Smoking a handful of cigarettes, definitely. Regular sodas are sugar delivery machines and deliver 100 calories per can. If you manage your diet, it won’t matter too much. There’s no managing you can do to account for cigarettes. Plus, cigarettes also have 2nd hand (and now 3rd hand) hazards.
What UI said (and anon, for that matter). Cigarettes don’t just stop at the user. Plus, soda-junkies can reverse the damage (unless it pushed them into diabetes, which then they have to manage it).
The fact of the matter is that cigarettes are made to make one an addict. Soda, though people drink it like it was beer, is not. Therefore, I say cigarettes.
Even if you stopped drinking soda, you’d still get HFCS. There’s really no way for Americans to avoid it unless you become a raw food vegan or something.
actually nemski soda or more specfically sugar is highly addictive. it boosts the dopamines in your brain and you go through w/draw similar to that of alcohol
this is mrs. hotviti….dv was on my computer again
CIGARETTES ARE SO MUCH WORSE THAN SODAS. I smoked for 14 years and I am so damned glad that I quit smoking!! One soda a day may be regrettable, but it ain’t gonna kill most people. Take a look at what crap people put in their shopping carts at the grocery store. Now, put all of that processed stuff back on the shelves and go pick up some real foods: fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy products, some decent breads–the real, pure stuff with as little processing as possible. Now, go home and cook it yourself. Drink ore water.
I would rather have a beer each day than a soda, anyway.
But, to be more serious, my mother died at age 61 thanks to cigarettes. She started when she was around 18 — which would have been about 1946 — when cigarettes were cool and not harmful.
Well, in the early 1980s, the gunk had put a film on the inside of her lungs, and she developed COPD: just breathing was a struggle. She had a two story house, and it was ten steps up to the landing, a right turn, and another seven steps up to the second floor; she had to stop on the landing to catch her breath, before she could make it the rest of the way upstairs.
My mother was never big — maybe 105 lb — but when she died she was down to 80 lb. Why? Because when you swallow food, you hold your breath, and eating takes time away from breathing, and COPD sufferers have a very difficult time.
As it happens, my family was blessed with good genes: we almost never get sick, and when we do, we throw off a three-day bug in a day. That was my mother, that was my sisters, that’s me, and it’s even been my kids so far. Mom never got cancer or any illnesses that the immune system could fight off; she just developed a coating on the inside of her lungs through which it was difficult for oxygen to pass. If she hadn’t smoked, she’d probably have lived into her nineties.
I don’t mean to sound glib, but diabetes is a manageable disease. It’s certainly something you want to avoid, but my dad has been managing diabetes for 20 yrs., my best friend from high school for almost her whole life. My grandfather lived into his mid 80s despite being insulin dependent.
One or two sodas a day probably aren’t too bad, but when you pile on all of the other sources of sugar (and that mostly HFCS) present in alot of our diets, Americans take in alot of sugar. Most of the popular low-carb diets are focused on really reducing the amount of sugar you take in.
I quit smoking 5 years ago (anniversary tomorrow!) after quitting multiple times before. The CW about quitting nicotine is that it is harder to do that than to quit heroin. No idea if that is true, but the first 3 months were really, really tough.
Smoking a handful of cigarettes, definitely. Regular sodas are sugar delivery machines and deliver 100 calories per can. If you manage your diet, it won’t matter too much. There’s no managing you can do to account for cigarettes. Plus, cigarettes also have 2nd hand (and now 3rd hand) hazards.
uh-oh. I sense an ex-wife story coming on.
What UI said (and anon, for that matter). Cigarettes don’t just stop at the user. Plus, soda-junkies can reverse the damage (unless it pushed them into diabetes, which then they have to manage it).
Depends on how big your hands are.
Plus, cigarettes also have 2nd hand (and now 3rd hand) hazards.
If you have a 3rd hand it is definitely time to stop smoking.
Perhaps Big Brother is Big Nanny in drag.
I suppose the progressive mindset can be rather sective when it lurches into neo-puritanism.
So, what about my four to five cans of Mountain Dew a day? No cigarettes, though!
Just remember: Mountain Dew is a good source for two of the four main food groups, sugar and caffeine.
high fructose corn syrup
do some research people
The fact of the matter is that cigarettes are made to make one an addict. Soda, though people drink it like it was beer, is not. Therefore, I say cigarettes.
Even if you stopped drinking soda, you’d still get HFCS. There’s really no way for Americans to avoid it unless you become a raw food vegan or something.
actually nemski soda or more specfically sugar is highly addictive. it boosts the dopamines in your brain and you go through w/draw similar to that of alcohol
this is mrs. hotviti….dv was on my computer again
Oh…whoa…so do we have this backwards? Are YOU the one who smokes handfuls of cigarettes?
😛
A big study on high fructose corn syrup by a M.D. who thought that it was more of a problem than table sugar just concluded it wasn’t.
They are both equally bad and addictive. 🙁
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98657403
Sugar more addictive than nicotine? I don’t think so.
PS, I’m not saying drinking soda is good for you, but I was given an either or scenario.
just the comment the post was all dv.
and nemski addictions are addictions regardless of the culprit: read this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_addiction
nemski,
if I had to give it a 1 to 10 number smoking being a 10. I’d give the soda an 8.
one soda a day for the rest of your life would be a horrible thing for ones body.
Sure smoking causes cancer. But diabetes is pretty awful too. Blindness, amputation, dialysis.
Those pepsi commercials are so cute how could they mean harm?
Cigarettes make you look cooler and older.
CIGARETTES ARE SO MUCH WORSE THAN SODAS. I smoked for 14 years and I am so damned glad that I quit smoking!! One soda a day may be regrettable, but it ain’t gonna kill most people. Take a look at what crap people put in their shopping carts at the grocery store. Now, put all of that processed stuff back on the shelves and go pick up some real foods: fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy products, some decent breads–the real, pure stuff with as little processing as possible. Now, go home and cook it yourself. Drink ore water.
I would rather have a beer each day than a soda, anyway.
23, because footballs don’t have feathers.
Anon wrote:
Cooler, because you are standing out in the cold smoking, ’cause it ain’t allowed in the building.
But, to be more serious, my mother died at age 61 thanks to cigarettes. She started when she was around 18 — which would have been about 1946 — when cigarettes were cool and not harmful.
Well, in the early 1980s, the gunk had put a film on the inside of her lungs, and she developed COPD: just breathing was a struggle. She had a two story house, and it was ten steps up to the landing, a right turn, and another seven steps up to the second floor; she had to stop on the landing to catch her breath, before she could make it the rest of the way upstairs.
My mother was never big — maybe 105 lb — but when she died she was down to 80 lb. Why? Because when you swallow food, you hold your breath, and eating takes time away from breathing, and COPD sufferers have a very difficult time.
As it happens, my family was blessed with good genes: we almost never get sick, and when we do, we throw off a three-day bug in a day. That was my mother, that was my sisters, that’s me, and it’s even been my kids so far. Mom never got cancer or any illnesses that the immune system could fight off; she just developed a coating on the inside of her lungs through which it was difficult for oxygen to pass. If she hadn’t smoked, she’d probably have lived into her nineties.
LOL@Dana #21. Too true!
I don’t mean to sound glib, but diabetes is a manageable disease. It’s certainly something you want to avoid, but my dad has been managing diabetes for 20 yrs., my best friend from high school for almost her whole life. My grandfather lived into his mid 80s despite being insulin dependent.
One or two sodas a day probably aren’t too bad, but when you pile on all of the other sources of sugar (and that mostly HFCS) present in alot of our diets, Americans take in alot of sugar. Most of the popular low-carb diets are focused on really reducing the amount of sugar you take in.
I quit smoking 5 years ago (anniversary tomorrow!) after quitting multiple times before. The CW about quitting nicotine is that it is harder to do that than to quit heroin. No idea if that is true, but the first 3 months were really, really tough.
After I lost one of my lungs to cancer, I cut my smoking in half. (That’s a joke, yo).