Brilliant Investor, Lousy Nutritionist
but is that a good reason for drinking Coke?
It's only likely to prove a really healthy remedy
if you happen to own nine percent of the company.
For the billions of others for whom this doesn't apply
there are many other beverages far better to try:
such as WATER both bacteria and chemical free
which may even fall from the sky naturally--
In fact its only defect that i can see
that cause one not to love it
is that nearly ten percent of THAT industry
is not yet owned by Mr. Warren Buffett.
HzL
5/5/16
From Dictionary.com: Word History: Water is wet, even etymologically. The Indo-European root of water is *wed-, "wet." This root could appear in several guises-with the vowel e, as here, or as *wod-, or with no vowel between the w and d, yielding *ud-. All three forms of the root appear in English either in native or in borrowed words. From a form with a long e, *wēd-, which by Grimm's Law became *wēt- in Germanic, we have Old English wǣt, "wet," which became modern English wet. The form *wod-, in a suffixed form *wod-ōr, became *watar in Germanic and eventually water in modern English. From the form *ud- the Greeks got their word for water, hud-ōr, the source of our prefix hydro- and related words like hydrant. The suffixes *-rā and *-ros added to the form *ud- yielded the Greek word hudrā, "water snake" (borrowed into English as hydra), and the Germanic word *otraz, the source of our word otter, the water animal. O.E. wæter, from P.Gmc. *watar (cf. O.S. watar, O.Fris. wetir, Du. water, O.H.G. wazzar, Ger. Wasser, O.N. vatn, Goth. wato "water"), from PIE *wodor/*wedor/*uder-, from root *wed- (cf. Hittite watar, Skt. udnah, Gk. hydor, O.C.S., Rus. voda, Lith. vanduo, Lettish ūdens, O.Prus. wundan, Gael. uisge "water;" L. unda "wave").
Warren Buffett: Brilliant Investor, Lousy Nutritionist
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At his annual meeting last weekend, Warren Buffett defended his daily intake of Cherry Coke (700 calories) with the sort of folksy logic that has made him so appealing. "I like fudge a lot, too, and peanut brittle," he explained. "I am a very happy guy. If you were happy every day -- and it may be hard to measure -- you are going to live longer as well, so that may be a compensating factor."
Buffett is of course correct that there is no reliable metric for happiness (though that hasn't stopped people from trying, on apersonal and national scale). There are, by contrast, many ways to measure the effect of soda on human health. To summarize: It is bad.
While soda drinking might be good for Buffett's portfolio, it's unquestionably harmful for public health. Many studies show that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages every day leads children and adults alike to gain weight, mostly because few soda drinkers compensate by cutting other calories. This could help explain whyobesity rates worldwide have risen along with increased consumptionof sugar-sweetened beverages.
Researchers have also found strong links between soda-drinking and diabetes, heart disease and gout. And because sodas contain high levels of phosphoric acid but no calcium, they can also have an ill effect on children's bone development.
As for Buffett's suggestion that soda-drinking is a matter of personal choice, he may be immune from the $1 billion a year that soda makers spend on advertising, much of it directed at children, and by the drinks' low prices and ready availability. When taxes are levied to raise the price of the drinks, consumption falls, according to a studyof Mexico's soda tax (a study partly funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies). Emerging evidence suggests this has the potential to reduce obesity.
Buffett is certainly free to indulge his sweet tooth, and he seems to have a (healthy?) respect for the need for moderation. He can also be expected to defend his company's 9 percent stake in Coca-Cola. But generalizing from personal experience is not the best way to formulate public policy. In fact, it tends to work better the other way -- using aggregate data to guide personal behavior. On that score, here's some nutritional advice for Mr. Buffett: Please remember to stay hydrated.
To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg View’s editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net.
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