and gender), and that justifies discriminating against them.

Re:You keep using that word... "basically"...

[itzly]

Your body needs quick energy cause your GLUCOSE levels are down

The craving/satiety mechanism is much more complicated than that. The other day I bought a glucose meter and spend a few days testing my blood sugar levels, and found very little relationship to feelings of craving and blood glucose levels. Even at times when I felt really really hungry, glucose was still exactly the same as a few hours earlier. Besides glucose, hunger is also controlled by ghrelin/leptin and stomach/intestine fullness. In the case of HFCS sweetened beverages, the amount you drink is also influenced by carbonation, salt and other flavorings. Try comparing completely flat coke and fresh coke. Most people wouldn't want to drink a bunch of the flat stuff, because the taste just isn't appealing.

Re:You keep using that word... "basically"...

[itzly]

Your calculation is a bit off. The 55% fructose content of HFCS is by weight, not by moles. Density of fructose is 1.67, while density of glucose is 1.54, so the HFCS-55 actually contains 50.7% fructose and 49.3% glucose by moles. This is almost the same as sucrose.

Re:Not a surprise, but is it just one ingredient?

[drinkypoo]

It actually doesn't get any more simple than that, but too many people think there's some kind secret or potential magic cure for weight loss. Other than liposuction,

...there is also the low-carbohydrate modified fast commonly known today as the Atkins diet, in which it is possible to eat thousands of calories of fat (difficult, but possible, I've done it ho ho ho) and still lose weight. In my case, 10lb/mo for 9mo of sitting on ass and stuffing face. I'm asthmatic and I was too fat to exercise comfortably. I went from 380 to 290 packing my maw with massive steaks the size of a plate, eggs and bacon, and mixing-bowl sized salads showered with bleu cheese dressing. My cholesterol counts, blood pressure, and heart rate? Never better.

I call being able to remain full and lose weight rapidly close enough to magic for my purposes.

Except... I'm not talking about VOLUME...

[denzacar]

In short...

The 55% fructose content of HFCS is by weight, not by moles.

Yup.

Density of fructose is 1.67, while density of glucose is 1.54, so the HFCS-55 actually contains 50.7% fructose and 49.3% glucose by moles. This is almost the same as sucrose.

Nope.
You're taking a shortcut, imagining that both HFCS and sucrose are just piles of glucose and fructose, measured by volume.

Hint - molar mass of BOTH fructose and glucose is 180.16 g/mol - i.e. THAT is the molar mass of HFCS.
It's density is 0.88 g/cm3 for dry mass.
http://www.adm.com/_layouts/Pr...

For sucrose molar mass is 342.30 g/mol. With density of 1.587 g/cm3.
See where this is going? How it is NOT "almost the same"?

In long... and sorry if I'm repeating myself.
I explicitly stated "some 100 units of glucose".

So, if you are taking grams of glucose mixed inside HFCS - you compare it to grams of glucose trapped in sucrose. Same for fructose in the mix.
If you are taking cubic centimeters of glucose from HFCS - you compare it to cubic centimeters OF glucose FROM sucrose, along with attached fructose.
If you are taking glucose from lengths of strips of paper dipped into 50% HFCS solution... etc.

You are weighing, measuring, counting, drinking, biting... HFCS and sucrose - NOT glucose OR fructose.
It's about COMPARISON of same quantities of glucose-fructose compounds/mixes and the satiety THOSE COMPOUNDS/MIXES produce.
Except only one part of the mix does that.

Think drinking coffee or tea and sweetening it.
You are not measuring spoons of glucose and fructose. You can't take one or the other from the mix.
You are taking spoons of sucrose or HFCS - until it is sweet enough.
That's the 100% you're looking for. 100% sweet enough.
From the one or the other mix or compound of BOTH glucose and fructose together.

Now substitute "sweet enough" with "energizing enough" - i.e. enough of glucose, with fructose coming along for the ride.
Whether it is 55-42 or 50-50.

BTW... you are confusing density, molar mass, and how fructose and glucose are measured in HFCS

I.e. Mass per volume of substance - kilograms and meters, 1.694 g/cm3 and 1.54 g/cm3.
And mass DIVIDED by amount of actual substance in atoms - grams of substance times number of atoms in molecule of substance times atomic mass of the element, 180.16 g/mol AND 180.16 g/mol.

Molar mass for fructose AND glucose is EXACTLY THE SAME - 180.16 g/mol.
Just like their chemical formulas are the same - C6H12O6.

Meanwhile... HFCS 55-42 and 42-53 are measured by DRY MASS.
Nobody cares about moles or volume when making that mix.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

Now, OUT OF THAT MIX get the same level of blood sugar as you would get from sucrose.