Cola Wars

Billy Joel's song, We Didn't Start the Fire, serves as an excellent history test - how many of the events in the song do you know? It ends with this line, "Rock and Roll and Cola Wars: I Can't Take it Any More."  Cola Wars??? After singing about the H-bomb, drugs, etc, he ends with Cola Wars?

Well this is one long war between Coke and Pepsi that you can not escape seeing on TV, radio, movie theaters, etc. Recently I heard an ad for Pepsi that set my teeth on edge, "Live for Now".  Really?! That's the message for "a new generation?"  "What are you waiting for?", asks the Pepsi website, "Live for Now".

Besides being a dumb slogan, (why should living for immediate gratification mean drinking Pepsi?), it's also teaching a terrible lesson to today's youth. Failure to plan, failure to save money, failure to prepare, this is our new Pepsi Generation.

Medical Myths

“Fire, water and government know nothing of mercy.”
- unknown

I just started a new lecture series on CD titled, Medical Myths, Lies, and Half Truths: What We Think We Know May Be Hurting Us. So far I've enjoyed the first disc. Much better than the prior series on the Dead Sea Scrolls which used a lot of words to say very little.

Amusingly the first topic on the Medical Myths was hiccups which I discussed two days ago in this blog. Dr. Novella dismisses all the folk remidies and says medical research only endorses three drugs and direct neural stimulation or blocking for serious cases of hiccups which won't stop.

His second lecture covers hydration - do we really need to drink 8 cups of water a day? No. An old government guideline recommended 64-80 oz of water a day. But 20% of this will come from the food you eat. This leaves 6 1/2 cups which most people will drink normally.

Does coffee and caffinated sodas count as water? Many say no, but the professor says yes. The caffine will cause more peeing but not enough to cancel out all the water in the beverage. So perhaps it can count as 80% of a cup?

Another tidbit. The higher the elevation, the drier the air. At 6000 ft you exhale twice as much moisture as normal. At 10,000 ft, three times as much. This explains why people who fly experience thirst and why dehyration is serious for hikers and climbers in the mountains.

Bottom Line

For more information see my earlier blog:
http://perpetualpreparedness.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-much-water-is-enough.html

Beverage Secrets

“The materials don't even have the guts to urge kids to drink less soda pop, or eat less candy.” - Michael Jacobson on the new Food Pyramid for Kids

Did you know that the average American drinks 1/5th his daily calories? Many of us drink more than 400 calories every single day, 21% of the daily recommended limit, which is twice as much as we drank 30 years ago. What changed? Women's Health magazine has the answers in 12 Secrets the Beverage Industry Doesn't Want You to Know.

1. How bad can a milk shake be? The Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Shake at Baskin-Robbins requires 50 ingredients and packs 1,690 calories and 46 grams of saturated fat. That's just about an entire day's limit in one drink. Shakes at the ice cream parlors of yore used just 5 ingredients and had fewer calories.

2. Everyone knows ice cream is caloric so I'll consume a healthy fruit drink instead. But the article claims that many of Ocean Spray's drinks contain as little as 20% real juice with 73-85 of the calories from added sugar to sweeten the cranberries. "That amounts to about as much sugar as two scoops of ice cream stuffed into each 8-ounce cup of juice."

3. When you drink a beverage that is "100 percent juice" know that very little of that juice is cranberry or pomegranate or whatever is pictured on the label. Most of the juice is cheaper apple or grape juice and is not much better for you than sugar water.

4. So I'll drink something 100% natural like milk. There are some reasonable fears over the use of bovine growth hormone that makes cows produce more milk. It adds an insulin-like growth factor, IGF-1, to the milk which may cause cancer and other side effects in humans.

5. OK, how about diet soda? It's calorie free and no hormones. Yet there are theories that diet soda makes you hungrier. The body is revved up with a sugar high but there's no calories to burn so the body demands content with hunger cravings.

6. Is soda natural? 7Up claims it is "all natural" but the natural ingredients are subjected to some serious chemistry and centrifuges to turn corn into corn sugar. "A 20-ounce bottle of 7Up has nearly as much sugar as five Breyers Oreo Ice Cream Sandwiches."

7. Cocktails are loaded with sugar. Tom Collins, Whiskey sour, Pina colada and other popular mixes contain twice the sugar as regular soda.

8. "Glaceau doesn't want you to know that a bottle of Vitaminwater has more sugar than a Snickers bar."

9. "The bottled water industry doesn't want you to know that its product isn't any better than the water that comes from your tap, which has passed strict state, federal, and local guidelines."

10. Many of the fruit smoothies you buy come spiked with sugar. Order your smoothie "skinny" and save about 100 calories per 20 oz.

11. "The coffee industry doesn't want you to know that the average latte is worse than a double-scoop ice cream cone."

12.  "The beer and soda industries don't want you to know that aluminum cans are lined with a toxic plastic. Bisphenol A, otherwise known as BPA, that has been identified as a threat to your health."

Bottom Line

For more information see
http://perpetualpreparedness.blogspot.com/2010/04/caffeine.html  Caffeine levels in drinks
http://perpetualpreparedness.blogspot.com/2009/04/things-you-pay-too-much-for.html  Cost of drinks

Ice with Class

Diamonds! Diamonds!
I don't mean rhinestones!
But diamonds are a girl's best friend.
- from GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953)

Many years ago I heard a news story on the radio of a company planning to sell ice from glaciers. It would melt more slowly and be slightly bluish. (The slow melting is not from extra hardness like I thought but rather from larger ice crystals in glacial ice.)  But this was back in 1988 based upon the only Google story I could find; there was nothing recent. I suppose the idea failed.

So where can you turn for really cool ice cubes? How about a diamond shaped "cube" (pictured above). The mold for a single diamond is $6.95 (plus shipping, etc.) A large chuck of ice will melt more slowly compared to many smaller cubes of equivalent volume. The rate of ice meltage is based on the surface area; smaller cubes have more surface relative to volume. This explains why I don't like the reusable ice cubes we have at home. They are plastic one inch cubes with water inside. Freeze them; drop them in a drink; and as they melt the water stays inside the plastic cube and does not dilute the drink. They can be washed and refrozen but they melt very quickly.

There are many specialty ice cube trays to be found online. For example 20 Unusual and Creative Ice Cube Trays include Lego's, the Titanic and iceberg, a set of false teeth, and dinosaurs.
CoolStuffExpress has Easter Island heads and penguins.
MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) sells a mold for spherical ice "cubes".

Bottom Line

Ice does not have to be boring; it can be fun. Or try non-ice alternatives like putting frozen grapes in a drink to cool it down. I also like using frozen limes that have been washed and cut in half.

Caffeine

Way too much coffee. But if it weren't for the coffee, I'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever. ~David Letterman

How much caffeine do you consume a day? It may be more than you think. Some sweets and over-the-counter medications have caffeine (note Excedrin at the top of the chart below.) Sunkist Orange soda has more caffeine than Pepsi or Coke.

The MayoClinc says most people can handle 200-300 milligrams a day although there are individuals that are affected by as little as one cup of coffee, 100 mg. At levels of 500-600 mg/day you may see the following side effects:

· Headaches
· Irritability
· Anxiety
· Nervousness
· Restlessness
· Insomnia
· Nausea or other gastrointestinal problems
· Muscle tremors
· Fast or irregular heartbeat

Caffeine can be addictive. As the brain gets used to the drug, it takes ever more caffeine for the same energy “boost”. Caffeine withdrawal results once a person stops consuming caffeine. Withdrawal symptoms are consistent with other drugs, but without the life-threatening severity of alcohol or Valium withdrawal. Caffeine withdrawal typically begins within 24 hours and can last for a week or more with these symptoms:

· Headaches
· Irritability
· Anxiety
· Fatigue

Ironic huh – the top three symptoms can result from too much caffeine or too little.

Product	Size in Oz.	Total Caffeine in mg
Excedrin, Extra Str,	2 tablets	130
Mountain Dew Game Fuel	20	120
Brewed coffee	8	60-120
Double espresso	2	45-100
Snapple Elements	18	108
Ben & Jerry's Coffee Fudge Frozen Yogurt	8	85
Red Bull	8.5	80
Instant coffee	8	70
Tea - black	8	45-60
Mountain Dew	12	55
Lipton Iced Teas	20	50
TaB	12	47
Diet Coca Cola	12	45
RC Cola	12	43
Sunkist Orange Soda	12	41-42
Dr. Pepper	12	41
Pepsi	12	38
Coke Classic	12	35
Dark Chocolate bar	1.45	31
A&W Cream Soda	12	29
Barq's Root Beer	12	22
Tea - green	8	20
Tea - white	8	15
Chocolate Bar	1.55	9
Chocolate milk	8	5
Hot Chocolate	8	5
Decaf coffee	8	1-5
Herbal Tea	8	0
7-up, Fanta, Fresca, Sprite	12	0
Yoo-Hoo Chocolate	8	0

Bottom Line

Use the chart above get a perspective on the caffeine strength of common items. Suppose you want to set a limit of 100mg per day. That would mean a limit of 1 coffee, 3 Cokes, 4 Root Beers, 11 Milk Chocolate bars or 20 glasses of chocolate milk.

Resources

http://coffeetea.about.com/library/blcaffeine.htm
http://www.energyfiend.com/the-caffeine-database
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/caffeine/AN01211
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/caffeine/NU00600
http://www.myaddiction.com/education/articles/caffeine_addiction.html