In 1986, California passed a ballot initiative called Proposition 65,
which required consumer products with potential cancer-causing
ingredients to bear warning labels.
Rather than label their
products sold in California as likely carcinogenic, most companies
reformulated their product ingredients so as to avoid warning labels
altogether, and most did this on a national scale, not just in
California, to avoid carrying a separate inventory of products.
After
it was revealed that a common additive known as “caramel coloring” on
labels, or 4-methylimidazole (4-MI) scientifically, used in many sodas
may cause cancer, soda bigwigs Coke and Pepsi announced that they would
reformulate their caramel coloring in order to avoid adding a cancer
warning label to their products in California.
But did they really?
Pepsi Products Outside of California Still Contain Carcinogenic Caramel Coloring
It’s been more than a year since Coke and Pepsi declared
they would be reformulating their products to remove 4-MI in their
caramel coloring.
This artificial brown color is made by reacting
corn sugar with ammonia and sulfites under high pressures and at high
temperatures. This produces the chemicals 2-methylimidazole and
4-methylimidazole, which have been found to cause lung, liver and
thyroid cancer in lab rats and mice.
However, when the Center for
Environmental Health (CEH) tested samples of Coke and Pepsi products
from California and other states for 4-MI, they found marked
discrepancies in the Pepsi products:
“If
you live in California, Coke and Pepsi products are made without 4-MI, a
chemical known to cause cancer. But in testing of cola products from
ten states, CEH found high levels of 4-MI in ALL Pepsi cola products,
while 9 out of ten Coke products were found without 4-MI problems.”1
Pepsi
responded to CEH’s findings by stating they plan to remove the chemical
for the rest of the US by February 2014 and are also planning to remove
the chemical globally. Still, CEH’s executive director called Pepsi’s
delay “inexplicable” and urged the company to “take swift action” to
provide the same safer product that’s being sold in California to all
Americans.
It’s Not Unusual for Food Manufacturers to Use Toxic Chemicals in Markets Where They Can Get Away with It…
This is but one example of a product being forced to clean
up its act in one region, but allowed to continue being sold with known
toxic ingredients in less-strict regions. The product manufacturers
rarely make moves to improve product safety on their own, doing so only
when bad press or the threat of a cancer warning forces their hand.
Case
in point, a list of ingredients that are banned across the globe but
still allowed for US foods recently made the news and included various
food dyes, the fat substitute Olestra, brominated vegetable oil,
potassium bromate (aka brominated flour), Azodicarbonamide, BHA, BHT,
rBGH, rBST, and arsenic
For clear examples, take a look at a
recent article on 100DaysOfRealFood.com.3 In it, author Vani Hari shows
the ingredient labels of several common foods sold in the US and the UK,
such as Betty Crocker’s Red Velvet cake mix, McDonald’s French fries,
and Pizza Hut’s garlic cheese bread.
Amazingly, while these foods
can be created using a bare minimum of additives in the UK (and
sometimes none), in the US they’re absolutely LOADED with chemicals.
The
same premise goes for the Pepsi being sold in California, which right
now contains fewer toxic chemicals than Pepsi being sold in other parts
of the US. The difference in this case, however, is that it’s likely
only a matter of time before the rest of Pepsi’s products catch up to
the California standard, as even though Prop 65 only applies to one
state, it typically has a national impact.
Soda Is Still Toxic Even If 4-MI Is Removed…
The
more unhealthful chemicals removed from the market, the better, of
course. But please don’t take the removal of 4-MI from Coke and Pepsi to
mean that it is somehow a safe or healthy beverage.
There’s
nothing healthy or natural about soda, even if it one day contains a
‘safe’ form of caramel coloring. Drinking soda is in many ways worse for
you than smoking, and it is only because of massive marketing campaigns
from the industry that these sugary beverages are deemed so acceptable.
The primary reason why soda is so dangerous to your health?
Fructose.
The
fructose content of the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) used in many
popular soda brands has been grossly underestimated. Around 100 years
ago the average American consumed a mere 15 grams of fructose a day,
primarily in the form of fruit, not industrially produced isolate, which
is infinitely different on a physiological level. One hundred years
later, one-fourth of Americans are consuming more than 135 grams per
day, largely in the form of soda.
Fructose at 15 grams a day or
less is generally harmless (unless you suffer from high uric acid
levels). However, at nearly 10 times that amount it becomes a major
contributor to obesity and nearly all chronic degenerative diseases.
Instead of consisting of 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose,
many soda brands, including Coke, Pepsi and Sprite, contain as much as
65 percent fructose, nearly 20 percent higher than originally believed.4
Thanks to the excellent work of researchers like Dr. Robert Lustig, and
Dr. Richard Johnson, we now know that fructose:
- Is metabolized differently from glucose, with the majority being turned directly into fat
- Tricks your body into gaining weight by fooling your metabolism, as it turns off your body's appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the "hunger hormone"), doesn’t drive glucose into the cell to create satiety, and doesn't stimulate leptin (the "satiety hormone"), which together result in your eating more and developing insulin resistance.
- Rapidly leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity ("beer belly"), decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure — i.e., classic metabolic syndrome.
- Over time leads to insulin resistance, which is not only an underlying factor of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but also many cancers.
- Leads to a dopamine- and opioid-mediated hedonistic syndrome, which causes an insatiable desire to consume more of the same, despite the broad range of adverse, even life-threatening, health effects caused by excessive fructose consumption.
Diet Sodas Are EVEN Worse!
You may be thinking you
can avoid many of the pitfalls of soda by switching to diet varieties,
but the artificial sweeteners they contain are in many ways worse than
fructose.
People who drink diet soft drinks daily may be 43
percent more likely to suffer from a vascular event, including a stroke
or heart attack, for instance.5 Diet soda has also been linked to weight
gain. In one study, diet-soda drinkers’ waists grew 70 percent larger
than the waists of non-diet soda drinkers. Furthermore, those who drank
two or more diet sodas a day had a 500 percent greater increase in waist
size!6
Still other research revealed that mice eating food laced
with the artificial sweetener aspartame (commonly used to sweeten diet
soda) had higher blood sugar levels than mice eating food without it,
which suggests it may increase your risk of diabetes and metabolic
syndrome.
Do You Want to Kick Your Soda Habit?
Sparkling
mineral water spruced up with fresh lemon or lime juice, a drop or two
of natural peppermint extract, liquid stevia, cucumber slices or a few
crushed mint leaves is a refreshing, healthy alternative to soda. There
is also the traditional cultured beverage Kombucha, which offers a
refreshing, fizzling soda alternative while also packing a
health-promoting probiotic punch. If you need help beating your soda
cravings, try the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and particularly
Turbo Tapping, for an effective solution. If it’s the energy boost from
caffeine- and sugar-laden soda that you’re after, there are a number of
ways to give your body lasting energy that don’t involve consuming
ingredients that may harm your health. These include:
- Eating a healthy diet with limited sugar, fructose and processed foods, and increasing your intake of animal-sourced omega-3 fatty acids, e.g. krill, wild salmon, free-range eggs, to support your energy levels.
- Releasing draining emotional stress and negativity with the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
- Sleeping when you’re tired, and make sure you’re getting high-quality sleep while you’re at it
- Exercising, and be sure to include high-intensity interval exercises like Peak Fitness for near endless energy
- If you need a supplement, do the above steps first and then try options that are designed to increase your level of foundational energy at the mitochondrial level, such as vitamin B12, ubiquinol and magnesium
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