New Study Casts Serious Doubt on the Soda-Obesity Link
Public health crusaders like Kelly Brownell have long demonized sugar-sweetened beverages
in an effort to get governments to tax them. As support for this
questionable proposal, they claim scientific research shows a “link”
between consumption of sugared drinks and a rise in obesity rates. But
a study released this week casts doubt on the whole premise of this demonization campaign.
As Food Navigator reports, new research in the International Journal of Obesity finds the supposed “link” between sugary drinks and obesity may suffer
from significant biases—the same sort of bias that the food police
endlessly complain about. Researchers from the University of Alabama
examined how studies on sugar-sweetened beverages were cited in later
research. They concluded that the results of two studies—which showed a
statistically insignificant link between sugary drink consumption and obesity—were later overstated by future researchers, and then by the media.
Why? Because of what these researchers call “white hat bias,”
or the tendency to distort results to fit a preconceived notion of who
the “bad guys” in the obesity debate are. In this case, the “black
hats” are worn by sports drinks, soda, and chocolate milk, even though
there is plenty of under-the-media-radar evidence to the contrary.
Dietitian Monica Reinagel sums it up:
[The researchers] show that studies which do find a link between
sweetened beverages and obesity are much more likely to be accepted for
publication than studies that fail to find a link—a so-called
publication bias. In other words, scientists have become so convinced
that soda is a "bad guy" in the war on obesity that they overlook or
misinterpret evidence to the contrary.
As we’ve documented, there’s plenty of scientific research that fails to suggest
sugary drinks are a unique contributor to obesity. By ignoring the lack
of scientific consensus and donning “white hats,” Brownell and other
public health activists have simply created a red herring.
Is anyone surprised?
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BY ITSELF being obese doesn't affect mortality as much as one might think:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/23210.php
that study doesn't prove their is bias in scientific publications as the authors of this article and the study wrongly suggest. The premise is fundamentally flawed. It says that studies that demonstrate no link exists are less likely to get published and assume that means bias. That doesn't address if the studies are actually of lower quality and that's why they aren't published. If I decide to publish a paper in Nature that says gravity doesn't exists and it's rejected , was my paper rejected because they have bias against the theory that gravity doesn't exist or just bias against papers that suck? A real world example, did you know very few studies have been publish (though many are submitted) that demonstrate raising the minimum wage increases employment? This isn't because bias exists, it's because the quality of data in support of that usually isn't enough to properly advance that theory. Unless you look at the quality of the study, you can't determine there is bias.
I'm honestly surprised Nature (who publishes the International Journal of Obesity) let that slide in there without a revision. I'm sure other researchers will contact Nature and they'll issue a comment correcting that.
Further, I think it's obvious that a sugary filled drink with high salt and caloric content would contribute to weight gain . What the initial studies demonstrated, and still demonstrate, is that high soda intake is coupled with obesity . What anti-obesity advocates took this as meaning was that soda intake implies obesity without considering that people that drink a lot of soda might just be unhealthy (seems obvious to me actually). What most subsequent studies that control for habits discovered was that this is 100% correct, soda drinking is common in unhealthy behavior. Then you had other studies that demonstrated cutting soda usage would reduce obesity, but once again subsequent studies found those didn't properly control for the fact soda intake reduction was coupled with other dietary measures.
So, no there is no scientific conspiracy here. Advocates merely have taken bits and pieces of studies they liked and ran with it before further studies and a more complete analysis was done.
Then again, I thought all of the studies about this were obvious. Obvious excess soda is bad for your weight and heath, but what is also obvious is the fact you don't become 300 lbs by consuming Coke and Pepsi regularly.