[xorcist]

It's a baffling thought that so much research is spent on which type of sugar water might cause the least amount of bad long term effects.

It's not like there is any medical need for the body to consume sugar water at all.

As recreation, sure, but doing something daily is routine, not recreation. That last part is the strange bit. Consume it every tenth meal and you can pick any type of sugar, an otherwise healthy individual would suffer no long term effects. Consume it every meal and you will.

As a though experiment, it would be interesting to think about how much research would be made into finding out which alcohol we could ingest 50 g of to every meal while minimizing long term damage.

[tene]

It doesn't baffle me; it seems pretty obvious.

Given that huge populations are consuming sugar water daily, and given the health consequences of this, information on which type of sugar water has the least-bad long-term effects is extremely valuable for harm-reduction efforts.

If "everyone should just stop drinking soda" was actually a strategy that worked, then the problem would have already been solved. It didn't work, or hasn't worked yet, so it's worth trying to check whether the variations advertised as less-harmful are actually less-harmful or not.

[xorcist]

Lots of people drink alcohol daily. But we don't collectively act as if that was something completely normal. We spend huge resources to spread the importance of drinking in moderation.

The same is true of sugar water too. Nobody has to stop drinking it. Just do it sensibly and it's not a problem.