There’s a decent chance you’ll be reading about diet soda studies until the day you die. (The odds are exceedingly good it won’t be the soda that kills you.)
The latest batch of news reports came last month, based on another study linking diet soda to an increased risk of early death.
As usual, the study (and some of the articles) lacked some important context and caused more worry than was warranted. There are specific reasons that this cycle is unlikely to end.
1. If it’s artificial, it must be bad.
People suspect, and not always incorrectly, that putting things created in a lab into their bodies cannot be good. People worry about genetically modified organisms, and monosodium glutamate and, yes, artificial sweeteners because they sound scary.
But everything is a chemical, including dihydrogen monoxide (that’s another way of saying water). These are just words we use to describe ingredients. Some ingredients occur naturally, and some are coaxed into existence. That doesn’t inherently make one better than another. In fact, I’ve argued that research supports consuming artificial sweeteners over added sugars. (The latest study concludes the opposite.)
2. Soda is an easy target
In a health-conscious era, soda has become almost stigmatized in some circles (and sales have fallen as a result).
It’s true that no one “needs” soda. There are a million varieties, and almost none taste like anything in nature. Some, like Dr Pepper, defy description.
But there are many things we eat and drink that we don’t “need.” We don’t need ice cream or pie, but for a lot of people, life would be less enjoyable without those things.
None of this should be taken as a license to drink cases of soda a week. A lack of evidence of danger at normal amounts doesn’t mean that consuming any one thing is huge amounts is a good idea. Moderation still matters.
3. Scientists need to publish to keep their jobs
I’m a professor on the research tenure track, and I’m here to tell you that the coin of the realm is grants and papers. You need funding to survive, and you need to publish to get funding.
As a junior faculty member, or even as a doctoral student or postdoctoral fellow, you need to publish research. Often, the easiest step is to take a large data set and publish an analysis from it showing a correlation between some factor and some outcome.
This kind of research is rampant. That’s how we hear year after year that everyone is dehydrated and we need to drink more water. It’s how we hear that coffee is affecting health in this way or that. It’s how we wind up with a lot of nutritional studies that find associations in one way or another.
As long as the culture of science demands output as the measure of success, these studies will appear. And given that the news media also needs to publish to survive — if you didn’t know, people love to read about food and health — we’ll continue to read stories about how diet soda will kill us.
by Aaron E. Carroll, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Wilfredo Lee
The latest batch of news reports came last month, based on another study linking diet soda to an increased risk of early death.
As usual, the study (and some of the articles) lacked some important context and caused more worry than was warranted. There are specific reasons that this cycle is unlikely to end.
1. If it’s artificial, it must be bad.
People suspect, and not always incorrectly, that putting things created in a lab into their bodies cannot be good. People worry about genetically modified organisms, and monosodium glutamate and, yes, artificial sweeteners because they sound scary.
But everything is a chemical, including dihydrogen monoxide (that’s another way of saying water). These are just words we use to describe ingredients. Some ingredients occur naturally, and some are coaxed into existence. That doesn’t inherently make one better than another. In fact, I’ve argued that research supports consuming artificial sweeteners over added sugars. (The latest study concludes the opposite.)
2. Soda is an easy target
In a health-conscious era, soda has become almost stigmatized in some circles (and sales have fallen as a result).
It’s true that no one “needs” soda. There are a million varieties, and almost none taste like anything in nature. Some, like Dr Pepper, defy description.
But there are many things we eat and drink that we don’t “need.” We don’t need ice cream or pie, but for a lot of people, life would be less enjoyable without those things.
None of this should be taken as a license to drink cases of soda a week. A lack of evidence of danger at normal amounts doesn’t mean that consuming any one thing is huge amounts is a good idea. Moderation still matters.
3. Scientists need to publish to keep their jobs
I’m a professor on the research tenure track, and I’m here to tell you that the coin of the realm is grants and papers. You need funding to survive, and you need to publish to get funding.
As a junior faculty member, or even as a doctoral student or postdoctoral fellow, you need to publish research. Often, the easiest step is to take a large data set and publish an analysis from it showing a correlation between some factor and some outcome.
This kind of research is rampant. That’s how we hear year after year that everyone is dehydrated and we need to drink more water. It’s how we hear that coffee is affecting health in this way or that. It’s how we wind up with a lot of nutritional studies that find associations in one way or another.
As long as the culture of science demands output as the measure of success, these studies will appear. And given that the news media also needs to publish to survive — if you didn’t know, people love to read about food and health — we’ll continue to read stories about how diet soda will kill us.
by Aaron E. Carroll, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Wilfredo Lee
