You think that’s bad? You should see what happens to metal left in the acidic contents of the human stomach!
Don’t drink gastric juices, people!!
I have heard for years that there is evidence that carbonated drinks can interfere with calcium absorption. This applies to any carbonated drink, regardless of how it is sweetened, or if it is sweetened. As quoted in http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/lh_general_info/article/0,2041,DIY_14040_2273064,00.html:
However, the evidence is weak, and even this particular article points out that the effect could be due to the girls in the study opting to drink soda rather than milk, so their calcium intake was lower in the first place.
The carbonation can also affect the esophagus, but I don’t know how that compares to OJ, which is very acidic, too.
However, in the long run, I would agree that if your diet is otherwise good, there probably isn’t a lot of difference between drinking orange juice and/or coffee in the morning vs. drinking a soda. You shouldn’t chug either of them all day long, though.
There is a problem with anything with artificial sweeteners in it, which is that they make your body believe it has sugar to deal with, but it doesn’t. So the body ramps up insulin production, which takes out what sugar there is in your blood, leaving you with low blood sugar and thus hungry. So you eat more than you would have otherwise.
This is why the rise of obesity in western society mirrors the rise in consumption of artificial sweeteners. Drinking full sugar drinks of any sort is not great, but at least it doesn’t send false signals to your body.
Do you have any cites for this? I didn’t know, for instance, that a food merely tasting sweet was enough to affect insulin production.
Once upon a time, before many Dopers were born, people drank fruit juice in small amounts, about 4 or 6 ounces at a time, 8 or 10 ounces tops. You couldn’t even buy a bigger glass of OJ than that in a restaurant. Of course, back then, Pepsi came in 10 ounce, 12 ounce or at most 16 ounce bottles. There was no such thing as a Big Gulp; one did not buy soda pop in the quart to half gallon size. Then it came to pass that 7-Eleven invented the Big Gulp and restaurants started offering “free refills” and people would drink 20, 32, 64 ounces or more of pop at one sitting. For a brief period in time Orange Juice would have been better than Pepsi simply because one consumed it in smaller quantities. Then, the Florida Orange Growers Council* realised that they were losing sales to the Soft Drink Manufacturers because people were loading up on Coke and Pepsi and had no room left for juice. Some people would even drink a can or bottle of pop for breakfast instead of the more traditional coffee and juice. So they started started the ad campaign, “Orange juice – it’s not just for breakfast anymore” to encourage greater juice consumption. The industry and some specific processors also inferred that juice was somehow healthier and more natural than Coke or Pepsi. So some people began gulping down OJ thinking they’d perhaps lose weight or at least reap the health benefits of a more nutritious diet. It’s a net loss.
Of course, good Orange Juice tastes better than Pepsi.
*There’s a certain irony here since Minute Maid Orange Juice is currently owned by Coca Cola. I don’t know off hand if Pepsi owns any of the large OJ packaging companies. Dasani and Aquafina water are owned by Coke and Pepsi, although I always forget which is which.
Are there any dentists (or knowledgable non-dentists) who can tell me if there’s a significant difference between orange juice and Pepsi when it comes to dental health?
I’ve seen the teeth of a person who drank a can of Coke a day for breakfast, and it wasn’t pretty. However, I don’t know how well this person took care of their teeth overall. Could orange juice have a similar effect?
I’m not a dentist, but my destist’s professor did an experiment every year to his class in dental school. He would take teeth and put them in a class of coke. Every now and then he would pull it out and the class would take a look at it. I didn’t ask what the liquid looked like, but he said that the teeth were slowly dissolving. The teeth didn’t even last until the end of the semester.
Was there a control experiment with a glass of gastric juices?
There is a difference in the type of sugars in foods. The difference is how fast the body can convert this sugar into Glucose in the blood. The measure for this is the Glycemic Index. If you Google this, you’ll get lots of info. This is measured over lots of volunteers and the blood sugar spike after about an hour is measured and compared to an equal amount of Glucose (Dextrose is an alterenate name for this sugar). Glucose is given a score of 100, and everything is relative to that.
Here’s some GI values for various sugars:
Fructose: 23
Lactose: 47
Honey: 61
High Fructose Corn Syrup: 65 (This is the most common sweetener for soft drinks)
Sucrose: 67
Maltodextrin: 109
Fruits generally have more Fructose than other sugars, but it does vary from fruit to fruit. I don’t have a GI value for OJ, but whole oranges come in at a value of 54, and the juice removes a lot of that good fiber in the pulp, so it will go up. So, there really isn’t a clear winner in terms of sugar or sugar related health between OJ and Pepsi, given equal serving sizes.
There is a second term, the Glycemic load, which is simply the Glycemic Index multiplied by the serving size. This becomes the total sugar your body will convert quickly. So, if you had 8 oz of OJ vs a Big Gulp of Pepsi, the OJ is the clear winner.
My personal rule is never drink a real soft drink, rarely drink a diet pop, and drink OJ in moderation - abut 6 oz per day max.
I drink water, coffee, and wine, instead.
Someone else pointed out that OJ has good vitamins, too.
I didn’t know you’re gay!
To partially answer my own question:
I found an informational pamphlet I took to read while waiting at the dentist’s office a couple weeks ago. (I had to dig through the small garbage bag I keep in my car, but that’s a small price to pay for science! ;)) It’s colorfully titled, “Sip all day, get decay” and is about the dangers of drinking soda pop.
Anyway, it lists the pH and sugar content (in tsp) of various pops. Pepsi has pH of 2.49, and 9.8 tsps of sugar per 12 ounce serving (which works out to the 41 grams given in the link above). Pepsi is at the bottom of the list (meaning it has the lowest pH), uless you count Battery Acid, which is helpfully listed as having 1.00 pH and 0.0 tsps of sugar.
This page gives the pH of various foods, and lists the pH of orange juice between 3.30 and 4.19. (Interestingly, it differentiates between Florida and California orange juice. What’s up with that?)
Various other Googled sites of varying quality seem to agree on an orange juice pH of between 3.0 and 4.0 (most give some value in between).
Even assuming a value of 3.0 pH for orange juice, Pepsi is still more acidic. However, I have no idea how much of a difference roughly .5 pH would make when it comes to eating away at tooth enamel.
The soil in Florida and California is quite different. There’s lots of naturally occurring phosphates here, so that may help explain it.
FWIW, my understanding is that most OJ for mass consumption in the USA is now from Brazil, since Florida and California real estate prices usually makes orange production less economical. My data is somewhat dated, though, so I could be wrong on that.
Actually, there was, and I can’t remember it. One was water, and I think the other might have been milk, or a base solution. Or, they might already have had those values listed and the coke thing was just to put an illustration to the numbers. Sadly, that dentist retired, so I don’t have anymore access to his info.
Which is only relevant to dental health if you hold the drink in your mouth for days or months before swallowing it, as pointed out at Can Coca-Cola Dissolve Teeth? | Snopes.com . The same applies to orange juice, which actually has more acid in it than coke.
http://www.mercola.com/2005/jun/30/diet_sodas.htm
http://www.janethull.com/newsletter/0405/juvenile-obesity-and-artificial-sweeteners.php
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/advicecolumn/a/sweeteners.htm
Awesome stuff. So to go even deeper (it’s relevant to the OP, right?!?!), how exactly is sugar ‘bad’ for you? And to make it clearer, which is better: having the sugar convert to glucose and into your blood stream faster, or slower? Or is there some sweet spot?
I just saw that as I clicked the submit button.
No----pun—intended.
Can I get a cite for this?
(The Snopes link mentions something about percentages of a particular type of acid. However, not only is that a second-hand quotation from somebody working for Coke, it ignores other types of acid that may exist, as well as the more important factor of pH levels.)
Generally speaking, anyone who has offered up an opinion on this topic has claimed that slower is better. Food that converts “too” slowly is just flat out indigestible, and we wouldn’t call it food to begin with. Food that converts quickly has a tendency to spike your blood sugar level, then it runs out of fuel and your blood sugar drops quickly due to your body’s reaction. Food that converts slowly causes a gradual rise in blood sugar, lasts longer for equal amounts of fuel, and avoids the highs and lows of a fast converting food.
Diets like South Beach talk about this a lot under the assumption that when you hit a sugar low, your body looks for more food. So, a steady blood sugar helps control appetite. They also suggest that these wild swings contribute to diabetes, but who knows if that’s true.
Diet Rite is sweetened with Sucralose which does not effect insulin levels