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Coca-Cola To Fund Research That Shifts Blame For Obesity Away From Bad Diets
An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times reports that Coca-Cola is teaming up with influential scientists to support research into fighting obesity through other means than improving diet. They've provided funding to a new nonprofit called the Global Energy Balance Network. Its president said, "Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, 'Oh they're eating too much, eating too much, eating too much' — blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks and so on. And there's really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause." Health experts say it's an attempt by Coca-cola to deflect criticism of the sugary drinks that are the lifeblood of its business. "This clash over the science of obesity comes in a period of rising efforts to tax sugary drinks, remove them from schools and stop companies from marketing them to children. In the last two decades, consumption of full-calorie sodas by the average American has dropped by 25 percent."
Yesterday on a radio I heard a DJ saying that there was a study showing that diet drinks didn't help people loose weight. So the propaganda is already flowing.
Better known as 318230.
I think its stupid to try and shift blame for obesity from poor diet, but as a fat man, if you can come up with a legitimate way for me to lose weight without diet and exercise, I will love you forever
How the hell else do you get fat? You consume more calories than you burn, your body mass will increase. It's really basic thermodynamics at work here...
=Smidge=
So anything that shifts the attention away from that will only help their business of selling detritus. I would say it's an addictive drink, almost as bad as cigarettes.
It's like clockwork. If I drink one ordinary can of soda, two days later my face id covered in zits, and I wear them for a good two weeks.
I have been told by some that this is impossible, there must be some other cause, etc. It's bullocks.
And it isn't just soda, if I eat a nice big slice of cake, or anything with 40 grams or more of sugar and little-to-no protein, this happens.
When I wanted to lose weight, I reduced the number of calories I was consuming, and I lost weight! Weird, it must be that I changed my "energy balance". Except I didn't change *what* I ate, just how much. I'm not saying it's easy, but if you eat fewer calories than you burn, as a general rule, you'll lose weight.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
A diet isn't inherently bad when you're expending that energy through physical exertion. A power lifter can drink a coke and not have any issue whereas a sedentary programmer whose maximum amount of exertion for the day was climbing into his car not so much.
Calories in / calories out. You want to eat trashy feel good diets, then exert that amount of energy in your day so it won't matter. Otherwise, get your diet in check.
A super secret weight loss tip: Strength training is a far more effective means of losing weight than cardio and way less miserable.
You can always ignore what they have to say. Obviously, calorie intake (and coke sure is high in calories!) makes you fat. However, the body isn't a simple machine. Denying it calories results in a lot of negative reactions which are intentionally designed in to ensure the body keeps amassing calories. Most intelligent doctors know that just telling a fat guy to stop eating so much is worthless advice and just about never works (there's exceptions to every rule). Diets failing is the rule.
If Coke figures out how to get fat people thin without going the diet route (how, well, hell, I don't know!) at least it gives the overweight a fighting chance. As one of the members of that category, if you could slice 100 lbs off me tonight, I imagine I'd have a HELL of a lot more energy for the physical fitness I desire.
Or just keep making fun of fat people and telling them to diet. I mean, it's working pretty well right now, isn't it? I'm sure telling someone who already spends extra money on more calories that their food will cost even more is definitely going to make a big difference!
They say to really know someone you need to walk 1000 miles in their shoes. Well, to really know what it's like to be overweight, you need to be overweight. It's pretty much that simple. If you are, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you're one of the few that beat it through the traditional diet and exercise (ie: Sheer willpower) approach, good for you! But you know as well as I do that it sure as hell was harder than stopping smoking or even putting down the drink. Yet society views those as things to offer support, rather than ridicule for.
Sigh. I'm sure someone will just reply to this "LOL FATTY". Whatever. I'm in a taxpayer funded healthcare system. You're paying for not helping.
Had a quick google and evidently 1 pint of Coca Cola has a few more calories than...a pint of Guinness!
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Remember, your not fat because you eat a bag of cheetos and 2 liters of coke everyday and never leave your house. You're Fat because of North Korea and Iran and you don't believe in the right God.
Corporations have been doing this for ages.
The same professional deniers that insisted there was nothing unhealthy about smoking cigarettes, are now working the Koch brother's PR firm, and insisting that global warming is a hoax.
These scientists also work for, and support: the nuclear industry, Monsanto, and factory farmers.
You might also want to watch "That Sugar Film"
Patrick Moore, a scientist who help found Greenpeace, now works for several corporations.
Here he is promoting the wholesomeness of GMOs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSten18rI9A
Here he claims that rising levels of CO2 are good for the environment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWEjSDYfxc
Just typical corporate shenanigans.
A diet isn't inherently bad
Calories in / calories out. You want to eat trashy feel good diets, then exert that amount of energy in your day so it won't matter.
Mister self proclaimed health expert says that you can drink sugar water all day with no bad effects, as long as it's accompanied by exercise!!!
Who is paying you???
Does this fat make me look fat?
It's not that simple for most people. The body prefers a certain caloric intake level. When it does not get its preferred level, the body "complains" loudly in terms of cravings and discomfort.
And over time metabolism will slow down to catch up with the lower intake, so that one still gains weight even though they are eating less. And, still feel like sh8t.
It usually backfires after about 4 years. Very few can maintain that level of discipline to suffer beyond 4 years. Evolution heavily shaped our bodies, genes, and cravings to error on the side of plump.
Who knows, chubbies may better survive the apocalypse, having the last laugh. When nukes are flying, nobody will care about their slim figure.
Table-ized A.I.
They say to really know someone you need to walk 1000 miles in their shoes
If I walked 1000 miles on a regular basis, even in my own shows, I wouldn't be fat anymore.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Seriously. I went on Atkins about 10 years ago, *severely* cut back on bread/sugar/rice/pasta/cereal, and lost 50 lbs over a year or so with relatively little fuss. I ate lots of vegetables, with meat/cheese/eggs/cream/butter, etc. It tasted good, I wasn't hungry, and I satisfied sweets cravings with stuff sweetened with sucralose/stevia/sugar alcohols/etc.
Limit your calories per day say 2000 and go for a 30 Min walk or bike ride. You can easily lose 20LB in 4 months. Besides who wouldn’t want to have great cardio and not get winded when picking up a trash can.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Until you actually try it. Then when the weight starts dropping after a couple weeks, you wonder why you denied the obvious for so long.
CocaCola should have funded social studies instead, whole 'fat shaming' avenue would be a lot more productive than trying to misinterpret peer-reviewed hard science. With Social Sciences any nonsense could be published, given you insert enough right-think buzz words into your papers. For example the paper titled "The fat shaming of disadvantaged minorities by the patriarchy over consumption of carbonated beverages" is guaranteed to get published no matter what the conclusions and methods are. As long as introduction cites Gloria Steinem.
Sure there is! There's also Dasani!
But you're missing the point, instead of trying to bribe scientists into "proving" that sugary drinks are okay, which is terrible, they should be putting forth the stuff that is at least marginally healthier as an alternative. It shouldn't be Coca-Cola's job to convince you to consume the healthiest thing available, it should be Coca-Cola's job to convince you to drink their brand of whatever it is you want to drink. If you're concerned about the sugar in Coke they should want to convince you to drink Diet Coke, and if you're scared about both real sugar and artificial sweeteners they should want to convince you to drink Dasani. Their job should not be to convince scientists to lie to you.
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You're only correct to a point - ingesting GMO's, by and large, is safe by scientific consensus.
On the other hand, GMO's are horrible for the environment. The main "modification" given to plants is to make them more tolerant of highly toxic weed killers. This has sparked an arms race between your corn crop and weeds, to the point that superweeds are basically the farming equivalent of super bacteria. This is horrible for local flora and fauna who are out competed by the super weeds that grow faster and hardier than ever. And look at what it's doing to things like our bee populations. These neonectoid products are generally thought of as the reason we're seeing for the ongoing pollinator loss.
So just because you can eat GMO food doesn't mean it's good for us.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A common, but simple error. Muscle weighs more than fat. If you strength train, your muscles will constantly be repairing themselves well after you've done strength training. This repairing burns far more calories than the initial 900-1400. It will be far more than that.
Phelps spent at a minimum of 5-6 hours in a pool a day. His routine (assuming what is listed is correct) highlights all of the stuff he does http://workoutinfoguru.com/mic... If you're spending 5-6 hours swimming then you need to consume 10,000+ calories. Looking at Phelps diet he's eating a lot of grains, an energy drink, and could most definitely eat those pizzas you're referring to.
He also incorporate compound lifts into his training. Compound lifts include the bench, pull ups, push ups (really just a bench), squats, and deadlifts. These work the most muscles in your body and give you the most bang for your buck.
Word of advice for you to help speed up your fat loss. Stop looking at your overall "weight" and saying I need to lose X. Weight is a cumulative number that fails to show the full picture. Instead, find out what your body fat percentage is. This number is what you really need to focus on and bring down. Muscle is infinitely more attractive than adipose tissue.
Next eat a diet high in protein. Pick either animal fats or carbohydrates. If you pick both you will get fat. One of the other. If you lack self control, consider trying the paleo diet. This will force you onto a high protein and fat diet while lowering your carb intake.
Good luck, personal fitness is a goal that every one should esteem to be the best at. People instinctively follow those who are in better shape.
All my life I was a twig, up until a point when two things happened about the same time: I turned 30, and became a regular bench tech, sitting down most of the time. Suddenly for the first time, I found myself getting a little pudgy around the midsection (still skinny everywhere else). I think most people's metabolism takes a bit of a dive at around 30 years of age. Plus I was not moving around much. Ever since, it's been a bit of a battle, and that was 20 years ago. Just 3 - 4 years ago, I was at the gym regularly and doing really good, then my back went out, twice. I never got back into the groove, and at +50, it's a little harder to find the energy (and time), but, as with anyone, it's all how I set my own priorities, I'm not going to make excuses. I need to get back in. My weak spot however, isn't soda.. I'm not even fond of it. I love my English ales, cheeses, and meads! Mead is like liquid fat, just drink the pounds on. Argh.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Unless you have a causal mechanism and argument, generated through the scientific method...
[Sugar - The bitter truth by Dr Robert H. Lustig, University of California Television (UCTV)] https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [Warning: 90 minutes]
This is the best math I've seen about sugar, coca-cola, energy drinks and obesity.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
A diet isn't inherently bad when you're expending that energy through physical exertion.
This is true in one sense; untrue in most others.
It's absolutely true that if a person's energy intake is perfectly balanced with his energy output, that he won't gain weight -- or at least not much. Your body composition might be changing a little bit so your weight might not be 100% stable, but let's say this is true as a first approximation. The thing is, a human body isn't an insulated laboratory reactor; it has interfaces to the outside world that take in and expel energy and matter. The problem with sugary drinks is that in absence of fiber, protein and fat is that they derange the systems that are supposed to regulate your calorie intake and output.
If you drink a 20 oz Coke for lunch your blood sugar levels will rise rapidly, unless you immediately run for a mile and a half (roughly what it'd take an average person to run off 140 calories). Since your endocrine system tries to keep blood sugar in a very narrow range it will immediately begin storing that excess sugar as fat. Because the sugar syrup you just consumed enters the bloodstream with unnatural rapidity, your body will overshoot and you'll very soon experience *low* blood sugar -- which makes you hungry and irritable. This explains why people who are gaining weight are eating more calories than they need BUT are feeling hungry.
Contrast this with eating, say, 20 cups of raw spinach. If you can manage to choke it down, that much spinach has exactly as many calories (140) as the soda, and what's more those calories are almost entirely carbohydrates -- just like the soda. But you aren't going to be hungry for a long, long time. That's because the carbohydrates in the spinach are locked up in plant tissues that take a long time to digest, so they enter the bloodstream very gradually.
The "calorie is a calorie" hypothesis is based on a gross misapplication of thermodynamic theory to the human body. The "calorie" figures in food are determined by burning a measured quantity of food inside a calorimeter. For a calorimeter it's absolutely true that a "calorie is a calorie"; that's because a calorimeter isn't a self-regulating system which manages its exchange of matter and energy with the outside world by getting hungry and tired. A human body is.
According to the "calorie is a calorie" hypothesis, it's worse to eat two hard boiled eggs for lunch than it is to drink a coke, because the eggs have 16 more calories. That's obviously ridiculous.
Drinking a coke instead of eating real food is like putting gasoline in a diesel engine. A scientific sounding argument could be made that you should get more power out of your diesel engine that way: gasoline and diesel fuel are both liquid hydrocarbon fuels, and gasoline has a higher energy content per volume than diesel. This of course is only convincing if you have no idea of how a diesel engine works.
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Seriously... I drink pop maybe 2-3 times a year. How's that as an alternative? I'm not saying drinkers are to blame but since I cut my pop, everytime I drink it, it just taste like syrup.
Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.
Sugar + Phosphoric Acid = diabetes in a bottle. You are better drinking a home brewed ice tea with lemon / no sugar. Trust me .. I know. I've been borderline diabetic for a few years. It's the lifestyle of a Systems Engineer. When I was younger I performed many late night firmware updates to midrange servers and SAN hardware. What did I do to stay awake ? I did the Dew in mass quantities.. 2 litre bottles..Coca-Cola..
Bottom line. I'm glad I'm married and have a wife that made sure I went for my yearly physicals. Now.. no more soda for me. I only drink brewed ice tea, coffee,
ice coffee (no sugar). Grilled salmon, steak tips.. nor much bread.
Pretty much close to normal. Processed foods and sugary drinks are making a lot of people sick.
Most people like Coke and have nothing against Coca Cola corporation. They know Coke has sugar, and sugar makes them fat. They know it's up to them to consume it in moderation and if they don't then they accept the consequences.
So for Coke to do an RJ Reynolds and try and pretend uhhhhhh sugar does NOT make you fat it insults the intelligence of their customers and begs Government to say 'they have gone too far' and to step in and regulate. When that happens Coke, remember you started it.