Hi my Name is Megan, and I’m a Pepsi Addict

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The discussion about sugary drinks in class sparked my attention, since I have been known to kill a bottle or two in a few days time. I consider myself a caffeine addict, and when I don’t have my fill by a certain time of day, I start to suffer from withdraw headaches. I could quit at any time, I just don’t want to. Anyways, I thought for a minute about switching to diet pop, but then I remembered hearing stories on the news and health channels about how diet pop can lead to cancer, and if you ask me, I’d rather be fat than have cancer. I decided to take a more in depth look at the situation to see if there was any truth to this or not.

If you drink 2 or more diet pops a day, you chances of being obese go up 57% (Chavarria, 2013). So if you are an avid pop drinker, like myself, what’s the point of switching over when you still have over a 50% chance gaining weight anyway. The only time diet pop actually helps you loose weight is if you drink a glass or less a day. That’s not really worth it for the people that are considering switching over because they most likely are already over weight and there chances of becoming even more overweight are still significant even when drinking diet pop.

The ingredient being called into question on whether or not diet pop can cause cancer is aspartame. Aspartame is an artificial sweetener. It is made when amino acids, aspartic acids, and phenylalaine are joined together. It is 200 times sweeter than sugar, and lowers the calories of the drink (cancer.org, 2014). To determine if a substance causes cancer, two types of studies are done. One is an experimental lab study, where animals are given large amounts of the substance to see if it causes health concerns. The an observational study when you look at two groups of people, one would be the group who drink diet pop and the other would be people who don’t and you see the cancer rates of the two groups. In the lab studies done, researchers could not find any health concerns to the animals when they were given aspartame in amounts greater than 4,000mg/kg per day. But the site does say that two italian researchers published studies showing that high amounts of aspartame increased rats rate of getting blood cancers. The FDA and EFSA called the studies into question based on the lack of important data (cancer.org, 2014). The observational studies in people mostly concluded that aspartame does not link to cancer. The only significant one was how the high amounts of the chemical in men linked to the cancer, lymphoma, but they ruled that by chance.

So overall the risk of diet pop is pretty much the same as regular, unless you decide to drink less than one cup a day. If you only consume one glass of pop a day, I would suggest you go diet, but if your like me and that one glass a day doesn’t cut it, I would continue with regular pop since you still have a chance of gaining weight from diet pop as well. The Italian study that was mentioned earlier does spark some interest because it doesn’t say what data was not included in the study, and such. As we all know a lot of times when something bad happens, people like to cover it up, and who knows this could be the Beverage Association protecting themselves and their profits. If you are still scared of the risks of diet pop I would stick to regular but then this chemical has been around since the 1980’s and no one has died from it yet.

 

Work Cited:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/diet-soda/faq-20057855

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/artificial-sweetener

http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/aspartame

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/20939173/diet-soda-dangers-new-study-may-link-aspartame-to-cancer

 

One thought on “Hi my Name is Megan, and I’m a Pepsi Addict

  1. Lauren Marie Freid

    I chose this article to read and comment on because I do not really know a whole lot about soda pop and soda in general. I don’t like soda so I rarely drink it unless it is the only beverage available. It makes total sense to me that if you drink up to two or more soda pops a day, the likelihood of you becoming obese raises up to 57%. I believe in general constantly drinking soda and tons of sugary drinks will cause you to gain more weight. I don’t think soda pop has a more profound effect than regular soda on your body weight. In the studies you blogged about talking about aspartame linking to cancer, I agree with you that there is no direct causality. I think the studies done (both experimental and observational) are strictly due to confounding variables because like Andrew mentioned in class, everything can be due to chance. Chance is everywhere. The link below talks more about what aspartame really is and if there is strong evidence linking it to cancer in animals and humans. According to scientists, the experiments done are probably due to chance and there is not enough sufficient evidence to say aspartame directly causes cancer.

    http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/aspartame

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