Can a Soft Drink Give You Cancer?
Cancer-causing carcinogens should be banned from Coke and Pepsi, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The scaremongering nonsense includes this gem:
As Congress recognized when it passed the food and color additives amendments 50 years ago, chemicals that cause cancer in animals have no place in the food supply.
Yet as everybody who knows anything about rodent carcinogens knows, there are minute amounts of them in everything we eat. We try to bring this point home every Thanksgiving by giving readers a cancer report on their turkey day dinner.
For all we know, CSPI may be right. Soda pop may be the trigger to human extinction. Coke and Pepsi probably killed the Neanderthals 25,000 years ago. And do we know the whereabouts of Coke and Pepsi on November 22, 1963?
Trying to scare people about trivial cancer risks is a standard past time of left wing groups who have no serious purpose in life.
I enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner menu, but no one else in my family does. Most people don’t wnat to think about these things.
I gave up soda several years ago. I will occasionally have a soda (maybe every few months), and every time I do, I find that it makes me feel bad.
I agree that it’s silly to say that soda causes cancer just because rats receiving massive doses develop the disease. However, there’s no denying that drinking gallons of it a day/week is probably harmful.
Now if only I can do with chocolate and dessert what I’ve done with soda!
There is a persistent theory that cancer has increased in the past half century due to environmental factors. But, cancer is mostly a disease of old age. The prevalence of cancer has risen due to the increase in longevity over the past century. Also, since most cancer (something like 90%) originates in soft tissue, it’s difficult to detect in the bones of bodies discovered in ancient ruins. However, there are over 200 instances where cancer has been discovered in old bones from antiquity. Cancer was not unheard of in the ancient world – and it would have been more common if people lived long enough to contract it.