"Cold drinks" an addiction

Life Health & Fitness
1

Now I’ve seen it all…

[quote]Cold drink addiction a bad habit: foundation
2008-08-20 17:48:03

Taipei, Aug. 20 (CNA) Addiction to cold bottled drinks on hot days is a bad habit in terms of both enviornmental protection and health, warned an official from the John Tung Foundation Wednesday. 

Drinking and consuming excessive amounts of bottled cold drinks, particularly purchasing them from convenient stores, will only cause those franchises to consume more electricity in order to boost sales -- which is eventually detrimental to the environment, said Hsu Hui-yu, a foundation official in charge of nutrition and related affairs. 

The John Tung Foundation is an anti-smoking group seen as one of the most effective nonprofit lobbying groups in Taiwan.

…

The United Kingdom is promoting the sale of preserved milk to replace fresh milk, as storage of the latter consumes more energy, Hsu said, adding that most of the soft drinks in Germany, Portugal and Spain are sold and stored at room temperature. He also noted that Wal-Mart Stores in the United States require its suppliers to provide the amount of greenhouse gas emission for each of their products.

The UK's Tesco grocery franchise has promised that all of the over 80,000 products on their stores' shelves will carry tags telling how much carbon dioxide emission is involved in producing and marketing the products, Hsu added. "For the part of the consumers, they can help reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission simply by drinking fewer cold bottled drinks," Hsu reiterated.

[b] Meanwhile, Wu Chien-lung, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine with Taipei City Hospital, said he does not think it’s smart to consume cold drinks or ice excessively in the summertime. “Gulping icy drinks probably cools people down and delights them on hot days, but people with weak stomachs could suffer diarrhea, those with weak kidneys could develop dydroncus, some could develop skin rashes, and black eyes and nasal problems could become worse after people drink their fill of cool liquids,” Wu said.

Those who are on a diet should refrain from bingeing on cold drinks, as nearly all of those products could affect their metabolism if consumed excessively, he added.[/b]

[/quote]

From CNA

Is it true what they say about UK sales of milk? Yuck.

2

More GREEN nonsense. Who cares how much carbon etc we use? Its like recycled paper, which uses more resources to process than cutting down trees and making new paper. I bought some tissues the other day that said “pure virgin pulp” on the box; now thats awesome. I’m buying more.

BTW should we have a separate thread for Green nonsense so we don’t accidentally stumble on it? At a push we could have the Green and Foam forum?

3

[quote=“Icon”]Now I’ve seen it all…

[quote]
[b] Meanwhile, Wu Chien-lung, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine with Taipei City Hospital, said he does not think it’s smart to consume cold drinks or ice excessively in the summertime. “Gulping icy drinks probably cools people down and delights them on hot days, but people with weak stomachs could suffer diarrhea, those with weak kidneys could develop dydroncus, some could develop skin rashes, and black eyes and nasal problems could become worse after people drink their fill of cool liquids,” Wu said.

Those who are on a diet should refrain from bingeing on cold drinks, as nearly all of those products could affect their metabolism if consumed excessively, he added.[/b]

[/quote] [/quote]

OK, we have CNA coming up with some unrelated claptrap regarding milk - at least in Denmark the only ones selling UHT milk was Aldi, and they stopped that as people would have none of it.

The cold drink bit - haha, all Chinese doctors are quacks, and this one uses the flimsiest of pretexts to ride his completely unproven hobby horse.

I do not get that CNA as a supposedly reputable news agency puts shite like that out.

4

I don’t know what’s wrong with saying that ice-cold drinks are bad for your body. Basically, the more extreme food and drinks are, the worse they are for your body. Too cold, too hot, too spicy, too sweet, too salty… all the same. You make it harder for the body to function properly. Drinking beverages stored at room temperatures is a wise choice.

5

dydroncus: there’s no such word. skin rashes and black eyes? :loco: don’t forget, he’s “a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine with Taipei City Hospital” which means he follows a thousands of years old medical philosophy with no physiological underpinnings. while a lot of TCM does work, especially the herbal stuff, the reasoning it is based on is very suspect.

sure, ice cold drinks will cool you down from the inside, but when you’re really hot, why is that such a bad thing? and as for the extra electricity, stop airconditioning the stores at -5 degrees.

6

[quote=“Mr He”]

I do not get that CNA as a supposedly reputable news agency puts shite like that out.[/quote]
They put it out because its a press release from the John Tung Foundation, which is a respected group here with powerful lobbying ability and therefore influential.
CNA’s purpose is to report what people are saying and doing, not to analyze and express opinions about it. That’s what newspapers are for. Perhaps you’d prefer simply not to be informed when people are talking about stuff you disagree with, but others prefer to know as much as possible about other peoples’ stupidity and superstitious nonsense.
The bosses and staff at CNA are Chinese and therefore, like your friend HGC, don’t agree that Chinese medicine beliefs are claptrap at all.
The milk in the UK stuff at first glance seems to be nonsense, I agree, but if I were to add anything to that effect to a CNA story I’d be accused of editorializing, which is a major no-no. (I didn’t edit that story, by the way, and would have argued that it be completely rewritten. Indeed, dydroncus would get a mention, probably along the lines of "the doctor did not elaborate on the definition of “dydroncus” – assuming that he could not be reached for comment, which CNA should have tried to do first).
However, the story makes no mention whatever about whether the milk move in the UK is successful or not, only that its being promoted, which is absolutely true. It makes no mention about the effectiveness of requiring carbon emission labeling, only that it’s being done. Again, absolutely true.
One of the things I notice in Germany is that indeed cold drinks – beer – is usually bought by the crate from neighbourhood shops that look more like mini-warehouses – unrefrigerated.

7

I thought I’d play around a bit …

Drinking and consuming excessive amounts of local food and hot drinks, particularly purchasing them from vendors on the street, will only cause those vendors to consume more electricity and burn more household gas in order to boost sales – which is eventually detrimental to the environment, said Anubis, a foundation official in charge of cofusion and idiocy related affairs.

Meanwhile… Anubis said he does not think it’s smart to consume hot drinks excessively in the summertime. "Gulping hot drinks probably heats people up and delights them on hot days, but people with weak stomachs could suffer diarrhea, those with weak kidneys could develop dydroncus, some could develop skin rashes, and black eyes and nasal problems could become worse after people drink their fill of hot liquids…

You guys think I sound credible? :rainbow:

8

Actually I think cold drinks may be addictive, I drink an awful lot of cold beer. :uk:

9

When I posted this, I did not mean to make fun of whatever beliefs in TCM. I myself get criticized often for drinking cold water in the office and cold drinks on hot summer days and cold winter nights. I do get a sore throat from drinking cold stuff at night -Duh!- but I do not think I have suffered from black eye, whatever other weird things, and I blame the kidney problems on the sugar from those drinks, not the fact that they are cold. If they referred, though, to the quality of the ice, and the presence of what in Spanish we call culiformes, well, that would be another story.

I do resent the patronizing tone of calling “addiction” a preference for cold drinks. I wished there was a more educated/scientifically backed discussion on the effect of cold drinks on the body -if any- as I’ve read somewhere cold water is more readily absorbed by the body.

The organization mentioned is against tobacco -me too- and has provided support for campaigns promoting mental health -suicide prevention- and nutrition -info on juice drinks, for instance. I am too all for the environment -I turn off the lighst and AC during lunchtime at the office, whether I am there or not- but blaming cold drinks calling them “addictive” is not helping. I’d readily give up my steaks and ham for health and the environment, but blaming an increase in electricity consumtion on cold drinks or pinning weird conditions on them is not reasonable to me.

10

And when you consider the at best certainly comparatively benign, and at worst spurious nature of this “problem” and the likelihood of any “addicts” changing their crazed, cold-drink-slurping ways because of this effort, focusing any attention on it seems a waste of resources.

11

cold drinks = brain freeze.

paper problem? Grow hemp, not trees. Fixed.

12

UHT milk is great! It’s nice to be able to keep a six-pack on the pantry shelf for when you run out of cold milk or have forgotten to buy milk on the way home. It’s good for typhoon preparedness and camping, and for the office desk drawer.

13

It’s like the Korean “death by fan” fetish: the media fuels popular cultural myths using “experts” who spout pseudoscientific nonsense. Anything to give a rational-sounding basis to the Chinese phobia of consuming cold drinks on hot days.

(BTW, in Taiwan, those convenience store fridges are ultimately powered by hydroelectric and nuclear power, adding nary a molecule of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere!!)

14

Mostly. AFAIK there are several coal-fired plants too:

15

Mostly. AFAIK there are several coal-fired plants too:

Didn’t know that. I thought Taiwan’s coal industry was long dead.

Anyway, I won’t be missing much if I stay away from Mailiao and Heping (if I can help it…I once spent 6 hours in beautiful downtown Heping - Cement City! - after the car I was driving broke down there…)

16

FWIW, coal or not, it’s silly anyway. If cold drinks, why not fans, tvs, air conditioners, most computer use, most auto use, or just about anything else.

17

[quote=“sandman”]
They put it out because its a press release from the John Tung Foundation, which is a respected group here with powerful lobbying ability and therefore influential. [/quote]

So because they are influential, everything they say gets reported?

I must admit that it looks to me a bit like influence-peddling.

[quote=“sandman”]
CNA’s purpose is to report what people are saying and doing, not to analyze and express opinions about it. That’s what newspapers are for. Perhaps you’d prefer simply not to be informed when people are talking about stuff you disagree with, but others prefer to know as much as possible about other peoples’ stupidity and superstitious nonsense. [/quote]

Well, CNA does not report on anything and everything they hear about, I guess. Merely by selecting what they report and what they don’t, they actually do edit the newsstream as it were. The ultimate edit is to basically get rid of the whole thing, or decide that this or that gets a mentioning. It would appear that CNA does it based on influence and not newsworthiness as it were. I would be surprised if any but then most news-starved cable tv “news” channels picked up on this.

In the specific instance the idea that cold drinks are bad for you is something completely unsupported by any research. That makes it claptrap. Moreover, before I eat any medicine, I would prefer both the effeciency and the safety of it tested in double blind test over several rounds. Moreopver, I would like someone with a deep knowledge of the human body to tell me what was wrong.

It’s not very hard to find Chinese who completely agree with me, a psychriatrist finds the usage of chinese medicine on people with mental ilnesses dangerous, the doctors of say a major hospital tend to either banish practitioners of Chinese medicine or - like in Veterans General hospital - give them an attic somewhere to sit in.

Yes, however they aren’t usually consiumed before they have been put into cold storage for some time.

If I am thirsty and return with a warm beer it goes into the freezer for 30 minutes before opening.

18

Stay away from Chinese medicine, then. :laughing: Although the Chinese medicine practitioner I sometimes go to has a VERY deep knowledge of the human body indeed – probably FAR greater than the arsehole who’s dealing with my gashed leg right now, that’s for DAMN sure.

19

Cold water = drinking …
warm water = shower, laundry, cleaning … :bow:

Many people in Belgium drink UHT milk because it’s readily available, has a long shelf life and it’s cheap … nothing wrong with UHT milk, it’s milk … just heated at high temperature for a very short time to kill bacteria …

20

[quote=“Mr He”][quote=“sandman”]
They put it out because its a press release from the John Tung Foundation, which is a respected group here with powerful lobbying ability and therefore influential. [/quote]

So because they are influential, everything they say gets reported?

I must admit that it looks to me a bit like influence-peddling.[/quote]
No, because its a locally respected organization it gets reported.

[quote=“sandman”]
CNA’s purpose is to report what people are saying and doing, not to analyze and express opinions about it. That’s what newspapers are for. Perhaps you’d prefer simply not to be informed when people are talking about stuff you disagree with, but others prefer to know as much as possible about other peoples’ stupidity and superstitious nonsense. [/quote]

Well, CNA does not report on anything and everything they hear about, I guess. Merely by selecting what they report and what they don’t, they actually do edit the newsstream as it were. The ultimate edit is to basically get rid of the whole thing, or decide that this or that gets a mentioning. It would appear that CNA does it based on influence and not newsworthiness as it were. I would be surprised if any but then most news-starved cable tv “news” channels picked up on this.[/quote]
If CNA gets sent a press release it will most probably run it. That’s what it does. “Based on influence?” What on earth are you talking about? Based on the fact that the press release came from a respected organization that is considered newsworthy – just not by you.