[swiftLife]

Originally Posted by msdivy

From physics point of view, 100 calories of petrol is equivalent 100 calories of glucose, 100 calories of fructose and 100 calories sucrose.

But our body process these inputs in a different way. 100% petrol is excreted. 100% glucose is converted to energy. Percentage of fructose depends on body internal state & condition. A certain percentage of sucrose is converted to energy.

Exactly what I wanted to convey.

It's the effect of digestion of fructose in the body that causes all the issues. And sucrose is basically 1 glucose and 1 fructose joined together. The first thing that happens when you consume sucrose is that it gets broken down into glucose and fructose. And then the harmful process of digestion of fructose starts.

[fhdowntheline]

What about processed food in general? There are so many snacks that are packaged as tasty, healthy but are absolutely useless. Not to mention that they generate tremendously package waste which constitutes most of the garbage on the streets.

[PrideRed]

The Colas are bad for sure, but aren't the so called fruit juices? Some of them contain more sugar than regular Cola and are mostly made from concentrate and can have equal amount of "Pesticides" or more. The fruits are already loaded with pesticides. Fresh fruits have enough stories of coloring, injects around them. I think in an unknown place, the Cola's are better bet than fresh fruit juice or even fruit. Not that I drink often, but just a thought.

[FrodoOfTheShire]

I watched a video documentary few days back on YouTube. It showed how the big fast food chains and soft drinks companies changed their advertising model to target kids instead of adults. It was also easy for them to do so, just rope in some hot and happening movie star or sports star, tie up with the latest superhero movie or animated cartoon movie, put superheroes or cartoon characters on the product box and give out free toys with the food products. The kids are hooked! Peer pressure at schools does the rest. Good parenting goes down the drain, kids rebel and demand those food stuffs and sales skyrocket. So we as knowledgeable adults might know about fancy marketing and dangers of excess refined sugar and fast food, but kids are very easily impressionable.

[srini1785]

One more item added to the list of a "Fine city". I particularly like the 2000.00 SGD fine .

[The Observer]

IMHO banning stuff or advertisements will not reduce consumption, i would like to understand how someone comes to such kinds of conclusions. If sugar is the villain then Cola Companies are favorite villains but we should not forget that the entire gamut of processed food have a LOT of sugar in them. Will the govt ban all of them. Even baby food contains a lot of sugar. Also what about chocolates and our very own Indian traditional sweet shops - not taking names but am sure most us know.

Banning aerated drinks is not ethical too, then why aren't cigarettes banned? Will theaters now have "Cola is harmful for health" informational video like "tobacco is harmful" before every movie?

Seems like an illogical move but may appeal to the masses.

[CarBot]

As a matter of co-incidence, our topic during today's lunch an hour back was how a girl got terribly sick after drinking coke in USA. It has nothing to do with Diabetes.

What happened was the girl visited Miami and bought a crate of Coke from gas station and took it in her car. During the trip drank a tin of coke and got sick and got horribly sick. Now you may assume what was wrong with it. There was pee / poop of a rat or skunk on the tin which got dried and without noticing it she drank. You know how we drink from a tin. Direct mouth contact with tin.

Now if you imagine we usually buy the tin of drink and never wash the tin. We directly drink it. Pretty scary if you think now!

[silverado]

Anyone who has visited Coke Musuem in Atlanta will know , how you end up drinking way more while testing so many flavors.

I had been there in 2013 and was very much wary of drinking too much.
There was a time when i used to drink Coke/Pepsi a lot, but since 2014 have realized the dangers and almost do not drink it anymore.

A visit to McD/Dominos etc tells me younger gen is not too aware and I can see kids drink these happily.

In fact the entire Fast Food thing should be banned worldwide.

[Passiautonate]

Originally Posted by Sebring

When you ban something bootlegging starts. Everybody loses there. Better to make it prohibitively expensive.

Bootlegging- Hard to believe this can happen for a Cola. But yes I have been surprised in past.
Even with 28% GST its a marginal single digit increase. Anymore will make Trump angry. With plastic rice and food adulteration to deal with I am not seeing it a government priority.

[the_skyliner]

Originally Posted by CarBot

What happened was the girl visited Miami and bought a crate of Coke from gas station and took it in her car. During the trip drank a tin of coke and got sick and got horribly sick. Now you may assume what was wrong with it. There was pee / poop of a rat or skunk on the tin which got dried and without noticing it she drank. You know how we drink from a tin. Direct mouth contact with tin.

Do you know this girl personally? Because such rat piss stories are doing rounds since SMS days. I remember reading similar story which was a text message from a college friend way back in 2004.

[poised2drive]

Originally Posted by CarBot

As a matter of co-incidence, our topic during today's lunch an hour back was how a girl got terribly sick after drinking coke in USA. It has nothing to do with Diabetes.

What happened was the girl visited Miami and bought a crate of Coke from gas station and took it in her car. During the trip drank a tin of coke and got sick and got horribly sick. Now you may assume what was wrong with it. There was pee / poop of a rat or skunk on the tin which got dried and without noticing it she drank. You know how we drink from a tin. Direct mouth contact with tin.

Now if you imagine we usually buy the tin of drink and never wash the tin. We directly drink it. Pretty scary if you think now!

Originally Posted by the_skyliner

Do you know this girl personally? Because such rat piss stories are doing rounds since SMS days. I remember reading similar story which was a text message from a college friend way back in 2004.

There's an eerily similar story wrt Mountain Dew.

A person found the taste of his drink odd and found that there was a mouse in the drink. When the Pepsi Co was challenged, they came up with a logical, but horrible counter that their drink would dissolve mouse.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-dissolve.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/national...casses/333399/

[autoholic]

Ban on Ads in India is a sham. They ban advertisements of cigarettes and alcohol and the companies circumvent the rule by displaying surrogate ads (Bacardi, Kingfisher, Johnny Walker, Wills Etc.). There is no ban on surrogate ads and the celebs, while showing grave concern, regularly figure in these surrogate ads. In my opinion, if a government is okay with accepting revenues from these industries, then they are passively endorsing the use of their products. They are ready to penalize these firms for non-payment of their cut, sorry taxes, but not for selling the poison. Hypothetically, if the government could control use of a firearm against itself or its officials, you could have bought them off paan shops with cigarettes. They aren't overly concerned about anything that doesn't directly affects them. We have to wait till someone related to the legislature(god forbid) is affected by excessive Cola consumption for any concrete steps to be taken against it.

Only way to tackle the problem is awareness. My kids are made aware in their school about what is junk food and what is not. They are not allowed to bring junk foods to school. They still eat burgers, pizzas and drink colas, but, they dont demand those items regularly. I think its a good start. Many schools have completely banned junk foods from their canteens.

I am not in affirmative of the statement, a calorie is a calorie. My son was on ketogenic diet for seizure control and it did give us positive results till we were able to sustain it. So it means that different foods have different effects on our bodies and strengthens the age old recommendations of having a balanced diet. IMO all food types have something positive to offer to our body IF consumed in limited quantities, while excess of anything and everything is bad.

An article I came across on google search - 6-reasons-why-a-calorie-is-not-a-calorie

PS I used to be a Cola junkie, consuming a litre of the stuff per day. Needless to say, I am a diabetic since 29 years of age.

[Turbo yoda]

One day in May 2017 I made a decision to stop drinking all aerated drinks.2years since then I am happy I made that decision.
There is a sense of pride when I order water instead of coke

[behaln]

A very good move by Singapore.
Can anybody shed light on so called diet and lite versions of soft drinks. Are they too equally harmful?
As said by many fellow members, rather than ban awareness is the key. We need to make the young ones aware about the I'll effects of the sugary drinks.

[graaja]

Originally Posted by autoholic

PS I used to be a Cola junkie, consuming a litre of the stuff per day. Needless to say, I am a diabetic since 29 years of age.

OT to this thread: the same Keto diet that helped your son's seizure control can reverse your diabetes and take you off meds. There are doctors who help their patients to reverse diabetes using Ketogenic diet and/or intermittent fasting. An informative video on a study done on this topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUuH...r&index=6&t=0s

Originally Posted by behaln

Can anybody shed light on so called diet and lite versions of soft drinks. Are they too equally harmful?

Mostly, Aspartame is used as artificial sweetener in these diet versions. Though there is no scientific evidence that this is harmful, there are many arguments that aspartame can cause health issues like cancer, seizure etc. in the long run.

Personally, if I wanted to have a cola (haven't had them in years), I would rather have the regular one than the so called "zero calorie" version with the synthesized sweetener.

An very interesting interview with Gary Taubes (author of "The Case Against Sugar" and "How We Get Fat") on how the sugar industry made sugar as a major part of people's diet using the "reduce fat" guidelines introduced by Government. An apt topic for this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpALLBqcYTE