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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.
Can I have your stereo?
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)
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.
The actual study only applies to sugar-sweetened drinks.
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/ )
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.
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.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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
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!
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.