so if soda accounts for twenty percent of so of weight gain, what accounts for the vast majority? I would still place my bets on junk foods similar to cookies, chips and such, but cannot discount prepared breakfast and dinners.
To play devil's advocate, one reason you might want to exempt "natural fruit juices" from a "soda tax" laws is that the laws are designed to make the product more expensive, enough to scare off consumption into healthier alternatives. But natural fruit juices tend to already be much more expensive to begin with (because you have to actually grow the few pieces of fruit), so they already have a kind of built-in deterrent to overconsumption.
I cannot say the same for random sugar-like-but-not-really-sugar chemical of the month.
You could just call them sweeteners, non-nutritive sweeteners, or even artificial sweeteners. There's nothing more chemical-y about aspartame (for example) than sucrose, glucose, fructose, etc...
Where in nature do humans or animals eat aspartame?
Now that doesn't necessarily mean they are bad, but it does mean they are unproven. You can find enough studies that show negative effects (in weight loss, gut bacteria, etc), that you should at least QUESTION your use of making your food sickly sweet without nutrition.
Logically if your goal is to eat less sugar, again it seems counterintuitive to make everything you eat sickly sweet. Your body doesn't need to have sugar on everything, or in every beverage. Rather than substitute sugar (known bad) for fake sugar (unknown bad amount), you can just.. you know... drink water and eat better?
Are you suggesting aspartame is supernatural? :)
I'm not arguing against any of what you said. I'm just suggesting the way you use the word "chemical" makes it sound like you think some things we consume are not chemicals.
The health groups, on the other hand, seem to have a big conflict of interest. They should either stop taking industry money OR stop commenting on industry issues.
For instance, apple and orange juice contains approximately 10 % sugar.
Juice drinks are then another matter; they are juice diluted with water and added sugar and flavourings, thus nutritionally even worse even though the sugar content is roughly similar.
For comparison, Coca-Cola "original" has 26g sugar in 8oz (236ml).
Fruit juices are fruits with lots of the good stuff removed but I still consider fruits as desserts and not very healthy...
http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocuments...
That doesn't mean that they aren't sweet, but the labeling should reliably state the fruit juice content.
Given that the blends aren't necessarily worse than the pure juice nutritionally, I'm not sure what you do for the consumer that can't tell the difference between "100% Vitamin C" and "100% Fruit Juice".
How can they say 100% apple juice with added ingredient (even if it is only vitamin C that they are adding in very small quantity...)
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but why wouldn't fruits as desserts be healthy?
Fruit and vegetable consumption and all-cause mortality: a dose-response analysis http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23803880
Normally you would only eat one orange. A glass of orange juice is equivalent to the juice of several oranges, with little or none of the accompanying fiber to slow down sugar absorption. Sure it's nutritious, but it's also a fructose bomb in a cup.
Fruit and vegetable consumption and all-cause mortality: a dose-response analysis http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23803880
Did I just blow your mind?
It may be interesting to note that I am a vegetarian so I am far from opposed to eating lots of fruit.