Comments on: Why fructose-laden drinks when there’s a healthy option on tap?

By: meski

meski — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:00:17 +0000

I’m not sure about the anti-water idea. If you drink water[1] with your food, you’ll end up eating less, which is often a good thing. Makes your ‘I’m full’ reflex kick in sooner?

[1] just water, not water ‘drink’

By: deccles

deccles — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:47:56 +0000

Also is the fructose / sucrose chemical distinction (yeah same but chemically different) the reason they get away with not calling it ‘sugar’?

By: deccles

deccles — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:45:25 +0000

Umm not sure if I should add this or not. Until recently I couldn’t distinguish between hunger and thirst. I honestly couldn’t tell you whether I was hungry or thirsty. I can now thanks to the Nutritionist I am seeing.

So I’m not sure us modern cubicle farm humans *do* drink water they need it. Also have I also been suckered in by my rugby coach who use to say ‘By the time you are thirsty it’s already too late ! You’re dehydrated’. Believe me I would never consider my self an ‘athlete’ little alone with the ‘elite’ prefix.

By: Rosemary Stanton

Rosemary Stanton — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:07:43 +0000

David Gillespie is right on this one. We all survived pretty well without constantly sipping on water. The whole industry-fuelled ‘hydration’ thing is designed to sell us their products. The ‘fluids’ industry take data from endurance athletes, who may need to drink more than they think they need during a long hard high-sweat effort and then apply it to everyone else. With the exception of the frail aged, humans drink water when they need it. This includes children. Most foods are quite high in water - even meat is 60% water and most fruits and vegetables are 85-92% water. AR’s comment about tea and coffee having “serious and pernicious” diuretic effects is also a bit silly. Tea and coffee do have a mild diuretic effect but when you drink a cup of tea, you don’t lose more than a cup of liquid in urine as is mistakenly assumed. In any case, one of the purposes of fluid is to encourage fluid flow through the kidneys.

There is no excuse for schools to sell this junk.

Rosemary Stanton

By: meski

meski — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:15:10 +0000

@AR: the solution to tea and coffee then, is to drink them black no sugar. It may make you drink more, but too much coffee is not enough! :^) (good cafes will supply a bottle of plain water with an espresso)

@James: The apple pie is ok, but maybe you should leave the pastry, and cook the apple without sugar. IMO, you would call that dish stewed apple, not apple pie…

By: AR

AR — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:58:02 +0000

The most common diuretic drinks, tea & coffee,have a serious & pernicious effect on the post middle aged who, in general, are less active (sweat less) and more likely to need hydration.
Combined with sugar, a cuppa actually leaves one in water deficit so people have another, and another…

By: Joal

Joal — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:27:22 +0000

“People would learn to use whats left of the brain that in their head”

Absolutely. The world would be a better place if people read things critically rather than blindly accepting stuff being marketed at them, don’t you think?

By: james mcdonald

james mcdonald — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:34:30 +0000

Question: I like caramelized fruit desserts like apple pie. Is that bad? (I’m not being facetious.)

By: Roger Clifton

Roger Clifton — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:08:33 +0000

If your kids are fat, you might check if some idiot has put fruit juice in the door of your fridge. Throw it out. You don’t have to check the sugar content on the side. Heavens sake, the stuff is machine pulped and filtered, not whole fruit.

Do you kid yourself that it’s good for the kid to swig fruit juice when s/he gets the urge because it contains a mysterious essential natural goodness, of which everybody needs a unknown daily dose? Face it, the number of pieces of fruit in a single guzzle amounts to an overdose of pretty well everything in it.

Vitamins? Try the whole fruit. Go further. When your fat kid wants to know where his dessert is, dump a whole orange in front of him instead.

By: scottyea

scottyea — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:18:06 +0000

David, if everyone would be an outspoken killjoy like you it would ruin the economy.

People would learn to use whats left of the brain that in their head - you know telling the difference between things n stuff? Outrageous!

How dare you try to wake me and all my other cardboard-cutout, box-fed friends up to the fact that neither government nor the ASX gives so much as a hooty patooty about us????

Keep it up.

By: Joal

Joal — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:44:21 +0000

It’s true that the marketing is terrible - this stuff is no water replacement. I’m not really sure whether it will be bought as a water replacement in practice, but that’s another discussion.

If it were marketed as a soft drink, though - which it is - surely it’s better than most, since it has about half as much sugar as most of them do.

I could get behind a lot of what David says if he could just dial down the hysteria.

I suppose he wouldn’t like the following review at all.

http://www.choicefoodforkids.com.au/review/WACKY-WATER-Radical-Raspberry

But on the other hand, what difference does all this make? As far as David is concerned, anything at all containing sugar should be removed from the food supply.

Anyway I digress… no, there is no justification for selling this to kids as health food.

By: james mcdonald

james mcdonald — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:43:52 +0000

The requirement for drinking 8 cups of water a day was always a myth based on a sentence in an old dietary guideline document which was taken out of context. The part about most of the water being in the food we eat was ignored. I’ve lost the original reference, but the myth is discussed here http://www.toolness.com/wp/?p=46

It’s true that we need 8 cups of water a day, but we already get most of it from the water contained in the food we eat. This is only an average and it depends on body mass, perspiration, and intake of salts and other diuretics.

By: stephen martin

stephen martin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:27:29 +0000

I wonder what the effect is going to be on people’s teeth, particularly young children, with the current fad of buying bottled water (no fluoride). If you think that Coke and Pepsi are the masters of advertising what about the guys that kid you that you need “pure spring water” in a bottle from the super market at what? $2.50 a liter?

By: Anna Whitfeld

Anna Whitfeld — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:11:44 +0000

I blame Elle Macpherson. I am sure it was her that started the whole 7 glasses of water a day for beautiful skin and a healthy glow.

By: John Molloy

John Molloy — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:13:24 +0000

So, I’d better stop eating this apple, then?