Coked up again

Jan 21, 2008 12:36

A Certain Bear sent me this link.  Of course, it's mainly aimed at Americans, the only people on this continent who are willing to drink soda pop that contains high-fructose corn syrup.  Still, honour must be defended with a good Fisking!  And making fun of snake-oil salesmen is about as easy as doing it to Creationists.

Consuming soft drinks is bad for so many reasons that science cannot even state all the consequences.
    Really?  This is saying that soda pop is *supernaturally* evil?

sugar. It’s an evil that the processed food industry and sugar growers don’t want people to know about.
    This is actually true, but phrased in dog-whistle religious terms.  Because Coke is "evil", the people selling it are demons working for Satan.
    The phrase "don't want people to know about" is commonly seen in advertisements for snake oil.

When somebody drinks a Coke watch what happens…  In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system.
    This assumes that you down the entire can in an instant.  That is not usually what I see when I watch somebody drink a Coke.

You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor
    There is no medical basis for this statement.  Sugar is antiemetic, something people eat when they're trying to *avoid* vomiting.  Phosphoric acid makes the product bubbly, which cuts the flavour, but drinking flat soda doesn't cause vomiting.

20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst.
    Again assuming that you downed the whole thing in an instant.

Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat.
    He only says this because everyone knows that fat is "evil".  Actually the liver turns sugar into glycogen, which is a starch.  The liver's response to high sugar levels is a measured attempt to restore calm to the blood, not a frenzy of fat-production that will make you gain 10 pounds (5 kilos) in an instant.

40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream
    As if caffeine has no effect during minutes 1-39, then suddenly hits you during minute 40.

The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
    More black-and-white thinking.  Only *some* of the receptors are blocked, which only *reduces* drowsiness.

Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain.  This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
    No, it's not.  Heroin works by simulating the effect of endorphin, not dopamine.  But everybody knows that heroin is "evil", so let's slime Coke via random word-association.  The author of this document is obviously a Republican.

* * * * *

Well, let's wash our mouths of that horrid taste.  Here's a Slashvertisement for command-line dating.  And here's CATO's map of botched SWAT raids.  And here's a little paranoia piece about how the Bush presidency is like General Pompey's Rome (which paved the way for the collapse of the Republic into Empire).

linguistics, fascism

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