This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, since soda’s getting linked to almost everything bad that happens to humans, but it now seems related to depression as well. The study also indicated that coffee drinking helped with the illness, meaning the culprit wasn’t caffeine. While hardly shocking, it bears consideration because the study was very large. Yahoo Health, take it away,
It’s a good article and worth a gander, going into a fair bit of detail. Of note, the study also indicated that sugar wasn’t at fault, as diet soda consumers had higher rates of depression than those who drank sugary juices, adding to the “what’s in that stuff” mystery that is modern junk food, particularly soda.
Of course, as tends to be the case with studies, it’s not conclusive. Based on large-scale surveys, with many outside factors (not surprising given it’d be hard to sequester 260,000 people for 10 years), it’s impossible to pinpoint soda as the culprit. Still, it’s getting very difficult to ignore the fact that soda is the one lifestyle factor that shows up for virtually every group of unhealthy people, both physically and now mentally.
Also noted was a positive effect on the brain for black coffee drinkers. Again, this follows a trend of coffee drinkers showing up in healthy demographics. The article states,
In the end, we’ve got another nail in the way-too-slow-for-me construction project that is soda’s coffin. It’s going down–at least down from being the single largest caloric source in the world. It’s just a matter of time.
I’m curious about the chicken/egg factor of these studies. Are coffee drinkers more holistic and healthier than soda drinkers and therefor less prone to depression?
For sure there’s that factor, eh? Especially black coffee drinkers, which alone would be an indicator that someone hasn’t bought into the over sweet, over salted, junk food culture. So, yeah, like a lot of these mass lifestyle studies it’s kind of a “duh” study. Still, any ammo to keep people away from soda should be scavenged.
Speaking of interesting health trends, thought you might find this article interesting.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323975004578501150442565788.html
Thanks! I’ve been meaning to blog on that one, too. I’ll get around to it pretty soon.