Just say no to the demon drink

Watch out, Carrie Nation: a new generation of prohibitionists is dawning. And they're not wasting any time on alcohol, either (you hear that, OLCC? Give up, already.). No, the new demon drink is: soda pop.

Yep, you heard right.

This Herald Sun article presents a mounting tide of research that seems to show that drinking soda is a leading cause of obesity.

It sites numerous studies, many coming from prestigious institutions like Harvard and Yale, showing what they believe is a correlation between soda (and other sweetened drinks) and obesity:

• One study of of 548 Massachusetts schoolchildren found that for each additional sweet drink consumed per day, the odds of obesity increased 60 percent.
• Another gave 44 women water, diet soda, regular soda, orange juice, milk or no drink before lunch. Total intake was 104 calories greater for those given caloric beverages than those given diet soda, water or no beverage. Caloric drinks didn't help women feel any fuller either.
• Then there is the "jelly bean study." Purdue University researchers gave 15 men and women 450 calories a day of either soda or jelly beans for a month, then switched them for the next month and kept track of total consumption. Candy eaters ate less food to compensate for the extra calories. Soda drinkers did not.

Why would drinking soda have a different effect than consuming other sweet things such as fruit or candy? One probable culprit is the primary sweetener in sodas, high-fructose corn syrup. America's subsidized farming production of corn has resulted in a thriving industry designed to use this low-cost raw ingredient for ever more food industry uses.

That means that animals, from fish to cows, are being fed corn even when their bodies aren't able to break it down properly. It also means that high-fructose corn syrup, produced through chemical manipulation, has replaced other sugars in most processed foods. Industrial corn crops are also used to produce tires, explosives, plastics, and more. And "of the 37 ingredients in chicken nuggets, something like 30 are made, directly or indirectly, from corn," according to Michael Pollan.

Without going into the dramatic ecological impact of industrial corn overfarming (but I encourage you to read more in the linked editorial and article by Pollan; it's fascinating), I can tell you that the business of using up our subsidized corn overproduction is serious stuff. As Pollan says, "The USDA is not thinking about public health. The USDA is thinking about getting rid of corn."

Unfortunately, it is increasingly clear that even though high-fructose corn syrup is being used in place of sugar as if they were identical, our bodies don't process it the same way. HFCS can increase heart-disease-causing triglycerides in the blood, and it doesn't cause the body to generate insulin or leptin, substances that help break down calories and depress our appetites.

The very profitable soda industry, unsurprisingly, defends itself with suspicious self-funded research, but it looks to me like the handwriting's on the wall.

For the consumer it's not clear what will happen. Will we have to pay sin taxes on our Big Gulps? Buy your Snapple at a state-owned store with bars on the window? Trade grubby hand-written copies to make your own bathtub Pepsi?

Or maybe, just maybe, the industry can go back to plain old sugar and spare us from having to drink gallons of unnatural, unhealthy high-fructose corn syrup.