Soft option

The latest edition of Public Health Nutrition features several studies on soft drink consumption, along with an editiorial that echoes the recent fighting talk about fizzy drinks: Making soft drinks the dietary version of the cigarette.  One study, from the University of Alberta, examines pre-school children's consumption of soft drinks, finding that socio-economic and built environment factors are associated with soft drink consumption in children of pre-school age. No surprises there, then.  A recent study from the University of Bangor has been much commented on: Adaptive metabolic response to 4 weeks of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in healthy, lightly active individuals and chronic high glucose availability in primary human myotubes has been translated into "fizzy drinks are evil" by the press (Daily Mail article, of course).