Is beer as bad for your teeth as soda?

hardcore_gamer said:

I am trying to cut back on soda because of my teeth, but I have taken a liking to beer.

Obviously beer isn't healthy in large amounts any more so then soda, but does it actually damage your teeth as much as, say, coke? Or soft drinks in general?

Didn't you get your answer back in this thread? And I still standy by my answer of just using a damn straw for carbonated anything.

.

The very quality of being alive is bad for you.

DoomUK said:

The very quality of being alive is bad for you.

Seriously, almost everything leads to cancer (especially where I live). Might as well say fuck it, and enjoy a drink while we can.

Like you said as long as you dont drink beer in large amounts at the sametime.

Doominator2 said:

Like you said as long as you dont drink beer in large amounts at the sametime.

Yep, moderation is a virtue everyone should strive for. I think its funny that here in the U.S., at least when i was growing up, those who drank more were considered to be "tougher", or more "manly". For a lot of young kids, the goal is to get wasted. It really became apparent who stupid it was when kids started competing in who could drink the most Everclear Vodka; who could drink the most of it straight. I like how the culture of drink is in Europe. Socially, people who drinking to excess are actually considered to be weaker, and rightfully so.

Come to think of it, maybe this is why our test scores in reading and math are lower than in other nation-states. A lot the kids in high school and college, of almost all social groups, are getting trashed most of the time.

Kontra Kommando said:

Lol. The drinking culture in scandinavia is binge drinking to the max

Kontra Kommando said:

Yep, moderation is a virtue everyone should strive for. I think its funny that here in the U.S., at least when i was growing up, those who drank more were considered to be "tougher", or more "manly". For a lot of young kids, the goal is to get wasted. It really became apparent who stupid it was when kids started competing in who could drink the most Everclear Vodka; who could drink the most of it straight. I like how the culture of drink is in Europe. Socially, people who drinking to excess are actually considered to be weaker, and rightfully so.

Come to think of it, maybe this is why our test scores in reading and math are lower than in other nation-states. A lot the kids in high school and college, of almost all social groups, are getting trashed most of the time.

With respect, you don't know much about Europe. The fact that your "tall boy" beer cans are our standard size should indicate something. :p

idk, that's just what I've been told by people about places like Germany (at least in Octoberfest) and Italy. That people that act all drunk and foolish are looked at poorly; and people that keep their composure are what they consider manly.

Kontra Kommando said:

at least when i was growing up, those who drank more were considered to be "tougher", or more "manly"

Well, if you CAN drink up a lot and NOT get wasted, I can see the reasoning. But any fool can simply drink and get wasted, even the most un-tough and un-manly piece of scum-sucking algae-eater.
so.

Kontra Kommando said:

A lot the kids in high school and college, of almost all social groups, are getting trashed most of the time.

This is actually a 100% Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, common in all of the Anglosphere (yup, that includes Brits, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Aussies and Kiwis, and maybe some of the South Africans). The Scandinavians have their own version, but they are hindered by high alcohol taxes, while all of the aforemantioned Anglos are free to drink themselves to oblivion with state-approved cheap booze.

Mid- and southern Europe has a nice drinking culture. My guess is that the UK is just as bad as scandinavia :P

There's a funny thing about Everclear vodka; its extremely flammable due to it being 95% alcohol by volume. Instead of drinking it, sometimes we would use it to burn stuff.

Maes said:

The Scandinavians have their own version, but they are hindered by high alcohol taxes

With one exception: Estonia. :)

Maes said:

This is actually a 100% Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, common in all of the Anglosphere (yup, that includes Brits, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Aussies and Kiwis, and maybe some of the South Africans). The Scandinavians have their own version, but they are hindered by high alcohol taxes, while all of the aforemantioned Anglos are free to drink themselves to oblivion with state-approved cheap booze.

You forgot Canada! We always come out pretty much on top of studies of alcohol consumption. Attempts to combat this never work, and because said attempts always revolve around tighter liquor laws, I don't support any of them.

Aliotroph? said:

You forgot Canada! We always come out pretty much on top of studies of alcohol consumption. Attempts to combat this never work, and because said attempts always revolve around tighter liquor laws, I don't support any of them.

I don't think those laws work either. By the time I reached 21 years old (my state's legal drinking age), I was already done with drinking because me and everyone else had years of experience. The only way there would ever be any meaningful change is if there was a social paradigm shift in attitudes towards drunkenness. Which is something that really can't be facilitated by authorities; if anything I think their efforts only serve to re-enforce the opposite of what they are working towards.

Aliotroph? said:

You forgot Canada!

See? Nobody seems to give two bits aboot aboat about you, not even in negative or manly stuff like drinking :-p

The USA also has the peculiarity of being a very large country, so I can't imagine the drinking habits of a black in Louisiana being the same with some Inuit back in the north of Alaska, or the metropolitan New Yorker point-haired executives' being the same as the alcoholic native indians' in their reservation.

FWIW, I've read that the worst chronic alcoholism in the states is concentrated in said reservations, and also in Alaska, especially Inuit-majority hunter/fisher villages. Shit, those places looked like 3rd world hellholes, everybody was poor, depressed, drunk and violent and yet they classify as "USA". There was even a "Lockdown" episode focusing on such a town. Shit, even the worst Greek mountain shepherd community in the 1920s looked more advanced that that O_o

darkreaver said:

Mid- and southern Europe has a nice drinking culture. My guess is that the UK is just as bad as scandinavia :P

Yeah, we're pretty great at drinking. Not overdoing it, being able to pub crawl more often, maybe a bottle of wine at home... the sad part is the well hidden large caste of functional alcoholics.

Maes said:

FWIW, I've read that the worst chronic alcoholism in the states is concentrated in said reservations, and also in Alaska, especially Inuit-majority hunter/fisher villages. Shit, those places looked like 3rd world hellholes, everybody was poor, depressed, drunk and violent and yet they classify as "USA". There was even a "Lockdown" episode focusing on such a town. Shit, even the worst Greek mountain shepherd community in the 1920s looked more advanced that that O_o

Aside from some of the peculiarities of the American justice system, that episode could have been filmed in Canada. We have all the same issues with remote native communities. The ones that aren't remote have problems too, but they're more likely to have money and infrastructure because they can do things like build casinos and get everybody from the city to come and play.

One big difference with Canada is it's harder to find large communities where drinking is taboo. It's something everyone is exposed to, and the drinking ages here are always lower than for Americans (either 18 or 19 depending on the province).

I have a new question. Well 3 actually.

1. I found out that mixing whiskey with ginger ale is pretty sweet. However, I don't know if ginger ale is actually any better then soda. Does it have similar pH (acid levels) as coke?

2. I know alcohol contains sugar because it needs it to ferment (I think?). Does this mean alcohol is bad for your teeth? Or doesn't it matter because the actual alcohol makes up such a small portion of your drink anyways unless you are drinking it very strong?

3. When drinking drinks like sodas, which is worse for your teeth: The sugar or the acids?

hardcore_gamer said:

I have a new question. Well 3 actually.

1. I found out that mixing whiskey with ginger ale is pretty sweet. However, I don't know if ginger ale is actually any better then soda. Does it have similar pH (acid levels) as coke?

It's just as bad, actually.

Pro tip: All sodas contain citrus acids. That's the key to that refreshing, quenching, effect sodas have.

Why don't you just call your dentist and ask their opinion?

Maes said:

FWIW, I've read that the worst chronic alcoholism in the states is concentrated in said reservations, and also in Alaska, especially Inuit-majority hunter/fisher villages. Shit, those places looked like 3rd world hellholes, everybody was poor, depressed, drunk and violent and yet they classify as "USA". There was even a "Lockdown" episode focusing on such a town. Shit, even the worst Greek mountain shepherd community in the 1920s looked more advanced that that O_o

Peoples native to the americas, at least those from north america to my knowledge, literally cannot metabolize ethyl alcohol in the same way as people from the rest of the world. As such they are subject to intoxication and dependency far quicker than anyone else would be. The reasoning is much the same as why certain populations throughout the world are lactose intolerant.

As to why native people living in canada and the united states live in destitution is certainly a consequence of terrible relations between the host nations and their subjugated native nations in addition to rampant alcoholism and drug abuse.

Quast said:

Peoples native to the americas, at least those from north america to my knowledge, literally cannot metabolize ethyl alcohol in the same way as people from the rest of the world

I had heard the same thing as applying to Asians in general, but other sources discredit the whole "firewater" story as a sort of malicious racist myth with no biological basis whatsoever, not to be taken too literally.

Then again most anti-racism tirades "teach" that there literally is no difference between different races of people other than skin color -just as if you just dipped them in body paint- or that races exist at all, for that matter. I find this position to be equally extreme as nazi-style racism proper, as neither can be 100% right on the money.

The problem is that, unlike e.g. the beginnings of the 20th century, any serious study on race and genetics (at least when applied to human "races" in the same way it's appied to e.g. horses or dogs) is pretty much "taboo" and likely to cause a great deal of controversy and not taken seriously at all, so probably we're far, far away from an objective point of view and answers.

Maes said:

I had heard the same thing as applying to Asians in general, but other sources discredit the whole "firewater" story as a sort of malicious racist myth with no biological basis whatsoever, not to be taken too literally.

Then again most anti-racism tirades "teach" that there literally is no difference between different races of people other than skin color -just as if you just dipped them in body paint- or that races exist at all, for that matter. I find this position to be equally extreme as nazi-style racism proper, as neither can be 100% right on the money.

The problem is that, unlike e.g. the beginnings of the 20th century, any serious study on race and genetics (at least when applied to human "races" in the same way it's appied to e.g. horses or dogs) is pretty much "taboo" and likely to cause a great deal of controversy and not taken seriously at all, so probably we're far, far away from an objective point of view and answers.

The biggest problem with the idea of race to me isn't that different people aren't different, its that you can't really just throw a bunch of people into one single catagory.

At first glance defining people as members of races may sound simple enough, being just a matter of looking at their skin color. But then when you think about it it isn't that simple. What about a person who appears is mostly white on the outside, but has a black relative for example? Is that person a part of the "white race" or the "black race"?

I agree that there ARE differences, but that trying to catagorize them with the race idea is stupid, because there is no real true *******ion of race in the first place.

I think what people really use as a criterion to lump people into categories is not primarily race, but rather, social status and perceived threat.

E.g. probably a white-skinned, blue-eyed person will be seen as a citizen of a rich, Western nation and thus thought of as "superior" (or a "gringo" to con and trick, depends) by inhabitants of poorer countries, and viceversa, thus race actually becomes associated with wealth and prosperity. It's not a 100% infallible discriminator (white people can be "racist" against other white people of lower social standing, too, as can well-off blacks against "poor niggers").

In the same way, the blue-eyed, blond etc. Westerner is much more likely to associate dark-skinned people with being poor immigrants, criminals, perhaps illegal or even muslim (depending on where he lives), which are primarily a concern not because they are dark-skinned, but because they are more likely to be aggressive/criminals/beggars having nothing to lose etc.

Of course, this can sometimes be averted, e.g. seeing a well-groomed smiling negro or indian guy in a smart business suit or speaking in an educated manner may cause some dissonance but soon all negative prejudices against that one individual dissipate, but not against his race, in general. That same individual may be wary against "lesser" individuals of his own race, as I already mentioned.

Maes said:
I had heard the same thing as applying to Asians in general, but other sources discredit the whole "firewater" story as a sort of malicious racist myth with no biological basis whatsoever, not to be taken too literally.

While there may be some differences in alcohol tolerance, I'm skeptical about it as a key factor because chicha, pulque and other alcoholic beverages have been consumed in the American continent since well before the colonies. I'd say it has to do mainly with cultural disruption and the commercialization of alcoholic beverages, which broke ritual practices that set limits to consumption and intoxication. Likewise, drug use often spreads and gets damaging on impoverished and socially vulnerable parts of society, such as migrant workers and original peoples.

In contrast, and while some social pressures may also play in, the strong use of alcohol in northern regions like Canada, the Nordic countries and Russia seems to be augmented by the harshness of the cold weather, with long and gloomy winter nights.

Well, evolution is a thing that exists and manifests even on a shorter scale than millions of years. The western Euroasian culture revels in considerable alcohol consumption by all the social classes for thousands of years. I fail to see why the difference should be just a myth (and I've been told by a friend studying chemistry it is real). Slightly increased resistance to alcoholism is technically not a very noble point to make in a racism campaign anyways.

The Yupik cop in the show says it perfectly: "Our people are not used to alcohol; we don't know how to use it properly." I've never seen any evidence Europeans have super livers compared to people from anywhere else. If they did it would imply there was a selection pressure favouring people who could metabolize alcohol faster. I've never seen anything to suggest that either.

Aliotroph? said:

The Yupik cop in the show says it perfectly: "Our people are not used to alcohol; we don't know how to use it properly." I've never seen any evidence Europeans have super livers compared to people from anywhere else. If they did it would imply there was a selection pressure favouring people who could metabolize alcohol faster. I've never seen anything to suggest that either.

I know during the middle ages through the Renaissance Europeans preferred alcoholic drinks to water. They were required to ferment most everything they drank for the simple reason typhoid was so prevalent. If only they knew boiling their water would prevent disease.