Antioxidant Soda: Because You’ll Buy Anything
March 9th, 2009
|
| Share |
If health benefits are major factor in choosing what beverage you drink, soda is probably not very high on the list. It doesn’t provide much nutrition, it contains a large amount of empty calories and the the carbonic acid in soda has been linked to increasing tooth decay. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with a nice refreshing carbonated drink, it’s just not exactly a health beverage. Diet soda does remove the calorie concern, but it may not be the best thing to drink from a health perspective either. There is some evidence that the extreme sweetness of diet soda may lead to increase sugar consumption by desensitizing drinkers to sweet flavors and getting them used to getting a sweet fix.
(additionally, they taste like a combination of metal and industrial solvent, but that doesn’t seem to bother some people.)
Yet, the lack of health benefits from soda has not stopped Seven Up from cashing in on the health conscious soda drinker market with a new product: Diet Cherry 7UP Antioxidant.
This is, of course, from the same brand of soda that touts itself as “all natural.”
Diet Cherry 7UP Antioxidant
THERE’S NEVER BEEN A MORE DELICIOUS WAY TO CHERRY PICK YOUR ANITOXIDANT.In the mood for a healthy boost?
NEW Diet Cherry 7UP Antioxidant has the same great taste without the calories of the original. Refreshing all natural flavors with a splash of antioxidant. We’ll drink to that!
So what is so special about this Diet Cherry 7Up Antioxidant? Well, it seems it’s actually the same as the non-antioxidant variety except they threw in some vitamin E. Hmm, I wonder why they “Cherry Picked” vitamin E as the only one of the antioxidant class of vitamins to include. Perhaps it’s because vitamin E is one of the cheaper ones to get as a food additive? Also, the market for Vitamin C seems to already be saturated, so why not vitamin E, right?
Vitamin E is indeed an antioxidant and as such it has been theorized that vitamin E supplements may aid in preventing cancer or other conditions which could result from cellular damage due to oxygen free radicals. There’s little doubt that vitamin E’s antioxidant properties do help protect the body to some extent and that lack of vitamin E can be detrimental to human health, but research has failed to show much in the way of benefits from consuming higher than necessary amounts of the vitamin.
There is, however, evidence that levels of vitamin E beyond those normally required for proper nutrition may be detrimental to health. The jury is still out on the issue but as things stand, there is at least as much data to indicate that extra vitamin E is detrimental to health as there is to indicate it is beneficial.
Vitamin E has been proposed for the prevention or treatment of numerous health conditions, often based on its antioxidant properties. However, aside from the treatment of vitamin E deficiency (which is rare), there are no clearly proven medicinal uses of vitamin E supplementation beyond the recommended daily allowance. There is ongoing research in numerous diseases, particularly in cancer and heart disease.
Recent concerns have been raised about the safety of vitamin E supplementation, particularly in high doses. An increased risk of bleeding has been proposed, particularly in patients taking blood-thinning agents such as warfarin, heparin, or aspirin, and in patients with vitamin K deficiency. Recent evidence suggests that regular use of high-dose vitamin E supplements may increase the risk of death (from “all causes”) by a small amount, although a different study found no effects on mortality in women who took vitamin E daily. Caution is warranted.
It should also be noted that deficiency in vitamin E is exceedingly rare, especially in industrialized countries. However, the amounts in the Cherry 7Up probably are not going to cause any harm to health, as they’re not really all that high and probably won’t raise vitamin E levels to the level where detrimental effects may occur.
Just don’t expect it to do anything good for you either… But hey, you’ll buy anything, right?
This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 12:50 am and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Just LAME, Obfuscation, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
March 9th, 2009 at 4:41 am
Vitamin E is probably the most useless nutrient to supplement a beverage with. Of all the nutrition decencies, having deficient vitamin E seems like about the most unlikely. It’s found in a huge number of major foods like wheat, corn, corn oil, canola oil, oats, nuts and in lesser, but descent amounts in meats and fish.
It’s also not even that vital to health compared to other things, but everyone gets plenty of it because you would almost have to work at it to not get enough. The only groups that wouldn’t get enough would be some that survive on a very narrow diet like maybe farmers in some poor area who eat nothing but a single breed of rice or something. Those types are deficient in everything though.
They used to say that it might help with prostate cancer becasue I guess some study found a small indication of that but bigger studies were done and found no observable effect when taken above WHO recomended levels.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 8:46 am
‘Soft’ drinks were created as a healthy replacement for alcohol consumption, yet now I suspect that they are at the root of as many health issues as their hard counterparts. Yes, alcohol is the worse in terms of physiological damages, and social costs, but I’ll bet if you look at causation for other physical health issues, soft drink over consumption will be shown to be a significant contributing factor.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Sodas were often originally formulated by pharmacists and I suppose at one time there may have been a legitimate health aspect, since they were used as a means of delivering some kind of digestive or tonic or something that might have been unpleasant tasting on its own. Famously Coca-Cola once contained cocaine, which as a stimulant might have some pharmaceutical value (although dispensing it in a soft drink to anyone looking for a perk up probably wasn’t of medical value.)
I think that any claims that Coke, Pepsi, 7up or any of the other sodas were anything more than sweet tasting and refreshing drinks to have at a barbecue or ball game was gone by mid century. I don’t remember ever hearing or seeing a soda advertised with any kind of a health claim attached to it (until now of course.)
But this is a really absurd idea to try to turn cherry soda into an ‘antioxident’ health drink.
I’ll admit I like a carbonated soft drink as much as the next guy, but I’m not about to start drinking sodas becasue I think they’re going to provide any kind of nutrient. I try not to drink soda on a regular basis because it’s so devoid of anything useful. I can’t drink diet soda myself either, it has such a strange mouth feel and it tastes nothing like regular soda. The aftertaste really lingers. That doesn’t bother some people but to me it’s very unpleasent tasting.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 10:51 am
But the flavors are 100% “natural,” it say so right on the bottle. Natural = healthy!
Personally I avoid it because I was told by the internet that corn syrup is almost solely responsible for the weight problem in America, which was weird because I thought it had something to do with a sedentary lifestyle coupled with cheap and readily available food. Silly me.
And Actual Scientist, I know what you mean about the diet sodas. I haven’t been able to get near a diet soda since the first time I tried a sip of my mom’s TAB back in the 70s. Absolutely godawful stuff.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 11:38 am
apotheosis said:
Well, consumption of large amounts of empty carbohydrates doesn’t help. Sugar is a good way to pack a lot of calories into something, so if you drink a couple cans of soda a day it can definitely contribute to weight. By sugar I mean either cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup, they’re both the same in terms of calories and despite the fact that there have been claims that the corn sweeteners are worse, there’s no reliable evidence of that.
Either way, high calorie soft drinks are likely part of the problem.
apotheosis said:
Oh god, I can’t stand diet soda. I used to drink quite a lot of soda, I drank a glass almost every day with lunch. I have to admit I happen to like soda quite a lot and I still drink it on occasion.
Given that I was drinking it every day and I could stand to lose a few pounds, I figured I really ought to stop consuming that much. I absolutely hate diet soda but I had been told it was an acquired taste and after you had drank it enough you stopped noticing. I tried and forced myself to drink diet soda for about two months. No dice, the stuff still tasted as godaweful as when I started out.
I have no idea how people can drink that stuff.
So I had to go with plan B: stop drinking soda in general. Now I only have the stuff when I’m out to dinner or at a party or some other time like that. I don’t drink it as a routine thing. I probably drink it about two or three times a month as opposed to almost every day. I lost quite a bit of weight due to this alone. It is very noticable.
I now drink seltzer, sometimes the mildly flavored kind but with just a handfull of calories per bottle.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Diet sodas are a ploy by the corn industry to make sure we prefer the corn-syrup sweetened drinks.
Nah, actually while I’m not a big fan of diet pop, I have friends who have developed a taste for them and now won’t drink anything else. *shrugs* Heck, people eat durian fruit, and some parts of Europe consider maggot-infested cheese to be a delicacy, so maybe diet pop isn’t so weird.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Calli Arcale said:
What, doesn’t everyone love a feast of Casu Marzu? (shudders) I have actually seen this ‘delicacy’ when we were in Southern Italy twenty-five years ago. It was being eaten by a bunch of old men and it was obviously revolting most of the locals watching as well.
Colas of any sort taste like iodine in water to me. I’ll stick to single malts thank-you – if I’m going to kill myself, I’ll do it in style.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Calli Arcale said:
Diet sodas don’t actually contain corn syrup. That’s regular soda, which uses the corn sweetener. Diet sodas use either saccharin, aspartame or both. Occasionally they use Sucralose. Sucralose is sold under the brand name Splenda and it’s the only artificial sweetner I can tolerate, as it tastes basically like sugar without the godawful aftertaste, when it’s used in its raw form. I’ve put it in coffee and such and it doesn’t make me cringe. However, somehow, they manage to make beverages with it taste horrible. I suspect its due to other artificial flavoring agents in them. Cyclamate is used in some countries, but it’s banned in the United States and several European countries. I don’t know if its banned in Australia. THere is some evidence that associated it with cancer, but that’s in dispute.
High-fructose corn syrup (which is known as glucose-fructose in some countries) is an interesting case. It’s used by most beverage makers in the United States supposedly because its cheaper. It’s basically a syrup of glucose and fructose which has been purified and produced through some enzyme reactions.
The industry claims that the stuff can’t be distinguished from cane sugar (sucrose) in blind taste tests. However, there is some evidence that it can. Personally, I think I can taste the difference, but being a skeptic and totally aware of the fallacies of human perception and the fact that I generally know what it is to begin with, I’m not going to count that for anything.
The stuff is not used nearly as heavily outside the US where it has little or no price advantage over conventional sugar. In a few countries it has a small price advantage but only in the US is it vastly cheaper than cane sugar.
This is an interesting situation because it’s entirely artificial. Cane sugar would be at least as cheap as corn based sweetners and possibly cheaper in a free market, but the US does not produce all that much sugar domestically, there are only a few places in the South and Hawaii where sugar cane can be grown and sugar beats are not that huge a source of sucrose. It would be cheap on the international market, except the US has tariffs on it – enormous ones compared to other imports. The tariffs go back to the time of the First World War, when the US tried to limit imports and encourage domestic production for stratigic reasons.
There were tariffs on just about all foods, but they’ve all been gone for decades. Yet sugar has remained extremely heavily taxed. Of course, the US sugar growers don’t mind because they’d be dwarfed by imports if they weren’t so heavily taxed.
There are also direct subsidies for corn-based products like sweeteners.
This, of course, does not really help the energy situation, when you consider that corn is now being used for ethanol in large amounts, using it for sweeter as well only makes the situation worse by increasing the demand for corn byproduct materials instead of corn as a staple food.
Why is this?
Well, to put it simply: ADM. To give the more complete reason: Archer-Daniels Midland Corporation.
They happen to have some of the largest proportional expenditures for political lobbying of any big company in the world.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
“Diet sodas use either saccharin, aspartame or both.”
Here in Sweden it’s quite common to see acesulfame potassium + aspartame. I’ve never seen saccharin sodas, but I’ve seen sucralose and cyclamate once or twice.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I might have to give you a caution for use of the phrase “empty calories”.
Feel free to justify your use of this meme.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Joffan said:
You’ve got a point. Calories one of the most important things, if not the most important thing food provides, without nutritional calories we’d waste away and our bodies wouldn’t have the energy to function after they were done harvesting all tissues for calories.
Let me rephrase that then. “Non beneficial calories’ might be a better term than “empty calories” non-beneficial meaning that A) they’re not accompanied by anything useful as far as nutrition goes and B) are almost always contributing to excessive calorie intake and not basic nutritional needs
(I don’t know anyone who drinks a lot of soda and is not already getting plenty of food calories).
The other thing that makes them “empty” is that soda is not a filling or satisfying food. At least if you ate something high in calories that was filling it would satisfy your appetite for some time. If you eat dinner with a glass of soda or a glass of water, you’re not likely to eat less of the meal to compensate for the extra caloric intake of the soda. However, if those calories had come from an appetizer or something, that would be more likely to impact other food calories you take.
So… “Non beneficial” and “Prone to adding to calories from other foods, as opposed to replacing them”
But I think you do have a point that the whole “empty calorie” term can be deceptive.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Soylent said:
Yeah, well like I said, it varies country to country and it’s also complicated by some other factors. Like, for example, the EU is supposed to have uniform food laws to make trade and regulation easier, but countries can get extensions to implementing them or get exceptions and amendments for how they are enforced or have local and national regulations ontop of the existing ones.
Probably not so surprising that something like food regulation would turn out to be extremely difficult to get different European countries to agree on and enforce in any kind of uniform way.
I don’t care how much of a sense of continental unity they try establish, the British, French and Italians will never ever agree on what should go into a sauce and what is so sacrilegious that it should be forbidden by law.
I bet your diet soda tasts just as bad as what we have on the other side of the Atlantic though.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
I know; I was trying to make a joke that the industry is trying to make us prefer the high-fructose corn syrup by making the diet sodas taste so awful.
And at least as far as I’m concerned, it’s working! I love me some high-fructose corn syrup! The health nuts can have my Mountain Dew when they pry it from my cold, dead, fingers!
I agree — sucralose isn’t too bad. Diet 7-Up uses it, and it’s just about the only diet pop I actually *like*.
BTW, I understand the main reason why corn syrup is cheaper is partly because of the huge corn production in the US but also because it’s so convenient from a manufacturing standpoint. It’s already liquid, which makes it a lot easier to mix into a drink. With granulated sugar, you have to be more careful how you add it. I’m not sure I can tell any flavor difference, though. I’ve used both corn syrup and sugar in cooking, and there are differences, but not flavor, as far as I can tell. I find the main difference is in handling.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
I know this is off subject but I saw the mention of ethanol
I work for an ethanol production plant and have experience in dealing with another, the process of making fuel grade ethanol makes a substantial ammount of byproduct: “DDGS” Dried Distillers Grains with Syrup
and Wet Cake, We now also extract a form of Corn oil that is being used for BioDiesel or is applied to animal feed.
My point is while ethanol is not the best solution to oil, it does not interfere with the use of corn as feed, the end product DDGS is actualy better suited for use in animal feed than it was as whole grain corn. In the current state of the economy and price of ethanol on the market, DDG Is keeping us in a job. Most people do not realize how much processed feed we make on the back side of production. Also many plants go further and extract starch, sugars and manufacture multodextrose during their process.
Maybe I’m wrong but from a producer’s stand point even though ethanol is not as efective of an alternative to gasoline as was initaly sold to everyone it dosen’t deserve some of the blame people place on it.
Have there been any actualy studies as to how much impact Ethanol has actualy had on use of corn as a food staple?
I live in southern IN/IL and see piles of corn sitting in grain elevators on the ground because there is no where to store it. Localy I have seen elevators rent the parking lots of closed Wal Marts, make temporary walls with concrete highway barriers and pile corn in side of them for aditional storage. A large ammount of this simply rots because there is nowhere to store it. Yet I continue to hear how ethanol has driven up the price of food because a corn shortage.
Now that said I do know that wheat has not been grown as much and has been replaced by corn due to subsities for corn growing in favor of ethanol. I imagine this could in turn drive up the cost of flour, but the price of fuel also has a major impact on this. The cost of farming is directly affected by the price of diesel fuel.
I realize I am not half as educated as most of the people that read your blogs, and if this seems like I have wasted anyones time in having to read it I apologize. Just from my stand point the facts don’t seem to add up.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
the00mikearvi said:
A big reality check is in order.
First and foremost, over the past two years, 14 studies have found a direct link between the ethanol scam and higher food prices.
Second, calculations by Jason Hill, a resident fellow in the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and the lead author of a study, which was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on February 2 has shown that biofuel produced from corn grains has environmental and health costs that are equal or greater than those of gasoline, depending on whether natural gas, coal, or corn stover is used to generate heat during the production process.
Yes grain and corn are rotting in silos all over the North American Breadbasket, but meanwhile people are starving elsewhere. This issue is political, as I have said on a previous thread, and should be addressed as such. One thing is becoming perfectly clear: Ethanol isn’t the answer to our energy challenge or the farming issue. Ethanol makes it worse.
Quote Comment
March 9th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Calli Arcale said:
I think it has more to do with that whole ****ed up sugar subsidy/import quota thing(because it’s clearly a threat to national security if domestic sugar cane growers in Florida are unable to compete with south America on fair terms. What if world war III breaks out and you run out of snickers bars? That’d be an unmitigated disaster.).
Quote Comment
March 10th, 2009 at 1:15 am
the00mikearvi said:
Well, I haven’t graduated from college (yet). I’m kinda taking the slow route due to some issues that came up a while back and broke my stride combined with economics. I’m also not entirely in love with the major I have, yet changing it would set me back quite a lot.
Don’t feel like you need a degree to contribute. You just need to be right. Being factually correct trumps all credentials.
Quote Comment
March 10th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
no one seems to be hitting the correct topic – this stuff tastes like cough syrup !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The previous diet cherry 7up was light and just enough cherry. This stuff is horrible. Once again all this discussion and none of you actually tasted it. we need to let 7up know that once again they have failed – just like with 7up plus – put apple juice in pop and think no one will notice ????? give me a break. They must not have any tasters at 7up Inc.
Quote Comment
March 10th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Linda Kubish said:
Sorry, I didn’t try it because like I said, I don’t drink much soda and when I do drink soda, I don’t usually drink the stupid kind.
Quote Comment
March 20th, 2009 at 11:25 am
That beverage is probably a stupid idea especially with all the high fructose corn syrup in it.
But I am disappointed in this site. I thought you did better research than to listen to big pharma propaganda. I expect you to print an update and retraction on your attack of vitamin E.
Now pay attention and read this and learn why vitamin E above the dismal levels the FDA sets is beneficial and why those studies in the media are flawed.
Check out this non-profit site: http://lef.org
An Unjustified Attack on Vitamin E
And for vitamin E and other vitamins on that site:
Dietary Supplements Under Attack
Vitamin Studies: Rebuttal to Allegation That Certain Vitamins May Shorten Lifespan
Another Flawed Attack against Antioxidants
Dietary Supplements Attacked by the Media
Quote Comment
March 20th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I am disappointed in this site. I thought you did better research than to listen to big pharma propaganda. I expect you to print an update and retraction on your attack of vitamin E.
Now pay attention and read this and learn why vitamin E above the dismal levels the FDA sets is beneficial and why those studies in the media are flawed.
Check out this non-profit site: http://lef.org
An Unjustified Attack on Vitamin E
And for vitamin E and other vitamins on that site:
Dietary Supplements Under Attack
Vitamin Studies: Rebuttal to Allegation That Certain Vitamins May Shorten Lifespan
Another Flawed Attack against Antioxidants
Dietary Supplements Attacked by the Media
Quote Comment
March 20th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Konstantin said:
I don’t care what you expect from me, you’re not going to see it unless I see some consistent and compelling evidence from respectable scientific bodies.
I’ll say this much: For most people who are healthy and are not on blood thinning medications, vitamin E overdosing is probably not a realistic concern. In other words, it’s unlikely that it would be harmful to have a daily dose of vitamin E moderately greater than necessary amount for optimal health.
However, Vitamin E and for that matter, just about all vitamins have never been shown to be beneficial in extremely high doses – doses beyond what the body needs. Nobody is going to argue that lack of vitamins is harmful. Lack of vitamin C is what causes scurvy and low doses, even if not bad enough to cause scurgy can impare tissue building and the recovery from injury. Lack of vitamin B12 can cause nervous system problems and pernicious anemia. Lack of vitamin A can cause problems with digestion, the retnal lining and a variety of other issues.
However, that does not mean that taking enormous doses of these vitamins is helpful. The concept has been around forever. Linus Pauling was huge on telling people they needed to take hundreds of times the recommended levels of Vitamin C. Groups have pushed vitamin E and A and B vitamins and there’s just no evidence that this is helpful.
Quote Comment
March 20th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
The LifeExtension® site, from which all of this ‘unbiased’ proof of mega-vitamin benefits also sells nutritional supplements, including minerals, vitamins, herbs and hormones.
In my opinion, this makes Konstantin’s post nothing but thinly veiled spam.
Quote Comment
March 21st, 2009 at 3:11 am
Konstantin, I read your links and it smells like BS to me. It is full of unscientific assumptions and telltail jargon for bad science. I agree with Buzz because all the info I’m aware of is that vitamins are important to a point but that enormous doses beyond nutritional needs are unnecessary and possibly harmful.
Isn’t mega-vitamin therapy one of the oldest tricks in the book? It’s been around for as long as I can remember and many in the Church of Scientology and other groups like that talk about how anything can be cured with vitamins.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2009 at 3:25 am
You are absolutely wrong about vitamins. Yes, the person who eats natural foods and lives away from the modern world would get plenty, but this is not the case. Our bad health these days is the direct result of not getting enough natural healthy vitamins. Vitamins are what our bodies need to be healthy and without them we are unhealthy it is that simple.
Food today and medication does not have the amouts or balance we need. Firstly, food is cooked in harsh manners, especially microwave which kills the food and therefore the nutrition is null. Food is now placed under radiation. Again, all nutrition essence is destroyed because our bodies need to have the vitamins live from the food and the microwaves and radiation destroy it. Also, food today is not grown organically and that destroys the vitamins. Our bodies need alive food and today food is covered in insecticides. How do they know to kill only insects and not you? They do not. You are bringing nutritionally empty food in that has been killed by radiation, chemicals and alike.
Now there are worse which are genetically modified foods which have been made to look like real food and even taste similar but they are not from the earth or nature but are from a laboratory. They are just synthetic chemicals that have no nutrition and worse can cause cancer. Their DNA is corrupt. Remember you are what you eat.
Big drug companies are the reason for this. They want you sick so you can take their medications. Their medications make you worse. That is the other problem, these toxic drugs have turned our bodies into waste dumps.
Do drugs from big pharam help? Do they make you feel better? No. It only seems that way. These are like any drugs. Drugs to an addict make it seem like they are better. Give them their fix of whatever drug they think they need and they think they feel much much better, but really each dose makes the addiction worse in the long run.
Don’t worry, there are steps to fix thing.
STEP ONE IS CLEANSE THE BODY OF TOXINS. This can be done many ways for different types of toxins. Fast for days and use a colon cleans product then a liver cleans and drink plenty of water to flush out the toxins. Do not drink city water, it is filthy with fluoride.
Next, take NATURAL pills of vitamins to built up your body and immune system. Use plant-derived organic vitamins.
transition to 100% organic eating and be sure not to eat anything that has chemicals in it or has been modified. If this happends you will need to repeat the toxic cleanse to flush it all out.
You do this and you will have perfect health.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2009 at 9:36 am
The above is more spam, this time from Wellness-World, providers of homeopathic remedies for you and your pets.
The fact that these sits have to resort to this kind of thing tells me everything I need to know about the level of honesty I can expect from the rest of their claims
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:08 am
drbuzz0 by your reply I’m assuming you run this site. I’m new and only recently started reading it. The comment I wrote that I expected more I was just kidding.
The site I mentioned lef.org I was serious about. You probably didn’t check it out or you didn’t have time. They back up what they write with references to peer reviewed scientific and medical journals like the Lancet and others. It’s not one of those sham sites. There’s references to everything they write. You might have heard of a well known genetics researcher named Dr. West; he was on their medical advisory board.
Take a look at their medical and scientific advisory boards and you’ll see it’s not some junk science or junk medicine.
Almost always their recommendations to their members about vitamins, supplements, etc. are eventually adopted by the government but years after LEF.
Any questions?
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:35 am
Gordon Says:
“Konstantin, I read your links and it smells like BS to me. It is full of unscientific assumptions and telltail jargon for bad science. I agree with Buzz because all the info I’m aware of is that vitamins are important to a point but that enormous doses beyond nutritional needs are unnecessary and possibly harmful.
Isn’t mega-vitamin therapy one of the oldest tricks in the book? It’s been around for as long as I can remember and many in the Church of Scientology and other groups like that talk about how anything can be cured with vitamins.”
You are wrong about enormous doses. Some vitamins are harmful in large doses and some are not.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Konstantin said:
The question at hand is if there is any benefit to mega-vitamins. Please don’t swamp us with links from websites like LifeExtension. If you want to offer proof please reference works from proper sources, like recognized medical journals with proper peer-review. Also the studies have to have things like good design, proper cohorts, proper controls, and a well formed null hypothesis. It also needs correlations that are not just artifacts of statistical juggling which means proper error analysis.
Tripe like you linked to before will not impress anyone here.
Quote Comment
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Konstantin said:
Well that’s true in the sense that there are vitamins that are not necessarily dangerous at any dose. Vitamin C, for example – you can potentially take enormous doses of vitamin C and your body will just excrete it after a certain point.
The amount of Vitamin C for optimal health varies. The WHO puts it at 45mg. The USDA puts it at 40mg and Health Canada puts it a bit higher. There’s no doubt that any of those levels is more than enough to prevent scurvy.
There have been some who suggested that up to 100mg a day may be the appropriate amount to assure there is always plenty, but you could take 300mg if you wanted. Hell, you could take 1000 if you wanted. It’s not even considered dangerous to take 2000mg of vitamin C. Once it gets beyond a couple hundred it just stops being absorbed.
There’s some who have pushed for taking tens of thousands of milligrams per day. For a healthy person that shouldn’t cause any critical health problems but it can cause indigestion and diarrhea since the digestive system eventually just starts trying to flush it out.
Most vitamins have to be taken in extremely. high doses to actually get to the point of an acute overdose danger.
Quote Comment
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:44 am
Konstantin said:
But are there with any proven benefit at very high doses?
I mean we can sit around debating whether or not there is an advantage in having 60mg instead of 40 or something, and most agree that you should have at least the minimum and more is possibly useful, but what about something like one hundred times more? Maybe it’s not harmful but does it do any good?
Quote Comment
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:02 am
Some people like DV82XL are too lazy to check the links which have the references to peer reviewed medical journals. Sorry DV82XL I’m not willing to do the work for you. All you have to do is check the references in those links. I’m sure you’ll recognize some of the journals.
Quote Comment
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:05 am
Yes there are benefits to dose larger than the FDA recommendations. Check the links. It’s not that hard and they are a non-profit organization. They make supplements and do research and clinical trials.
Quote Comment
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:44 am
Konstantin said:
Well you see it doesn’t count when you are referencing these studies to show that they are in error when they do not support your contentions as in the link Another Flawed Attack against Antioxidants.
The list of publications was copied verbatim from the February 28, 2007 edition of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) which thoroughly discredited the notion that mega doses of these supplements had significant benefit.
If there is one thing I hate more than a spammer, its someone that treats me like an idiot. You have provided nothing to support your contentions except an attack from a website selling these products on a ligitimate journal disagreeing with your nonsence.
Quote Comment
March 29th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
DV82XL are you serious? If you are too lazy too read the references what do you expect me to do?
References:
1. Sies H. Introductory remarks. In: Sies H, ed. Oxidative stress. Orlando, FL.: Academic Press; 1985:1-7.
2. Halliwell B, Gutteridge JMC. Free Radicals. In: Biology and Medicine. 3rd ed. London, England: Oxford University Press; 1999.
3. Papas AM. Diet and antioxidant status. In: Papas AM, ed. Antioxidant Status, Diet, Nutrition, and Health. Boca Raton, Fla: CRC Press; 1998:89-94.
4. Halliwell B. Antioxidants in human health and disease. Annu Rev Nutr. 1996;16:33-50.
5. Halliwell B. Antioxidant defense mechanisms: from beginning to the end (of the beginning). Free Radic Res. 1999;31:261-272.
6. Willcox JK, Ash SL, Catignani GL. Antioxidants and prevention of chronic disease. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2004;44:275-295.
7. Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Simonetti RG, Gluud C. Antioxidant supplements for prevention of gastrointestinal cancers: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet. 2004;364:1219-1228.
8. Murphy S, West KP Jr, Greenough WB III, Cherot Katz J, Clement L. Impact of vitamin A supplementation on the incidence of infection in elderly nursing home residents: a randomized controlled trial. Age Ageing. 1992;21:435-439.
9. Brown BG, Zhao XQ, Chait A, et al. Simvastatin and niacin, antioxidant vitamins, or the combination for the prevention of coronary disease. N Engl J Med. 2001;345: 1583-1592.
10. Marras C, McDermott MP, Rochon PA, Tanner CM, Naglie G, Rudolph A, et al. Survival in Parkinson disease: thirteen-year follow-up of the DATATOP cohort. Neurology. 2005;64:87-93.
11. Wright ME, Lawson KA, Weinstein SJ, Pietinen P, Taylor PR, Virtamo J, Albanes D. Higher baseline serum concentrations of vitamin E are associated with lower total and cause-specific mortality in the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2006 Nov;84(5):1200-7.
12. Ito Y, Suzuki K, Ishii J, Hishida H, et al. A population-based follow-up study on mortality from cancer or cardiovascular disease and serum carotenoids, retinol and tocopherols in Japanese inhabitants. Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2006 Oct-Dec;7(4):533-46.
13. Walston J, Xue Q, Semba RD, Ferrucci L, Cappola AR, Ricks M, Guralnik J, Fried LP. Serum antioxidants, inflammation, and total mortality in older women. Am J Epidemiol. 2006 Jan 1;163(1):18-26.
14. Jatoi A, Williams BA, Marks R, Nichols FC, Aubry MC, Wampfler J, Yang P. Exploring vitamin and mineral supplementation and purported clinical effects in patients with small cell lung cancer: results from the Mayo Clinic lung cancer cohort. Nutr Cancer. 2005;51(1):7-12.
15. Buijsse B, Feskens EJ, Schlettwein-Gsell D, Ferry M, Kok FJ, Kromhout D, de Groot LC. Plasma carotene and alpha-tocopherol in relation to 10-y all-cause and cause-specific mortality in European elderly: the Survey in Europe on Nutrition and the Elderly, a Concerted Action (SENECA). Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Oct;82(4):879-86.
16. Kirsh VA, Hayes RB, Mayne ST, Chatterjee N, Subar AF, Dixon LB, Albanes D, Andriole GL, Urban DA, Peters U; PLCO Trial. Supplemental and dietary vitamin E, beta-carotene, and vitamin C intakes and prostate cancer risk. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2006 Feb 15;98(4):245-54.
17. Shetty PS, Breeze E, Fletcher AE. Antioxidant vitamins and mortality in older persons: findings from the nutrition add-on study to the Medical Research Council Trial of Assessment and Management of Older People in the Community. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003 Nov;78(5):999-1010.
18. Losonczy KG, Harris TB, Havlik RJ. Vitamin E and vitamin C supplement use and risk of all-cause and coronary heart disease mortality in older persons: the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly. Am J Clin Nutr. 1996 Aug;64(2):190-6.
19. Daviglus ML, Orencia AJ, Dyer AR, Liu K, Morris DK, Persky V, Chavez N, Goldberg J, Drum M, Shekelle RB, Stamler J. Dietary vitamin C, beta-carotene and 30-year risk of stroke: results from the Western Electric Study. Neuroepidemiology. 1997;16(2):69-77.
20. Blot WJ, Li JY, Taylor PR, Guo W, Dawsey SM, Li B. The Linxian trials: mortality rates by vitamin-mineral intervention group. Am J Clin Nutr. 1995 Dec;62(6 Suppl):1424S-1426S.
21. Blot WJ, Li JY, Taylor PR, Guo W, Dawsey S, Wang GQ, Yang CS, Zheng SF, Gail M, Li GY, et al. Nutrition intervention trials in Linxian, China: supplementation with specific vitamin/mineral combinations, cancer incidence, and disease-specific mortality in the general population. J Natl Cancer Inst. 1993 Sep 15;85(18):1483-92.
22. Fawzi WW, Msamanga GI, Spiegelman D, Wei R, Kapiga S, Villamor E, Mwakagile D, Mugusi F, Hertzmark E, Essex M, Hunter DJ. A randomized trial of multivitamin supplements and HIV disease progression and mortality. N Engl J Med. 2004 Jul 1;351(1):23-32.
23. Rahmathullah L, Underwood BA, Thulasiraj RD, Milton RC, Ramaswamy K, Rahmathullah R, Babu G. Reduced mortality among children in southern India receiving a small weekly dose of vitamin A. N Engl J Med. 1990 Oct 4;323(14):929-35.
24. Jatoi A, Daly BD, Kramer G, et al. A cross-sectional study of vitamin intake in postoperative non-small cell lung cancer patients. J Surg Oncol. 1998 Aug;68(4):231-6.
25. Pastorino U, Infante M, Maioli M, Chiesa G, Buyse M, Firket P, Rosmentz N, Clerici M, Soresi E, Valente M, et al. Adjuvant treatment of stage I lung cancer with high-dose vitamin A. J Clin Oncol. 1993 Jul;11(7):1216-22.
26. Nathens AB, Neff MJ, Jurkovich GJ, Klotz P, Farver K, Ruzinski JT, Radella F, Garcia I, Maier RV. Randomized, prospective trial of antioxidant supplementation in critically ill surgical patients. Ann Surg. 2002 Dec;236(6):814-22.
27. http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2007/02/27/589608-antioxidants-dont-help-you-live-longer
28. http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2007/Feb07/vitaminstudy.html
29. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/27/AR2007022700925.html
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I agree this product is dumb because soda is not a health drink.
There is one good thing about soda, however. Soda is something someone can drink at a party that is a little more appealing than water. Soda is a good thing to provide at parties and social events that have alcohol, because it is a good alternative for those who do not want to drink or have to drive. It is a good idea to provide softdrinks along side any alcohol so that people do not feel compelled to drink more than they feel comfortable drinking.
Quote Comment
March 12th, 2010 at 7:03 am
[...] something seen in a refrigerator (not mine*) and the ongoing Food Rules project here, this link to an article from last year at Depleted Cranium about diet sodas – now with antioxidants! (And, unfortunately, artificial sweeteners and artificial flavors that [...]
Quote Comment
June 20th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Vitamin B12 has been proven to reduce the risk of both heart attacks and stroke. There are many reasons besides this, though, why B12 is such an important vitamin to include in your daily diet regimen to help maintain overall good health, vitamin plays an important rols in our daily life.
Quote Comment
June 20th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Vitamin B12 is critical for a number of functions in the human body. Recent studies and surveys have determined that a higher than previously thought number of people in industrial countries may have a mild deficiency in B12. Anyone who suspects that they may have such a deficiency or who is at risk should see their doctor about it. If it is the case, it can be treated easily with supplements.
Low B12 can result in a depressed immune system due to low white blood cell levels. It can also be associated with any number of other health problems.
Thankfully, while minor deficiencies may be common, very very few suffer from severe or critical deficiencies of B-12, except for a few narrow goups including diabetics, long time alcoholics and those with digestive problems. These individuals have trouble absorbing and retaining B12.
The only healthy individuals at risk for a serious deficiency are vegans, because B12 is only found in animal products, they should be advised to take supplements or eat fortified foods.
Again, anyone who may be at risk or is concerned needs to see their doctor because it’s easily remedied.
there is no solid evidence that doses of B12 or any other vitamin at levels significantly above the nutritional requirement is beneficial in any way.
Quote Comment