Anti-soda activists are trumpeting a new study in The Lancet by Dr. David Ludwig, purportedly linking soda drinking to childhood obesity. What the activists don’t want you to know is, according to an editorial accompanying the study, “a large proportion of the children [in the study] were obese” to start with. “Perhaps many children in Ludwig and colleagues’ study had pre-existing difficulties with energy regulation that explained why they were fat at the start of the experiment and why they did not compensate well for sugar-sweetened drinks over the 21 months of the study,” the Lancet’s editorial concludes. In the study, even Ludwig concludes, “Indeed, there is no clear evidence that consumption of sugar per se affects food intake in a unique manner or causes obesity.”
