Cola Or Coffee? I'll have the coffee, thanks. When it's time to choose a beverage, rather than consult the Food Guide Pyramid, you might want to take a look at the results of two studies presented last month at Digestive Disease Week; an international conference of gastrointestinal physicians, academics and researchers. In a study presented by National Institutes of Health researchers, nearly 6,000 subjects who were at high risk of liver injury (due to various factors such as excessive alcohol consumption and obesity) shared details about their consumption of caffeine from coffee, tea and soft drinks. Analysis of the data found that the frequency of liver injury was less among subjects with the highest intake of caffeine. But before you reach for that caffeine-laden cola, take into consideration study number two… Using data supplied by the USDA, researchers in India found that the per capita consumption of carbonated soft drinks (CSD) in the U.S. jumped from about 11 gallons per year in 1946 to nearly 50 gallons per year in 2000. They also found that over the past 25 years, esophageal cancer rates among white males in the U.S. has risen more than 570 percent. Researchers drew a correlation between these two statistics with the observation that drinking CSD has been shown to trigger gastric distension - one of the causes of acid reflux. In addition, the researchers calculate that 53 gallons of CSD per year equals more than 32,000 minutes of acid exposure in the gastrointestinal tract. And finally: Identical trends of increased esophageal cancer and increased CSD consumption were observed in other countries where more than 20 gallons per capita are consumed each year. But in countries that consume less than 10 gallons yearly per capita there was very little increase in esophageal cancer over the past 25 years. Maybe while the USDA advisory panel is trying to break the deadlock over their recommendation about soft drinks, they should smooth things out by knocking off for a coffee break (and taking a look at these two studies).
To Your Good Health,
Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute Source:
"GI Health Affected by Consumption of Coffee and Carbonated Drinks" Digestive Disease Week news release, 5/17/04, scienceblog.com | 
