Scientists target soda as main cause of obesity

Collectively, they meet many criteria for proving cause and effect, Dr. William Dietz, director of nutrition at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in an editorial accompanying a study in February’s Journal of Pediatrics.

In rebuttal, Adamson, the beverage industry spokesman, sees no such consistency. He cites a 2004 Harvard study of more than 10,000 children and teens. Consumption of sugar-added beverages was tied to body-mass index gain in boys but not girls, a gender difference that warrants a “jaundiced eye” to claims that soda is at fault, he said.

He also points to a Harvard study finding no link between weight changes and soda consumption among 1,345 North Dakota children ages 2 to 5 — a group that arguably drinks far less soda than teens and adults.

“Whatever association there is doesn’t seem to be large,” said Richard Forshee, deputy director of the Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Policy at the University of Maryland who has received research funding from the beverage industry and global sugar producers.

As for soda being linked to poor eating patterns, “you don’t know which is cause and which is effect,” Drewnowski said.

People who consume lots of fresh-squeezed juice, vegetables and fruits are fundamentally not the same as those who subsist on colas and bologna sandwiches, he contends.

“There is a difference: The first group is rich,” Drewnowski said. He thinks government subsidies of fruits and vegetables would be better public policy than taxing a cheap source of calories.

He also disputes the claim that soda calories are not satisfying. He did a study in which 32 men and women were given either colas or fat-free Raspberry Newtons before lunch on four separate occasions.

“There was absolutely no difference in satiety” as measured by how much they ate or how hungry they said they were, he said.

That research was paid for by industry, a factor that can affect study outcomes, said Kelly Brownell, a psychologist and food policy researcher at Yale University and a vocal advocate for curbs on soda and fast food.

When you look at studies according to who footed the bill, “the literature parts like Moses parting the ocean,” he said, referring to the biblical parting of the Red Sea.

Does the evidence add up to a conviction of soda?

One of the nation’s leading epidemiologists who has no firm stake in the debate, the American Cancer Society’s Dr. Michael Thun, thinks it does.

“Caloric imbalance causes obesity, so in the sense that any one part of the diet is contributing excess calories, it’s contributing causally to the obesity,” Thun said. “It doesn’t mean that something is the only cause. It means that in the absence of that factor there would be less of that condition.”

Does it merit a warning on soda cans?

“I think it would be a good candidate for a warning,” Thun said. “It’s something that should be seriously considered.”

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