Caffeine Test

Written By Jill Ettinger

Bad news for diet soda drinkers, according to a study published in the most recent issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The study results found that drinking diet soda daily significantly increases the risk of developing a stroke, heart attack and other serious vascular issues.

Conducted by the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Columbia University Medical Center, the study, titled Diet Soft Drink Consumption is Associated with an Increased Risk of Vascular Events in the Northern Manhattan Study, observed the soda habits of more than 2,500 individuals over a 10-year period. According to the research, people who drank diet soda on a daily basis were 43 percent more likely to suffer a stroke or heart attack than those who didnt drink any diet soda, even if pre-existing vascular conditions existed. And those who drank less than than one diet soda per day were also less likely to be at risk of having a stroke or heart attack than those who consumed at least one a day.

The specific causal factor in diet sodas connection to heart attacks and stroke was not clear, despite the correlation, according to study authors. In a statement, researcher Hannah Gardener said, Results suggest a potential association between daily diet soft drink consumption and vascular outcomes. However, the mechanisms by which soft drinks may affect vascular events are unclear.

Artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and saccharin, which are commonly found in most diet sodas, have long been connected with health issues including tinnitus, headaches, nervous system disorders and certain types of cancer.

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If youre trying to lose pounds to get to a healthy weight, a new study shows those liquid calories matter, too.

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, showed that overweight and obese people who swapped out their caloric drinks for calorie-free options — including, yes, water! — were able to lose four to five pounds over a six-month period. The research will be published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

If this were done on a large scale, it could significantly reduce the increasing public health problem of obesity, study researcher Deborah Tate, PhD, an associate professor of nutrition and health behavior at UNC Chapel Hill, said in a statement.

Tate and her colleagues looked at the amount of weight lost over half a year among 318 overweight and obese people. The study participants were split up into three groups: one group that switched from caloric drinks to simply water, one group that switched from caloric drinks to diet soda, and one group that did not have to change their drink habits, but who received general information what healthy choices to make for weight loss.

All three of the groups experienced some weight loss and smaller waist sizes during the study period, but researchers found that the people who drank the water and diet soda were the most likely to experience weight loss of 5 percent or more of their body weight.

Even more, researchers found that the water-guzzlers were the most hydrated out of the three groups, and had lower levels of fasting glucose than the group who only received the general information.

Substituting specific foods or beverages that provide a substantial portion of daily calories may be a useful strategy for modest weight loss or weight gain prevention, Tate said in the statement. Beverages may be ideal targets, but keep in mind, the strategy will only work if the person doesnt make up for the lost calories some other way.

SICKENED workers for a domestic abuse charity are counting the cost after raiders ransacked their base.

Two laptops, three mobile phones and even petty cash and collecting tins were stolen from the Redcar town centre office of Survivors of Domestic Abuse (SODA) – situated in a church building.

The charity, set up in 2008, offers a range of services from its base on the first floor of Redcars United Reformed Church in Station Road.

But when staff opened up yesterday morning , they found internal doors smashed, the office ransacked and various items missing.

Its believed the raiders leapt onto a roof before dropping down and smashing a ground floor window in the church hall. They then went upstairs to the SODA office.

Andy Overton, a Cleveland Police officer whos also SODAs business development manager, said they were dismayed to be targeted.

WASHINGTON
In 2010, with concern over obesity and especially childhood obesity on the rise, several states including New York, California, Washington, Kansas and Rhode Island engaged in spirited debates about new taxes on soft drinks. Just as every state has a cigarette tax and every state taxes alcohol, soda taxes seemed as though they might be the new sin tax of choice. So far, though, that hasnt happened.

Momentum for soda taxes has fizzled out. Bills to create them were introduced in about 15 states last year, but, unlike in 2010, few of them gained much traction or much attention. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie made a prominent push for the idea, but it died quickly in a legislative committee. This year, rather than reintroduce the tax, Abercrombie wants a task force to study ways to reduce consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.

As of the start of 2011, almost half of the states did tax soft drinks at a higher rate than other food products, according to the Bridging the Gap project at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Most of those states, though, merely apply regular sales taxes to soda, while exempting food. Only a few states impose special excise taxes on soda the way they do on cigarettes. No state taxes soda at the levels public health researchers argue would be necessary to substantially reduce their consumption.

Even sales taxes on soda are now difficult to enact. When Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick introduced his new budget in January, he proposed one. His case was that the tax would promote public health, while yielding revenue to relieve strains on Massachusetts budget. But its a case that Patrick, a former Coca-Cola executive, has now made for four years without success.

The chances of moving it through the legislature have been very slim, says Patrick Tigue of Community Catalyst, a nonprofit that advocates for soda taxes, and this year looks like it promises to be no different.

One reason the momentum has stalled is that all tax increases have been off the table in many states lately. Equally important, the soft drink industry has pushed back aggressively, mobilizing opposition from convenience stores and bottlers, among others.

The excise tax is discriminatory, its regressive, it singles out one industry, says Chris Gindlesperger, director of communications at the American Beverage Association. Its government digging into the grocery cart of people.

The industry has scored some big victories. In 2010, with 60 percent of the vote, Washington state voters repealed a law that raised soda taxes.

Whats less clear is whether the idea has fallen out of favor in a lasting way or whether these are just temporary setbacks. Tigue notes that it took many years for cigarette taxes to gain broad acceptance and that theres a strong commitment to soda taxes in public health circles. Even Gindlesperger expects the issue to come up in more places in 2013, once lawmakers make it through election season.

At birth, Melinda Star Guido tipped the scales at only 9 1/2 ounces, less than a can of soda. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)AP2011

Ann Arbor, MI, Jan 18, 2012 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) –
Enlighten’s founder and CEO Steve Glauberman has been elected to the global Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) Board of Directors for the second year running, the digital marketing agency announced today. The new board will govern the 2012 calendar year for SoDA and includes a handful of digital marketing professionals from around the world. According to SoDA, each member of this year’s board “brings a wealth of industry experience and thought leadership to the organization” that they will be guiding in the months to come.

“I’m excited to serve on the SoDA board again, and to be counted among the industry veterans who will be shaping its strategic imperatives this year,” Steve Glauberman says. “I will also be doing my part to represent SoDA by attending and speaking at industry events, including SXSW 2012.”

SoDa was created in 2008 by 13 leading digital marketing agency CEOs to promote knowledge sharing and collaboration within the industry. Enlighten joined the elite, invitation-only organization, which counts Adobe Systems among its industry sponsorship partners, in 2009, and in addition to actively supporting its work has contributed numerous articles to its much-anticipated annual SoDA Reports.

For more information on SoDA, please visit
http://societyofdigitalagencies.org .

About Enlighten

Enlighten (
www.enlighten.com ) is an award-winning digital marketing, online advertising, web development, data analytics and strategic consulting firm building innovative online experiences for major brands including Hunter Douglas, Richmond American Homes, John Frieda(r), Jergens(r), Biore(r), illy caffe, Olympic Paint and Stain, Fruit2O, Jimmy John’s, HealthMedia, Comerica, Johnson & Johnson and more. Based in Ann Arbor, the independent digital marketing agency was founded in 1983.

This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire,
www.globenewswire.com

SOURCE: Enlighten

CONTACT: Tessa WegertCommunications Director734-929-1937twegert@enlighten.com

(C) Copyright 2010 GlobeNewswire, Inc. All rights reserved.

Dublin Dr Pepper is gone, leaving legions of soda fanatics — and an entire Texas town — in shock.

The soda, produced at the tiny Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling plant in Dublin, Texas, has been a cult favorite for years. Fans loved that it was still made from cane sugar and not high-fructose corn syrup. Locals saw the soda as one of the last economic strongholds in a struggling town with a population of just 3,800.

The bottler even added the word Dublin to the labels of its Dr Pepper and sold the soda on its website. In retrospect, that may have been its undoing.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group (DPS), which owns Dr Pepper, sued the plant in June, saying Dublin Dr Pepper was diluting the Dr Pepper brand and hijacking sales from other Dr Pepper bottlers, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Diluting the brand? Consider this: The Dublin bottler had sales of $7 million a year. Dr Pepper Snapple Group had sales of $5.6 billion in 2010. And, the Journal reported, Dublin Dr Pepper makes up less than 1% of Dr Peppers annual US volume.

But those numbers would not sway Dr Pepper Snapple Group. And as the lawsuit headed to a bitter settlement, it became clear that Dublin Dr Pepper would shut down. The worlds oldest Dr Pepper bottler has now changed its name to Dublin Bottling Works. It will no longer produce Dr Pepper.

Anything with the Dublin Dr Pepper logo on it is being destroyed, The Dallas Morning news reported. Dr Pepper Snapple Group says the same cane-sugar version will be produced by another bottler in Temple, Texas, but it wont have the special Dublin logo.

And so the region said an emotional goodbye this week to the Dr Pepper that bears the Dublin name and carries so much of the citys legacy. The plant laid off 14 workers. One nearby resident told the Abilene Reporter-News she would never buy Dr Pepper again. Im very upset that the parent company didnt realize what they were doing to such an icon, she said. They took that away, they strong-armed them and took it away.

Others nationwide joined in the outpouring of emotion and anger. Dear Texas, Go buy all the Dublin Dr Pepper you can, while you can, celebrity chef Alton Brown posted on Twitter. Then go out and shoot a bottle of Snapple.

The last few bottles of Dublin Dr Pepper have become hot items on eBay (EBAY). One bottle was selling for $22 and had received five bids as of Friday morning.

Mountain Dews Power to Dissolve Dead Mouse Used as Legal Defense

Even if there was a mouse in the mans soda, it apparently wouldnt be noticeable 15 months later.

Sydney —

In the midst of a summer heat wave, Australia is suffering a soft-drink shortage because of a disruption in supplies of the gas that gives soda its fizz. Schweppes is already losing sales, and Coca-Cola may be affected next.

At peak period, Im out of stock by 9:30 in the morning, said Mark Raynes, manager of Ritchies supermarket in Balnarring, a beach destination southeast of Melbourne. Our trade doubles at this time of year, and saying youve got no drink mixers is like saying theres no Champagne on New Years Eve.

Several factors have contributed to the fizz shortage. Schweppes Australia, the nations second-largest soft-drink maker, said production is being hampered by a lack of carbon dioxide because of manufacturing plant shutdowns.

Oricas Kooragang Island ammonia plant, which makes the raw gas as a by-product of explosives production, has been closed since August after an accident. The company began a controlled restart Tuesday, and it may take as long as three weeks to resume full production, said spokesman Nicole Ekert.

A labor dispute has made the situation worse. Schweppes Australia has locked out about 150 workers at a plant in Victoria state since Dec. 15 in a pay disagreement.

The shortage comes at a particularly bad time. Summer is typically the busiest period for the nations $3.3 billion soda industry with hotter weather, schools on vacation and workers taking time off between Christmas and Australia Day on Jan. 26. In Melbourne, the countrys second-largest city, temperatures peaked at 104 Fahrenheit this week, while temperatures in suburbs of Sydney, the biggest city, reached more than 98.6 Fahrenheit.

Australia is the driest inhabited continent in the world, and the last 10 years have equaled the hottest decade on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

This article appeared on page A – 5 of the San#xA0;Francisco#xA0;Chronicle

Here at DVICE, we have a proud tradition of only bringing you stories that matter. Stories about science, about the evolution of technology, and about the future. And it is in the spirit of none of these things that we are proud to present the HPS Hamstar, a hamster-powered submarine.

The HPS Hamstar was created from scratch largely from materials purchased at a local dollar store, which must not have instilled the captain and chief engineer, a hamster by the name of Houdina, with much in the way of confidence. The most expensive bits were the copper BBs used to ballast the fore and aft compartments, and the second most expensive part was the 1 HP engine (thats one hamster-power), which was that same poor little hamster engineer running on a wheel hooked up to a propeller.

Now, Im not qualified to speculate as to what was going through Houdinas fluffy little head as she became what may have been the first hamster in the history of everythign to pilot a submarine, but I imagine it was either: Imrunningonawheel Imrunningonawheel Imrunningonawheel or WTF?! See what you think; the video of the second epic voyage (not sure what happened with the first one but lets not go there) is below.

Hamster Submarine, via Geekologie