Caffeine destroys Vitamin C, which is used to deter toxins in the body which would cloud your brain. According to MayoClinic, having more than 500mg of pop a day can cause tension, irritability, anxiety, restlessness or nervousness.
Sugar, which we all know is high in pops, causes bad teeth. On top of that, it suppresses a key growth hormone called BDNF. Low levels of BDNF are linked to Depression, and Schizophrenia.
Artificial coloring in pop will stain teeth, giving it the color of the pop many times. This isn't helped by the fact that the sticky sugar will stick to the teeth.
Doctor Jeep
Ph.D.
Mmm. Yay.
Since you listed caffeine first, I'll go with that first. To start with, soda has pretty negligible amounts of caffeine. A 12 oz mountain dew has 55mg of caffeine in it, which is significantly higher than coke at 34mg per can. That site says 200-300 can be consumed safely per day, so that means you can drink 4-5 mountain dews or 7 cans of coke a day before reaching caffeine levels that are considered unhealthy. Not to mention, it doesn't say anywhere that it destroys Vitamin C. That doesn't even make sense.
Sugar next. The whole 'bad teeth' thing I've never understood, do any of you people swish your soda in your mouth and gargle it like mouthwash? 99.99% of the soda that goes in my mouth doesn't even touch my teeth. My teeth are fine. As far as your publication goes, it's not popularly supported. I can't find any other material on the subject and even UCLA themselves appear to have dropped the pursuit of such a claim. It's been 10 years since that hypothesis has been put out and there's literally no reading material about it anywhere.
Pop is an extremely high source of sugar. So, if you drink a few cans a day (or a couple - depending), you already are going to be over doing it with anything else you eat. And caffiene stays in your body for about 16 hours. So if you're guzzling pop, you wont be able to meet your Vitamin C requirements that day, because it stays in your system. Or if you just have 1, or 2, you won't be taking in Vitamin C properly until the caffeine has exited your system.
Caffeine has a half life of 5 hours to 56 hours, so that 16 hour claim is ridiculous. Caffeine also doesn't destroy Vitamin C. So, no, you won't get scurvy from drinking soda. Your sugar budget for the day is pretty much irrelevant, different people need different amounts. Something being high in sugar doesn't automatically make it unhealthy.
On top of this, you hardly addressed the entire point of my comment, which was about it's ability to cloud mental processing. You referenced a bad, old article and then told me how it had too much sugar and how you can be deficient in Vitamin C from drinking caffeine.
Actually, since we're including caffeine as an ingredient in our definition of soda, I have a whole new point. Caffeine is a CNS Stimulant. CNS stimulants are widely recognized for their ability to
improve memory and recall of information. You know those kids chowing down on Adderall at school for those hard tests? It's a CNS Stimulant and actually does help them with their work. So, as far as clouded mental processing goes, nope. Maybe even improved.
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