I was born in a simpler time. Back then, soda pop was an occasional treat, not an everyday (or twice a day) habit. In 1952, Americans on average drank 11.5 gallons of carbonated, caloric soft drinks per year. I doubt that I personally accounted for any of 1,786,100,000 gallons of cola, root beer, red pop, etc., produced and consumed in the U.S. that year, but a decade later, when per capita availability had increased to 14.5 gallons per year, I was doing my part.
I continued drinking my share of pop (as we call it in Michigan) for the next few decades, until the early 2000s when I started shirking my duty to the American beverage industry.
In the last few years before adopting a low-carb diet, I cut my consumption of pop by half or more. Now, of course, I avoid caloric pop altogether, and rarely drink the diet version, either, for reasons stated in an earlier post.
As the above bar chart shows, Americans in general have reduced their demand for caloric soft drinks in recent years, though by a small percentage. Many have turned to other caloric beverages, such as fruit juice and sports drinks. Swigging their calories is especially popular among the young.
During my lifetime, another upward trend (one yet to peak) has been in the percentage of the U.S. population afflicted with diabetes. That percentage has gone up more than six times, as the line graph below from the CDC illustrates.
Am I suggesting that the increased consumption of caloric drinks, especially carbonated soft drinks, caused the alarming increase in diabetes cases? No, of course not! As the cigarette manufacturers argued for years, cause is hard to prove when there are multiple variables.
Correlation isn’t the same as causation.
Right.
Nevertheless, I’m not drinking any pop.
Ever.
Sugar and HFCS are carbohydrates and it is necessary to show that their effect is uniquely due to the fructose rather than a generalized response to carbohydrate. As you point out, this is hard to do. I have made the point that most scientist consider that association does imply causality. It is a question of how strong the association is. The associations of most of the diet epidemiology, even sugar and diabetes have odds ratios that are usually in the ballpark of 1.5 while the association of tobacco and lung disease is in the ballpark of 20. Odds ratio is what you think. Relative payout for getting worse vs. better on the particular intervention.
There has to be a connection btw the pop consumption and diabetes. Crap, that is a lot of sugar!
I also remember a simpler time, perhaps not always better [before civil rights laws were enacted, no same sex marriage, etc]. I was born and raised in Massachusetts, we had one car, and my mother borrowed it several times a month to do the grocery shopping. I can remember traveling with her and my three brothers to pick up dad at the end of the day. There was a CocaCola machine outside the building where dad worked, and sometimes we were allowed to put coins in that machine and out would slide an icy cold bottle of Coke. It was a very special treat for us.
Now my “kids” and everyone I know drink the stuff every day, morning till night!
I also contributed to the profits of the American beverage companies for awhile, but, like you, quit the stuff years ago. For me, it never did really quench my thirst! Now it is water, coffee, almond milk and when it is really hot, club soda with some lemon juice, ice and Sweetz. It’s one more thing that always amazes me at the grocery store. With so many unemployed, how can they afford or rationalize all those cans of pop in the cart?