In a post yesterday at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum links to a study claiming that taxing sugary soda would "reduce net calorie intake from all beverages". Drum argues that, even if the study is correct, "it's pretty likely that you'll just make up the calories somewhere else. In fact, if this study is correct, it's possible that you might increase your total calorie intake." [Italics in original]
Unfortunately for Drum, the article merely shows a correlation between drinking a lot of diet soda and being overweight/obese. It does not prove that drinking diet soda causes obesity. From the article:
Fowler [the lead investigator on the study] is quick to note that a study of this kind does not prove that diet soda causes obesity. More likely, she says, it shows that something linked to diet soda drinking is also linked to obesity.
Drum appears to have missed this sentence in the article, which is very excusable, since the quote is about 2/3 of the way down the first page.
More seriously, I do not know how Drum found this study, but if you search on Google for "diet soda causes obesity", the first link is to the article Drum cites. It gets even uglier if you look at the screenshot for the search result (click on the picture for a larger size):
The text from the article under the link specifically states "a study of this kind does not prove that diet soda causes obesity". I do not know how Kevin Drum could accidentally mislead his readers like this.
Note: To me, Drum's theory that if you drink more diet soda, "it's pretty likely that you'll just make up the calories somewhere else" sounds plausible but wrong. I find that sugary beverages fill me up no more than water fills me up. However, I have not looked into the research, so I do not feel qualified to argue one way or the other.
No comments:
Post a Comment