Drop that can of sweet pop and grab a coffee - for your sanity's sake Further proof - were it necessary - that strong unsweetened coffee is the only correct workplace beverage and that sickly imitation pop is the devil's own satanic brew has emerged this week. Boffins in the States have confirmed that sweetened and "diet" drinks are associated with a significantly heightened risk of mental illness …
Close enough, byt "even instant coffee is preferable to bad tea" was what I was going for.
A quick test for everyone: next time you're near a hot drinks machine, get a cup each of tea and coffee from it - both will be awful, naturally, but only one will taste like it's actively trying to ruin your day.
There is a very simple principle to the making of tea and it's this - to get the proper flavour of tea, the water has to be boiling (not boiled) when it hits the tea leaves. If it's merely hot then the tea will be insipid. That's why we English have these odd rituals, such as warming the teapot first (so as not to cause the boiling water to cool down too fast as it hits the pot). And that's why the American habit of bringing a teacup, a tea bag and a pot of hot water to the table is merely the perfect way of making a thin, pale, watery cup of tea that nobody in their right mind would want to drink. The Americans are all mystified about why the English make such a big thing out of tea because most Americans have never had a good cup of tea. That's why they don't understand. In fact the truth of the matter is that most English people don't know how to make tea any more either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.
-Douglas Adams
If we follow the link to AAN piece we get this
"The study involved 263,925 people between the ages of 50 and 71 at enrollment. From 1995 to 1996, consumption of drinks such as soda, tea, fruit punch and coffee was evaluated. About 10 years later, researchers asked the participants whether they had been diagnosed with depression since the year 2000. A total of 11,311 depression diagnoses were made."
Way too many other possible reasons for depression could have happen - taking a wild guess with the age spread presented I think a few loved ones may have gone on rather than too many diet cokes.
Actually, "the cups that cheer, but do not inebriate". Although attributed to William Cowper, this description was originated by Bishop George Berkeley, he of the silent tree falling in the forest. He was talking about tar water, to which he attributed medicinal properties.**
Tar water is available from the vending machines in all the offices where I've worked, but they usually call it coffee.
** Curiously, this information comes from Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy
Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour had an episode called "Coffee", well worth a traipse across the interwebs to find... Apparently, one Pope liked this new-fangled drink so much that he baptised it.
Speaking of mathematicians (Russell, not Dylan), it was said of Paul Erdős by his colleague Alfréd Rényi "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems".
> Depressed all day, every day
> No Coke or Diet Coke
> Drink unsweetened coffee as if caffeine is the key to being one of the Chosen Ones when the rapture comes
> "Cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk"
My Face When
You know what would depress me? Living a health-freak's life. Every time I pick up a drink or snack these days there's someone around to tell me all the ways it's going to kill me.
GOOD!
I'd rather drop dead at 70 having eaten and drank every bloody thing I like than make it to 75 without Dr Pepper. I've no intention of becoming a man-mountain, but I'm not about to start snacking on the muesli either.
</grumpy_old_man_who_is_actually_in_his_mid_20s>
Muesli is fried. It's probably one of the worst things you can eat. Go compare the nutritional information to any other cereal (e.g. honey-nut cornflakes) next time you are in a supermarket.
That said, it tastes like bird-seed and I'm with you on the first part, so I avoid it for that reason.
I'd like a life experienced for 70 years, than death avoided through sacrifice of that experience for 100.
Give it up, muesli is mainly made of uncooked rolled oats.
I've done the comparison you suggest with a random muesli is lower in calories and suger, and higher in fibre:
http://www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Dorset-Cereals-Simply-Delicious-Muesli/31166011
http://www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Kelloggs-Crunchy-Nut-Corn-Flakes/10013011
>I'd like a life experienced for 70 years, than death avoided through sacrifice of that experience for 100.
My dad used to say that.
About tobacco.
Capstan Navy Cut.
Then he got cancer.
That frightened him.
But hey, he had a life full of experience right up until his 70's. 71 -and shitty health for decades.
He smelt like a red tide. I don't know what people dying of sugar poisoning smell like.
"I'd rather drop dead at 70 having eaten and drank every bloody thing I like than make it to 75 without Dr Pepper. I've no intention of becoming a man-mountain, but I'm not about to start snacking on the muesli either."
Don't you mean
"I'd rather spend my years from 45 to 70 taking ever increasing handfuls of powerful medications with nasty debilitating side effects and sleeping with a tubes up my nose and into my bladder. Slowly, slowly, ever-so-slowly slipping from a painful life to ignominious death - than consider my own and my dependants/loved ones futures a little tiny bit".
I'd rather spend my years from 45 to 70 taking ever increasing handfuls of powerful medications with nasty debilitating side effects and sleeping with a tubes up my nose and into my bladder. Slowly, slowly, ever-so-slowly slipping from a painful life to ignominious death - than consider my own and my dependants/loved ones futures a little tiny bit.
No, you condescending git, I don't. I mean that it's impossible to pick up anything these days without hearing about how it will kill me, so rather than spend the rest of my life worrying about dying from a thousand cuts, I'm going to continue the laser tag, skiing and otherwise pratting about that keeps me in reasonable condition, and eat and drink as I normally do. No smoking, no heroin, just the odd cider, and lots of chinese food.
And the most likely outcome from that? I'll live for pretty much the same length of time, but be far happier at the end of it.
"I'd rather spend my years from 45 to 70 taking ever increasing handfuls of powerful medications with nasty debilitating side effects and sleeping with a tubes up my nose and into my bladder. Slowly, slowly, ever-so-slowly slipping from a painful life to ignominious death - than consider my own and my dependants/loved ones futures a little tiny bit".
Anecdotal but...
The vast majority of people I know are not health freaks. Of those in the 45 - 70 age range only a tiny minority are on any medication as far as I'm aware. Only one (actually over 70) has tubes for breathing and that's because he worked as a painter in the ship yards before anyone gave a fuck about the health and safety of workers.
Hopefully I'll have the genetic resilience and luck of my great-grandad who had a full English every day, enjoyed his whisky and regularly smoked cigars. He lived in good health well into his 80s and enjoyed every minute of it.
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It depends what you mean by "depressed people", and I think perhaps what you really mean is "Depressed people aren't crazy".
If you mean someone who is depressed because their dad died or some other traumatic event, then no they're not insane (or crazy).
If you mean some one suffering from depression as a disorder, rather than depression as rational mood state induced by circumstances, then by definition they are not sane.
Sane/Insane are not insults but technical terms (albeit ones which have fallen out of favour due to political correctness), the definition of sane is being in a rational state of mind.
IANAP (I Am Not A Psychiatrist) but if you are depressed due to metal illness your judgment is compromised to a greater or lesser degree and as such you are by definition not rational.
Not that I judge or criticise anyone for being depressed or having any other mental illness. It is just that, an illness, something the sufferer is blameless for and there are a variety of treatments available.
Also it annoys me when they change the name of charities because of current political correctness or insults being used.
The Spastics Society changed it's name to Scope because the word spastic was commonly being used as an insult, even though the name of the charity came from the name of the illnesses involved such as Spastic Diplegia.
Would Cancer Research change it's name if people were using the word cancer as an insult?
Espresso was invented because there were tax benefits for serving coffee to customers who stood up rather than sat down at a table. It tastes crap compared to a decent cup of properly brewed coffee. Anybody who thinks their life is too busy and important to spend five minutes having a real coffee needs to take a good look in the mirror. The fact that an Emperor's New Clothes snobbery has grown around it is mildly amusing.
I've been drinking Diet Pepsi mostly every day, approximately 1 litre a day, for a little over 10 days and can't say I feel remotely depressed.
Cynical, and socially awkward yes, but I was like that before I started drinking diet soft drinks.
As many many people have point out correlation does not equal causation.
The study in question does not actually factor in other factors such as diet. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that a number of the participants had a family history of depression, but it wasn't factored in because it was never acknowledged/diagnosed/treated.
I also wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that some of them had diets lacking in carbohydrates. Since these are required for the body to form serotonin, it is a much more likely cause of depression than diet soft drinks.
P.S. I also enjoy the occasional strong black unsweetened coffee, but I seriously doubt this would counter any negative effects of diet pepsi.
I assume we are ignoring the many dodgy side effects of coffee, such as
- Caffeine dependency
- Increased risk of pancreatic and bladder cancer (which I had 7 years ago, and the docs put it down to coffee)
- Increased risk of glaucoma
- Insomnia
- High blood pressure
etc etc.
Given that it's not particularly good for you and tastes like sh*t, I'll stick to full-fat Pepsi thanks.
Which was linked to depression to the point where trials were stopped because the patients were viewed as serious risks of suicide.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8373935 (scroll to bottom of page for abstract).
For most people it might be OK but for a proportion of the population it appears Aspartane (created by the everyone's favorite agrichemicals and GM company Monsanto) is about as good an idea as working in a climbing rope shop or a plastic bag factory.
... It's got... electrolytes!
Here is my worthless opinion:
Tea=stimulating and tasty beverage.
Coffee=bitter tasting medicine useful for getting through dull meetings without snoring.
Soda (or Pop as I prefer to call it)=a drink best enjoyed at birthday parties with jelly and crisps.
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