Are there certain beverages that will literally "eat away" at your stomach tissue if you drink them? We already know that soda is far from healthy, some sodas contain caffeine which is addictive and can cause calcium depletion (Reason 2010), it has loads of sugar in it that could cause obesity and tooth decay. Most of the time the sugar isn’t even real, the most popular artificial sugar is high fructose corn syrup which wreaks havoc on your heart, bones, and skin, and they contain harmful preservatives that can cause high blood pressure and skin rashes in some cases (Reason 2010). Will soda break down stomach tissue? Judging from the method of cleaning coins, toilets, copper, bumpers, and blood via carbonated beverages, soda must obviously have some corrosive ability. Soda cleans a coin because the carbonation in it is really liquefied carbon dioxide, so when it is agitated, it bubbles and returns to its natural state and creates an acid which will clean the surface of a coin (Why 2010). Citrus juices will cause a similar reaction, but with the more natural citric acid (Why 2010). So if these drinks can do this to a tarnished coin, what can it do to bodily tissue? If tissue samples loose mass after 72 hours of being soaked in soda, then soda can be considered corrosive to stomach tissue.
To test this, small pieces of cow stomach. Were soaked in graduated cylinders of various sodas and juices for three days, each sample was weighed before they went into the soda and after they came out in order to determine change in mass. Although cow stomach is very different from human stomach tissue it is what was available and still provides insight into the effects of soda on stomach tissue. Samples were then allowed to dry for 6 hours to eliminate extra weight from the liquid.
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The results of this experiment show no significant deterioration caused by soda. Our hypothesis is rejected; there was no significant change in mass due to breakdown of tissue. The drink that caused the most deterioration was not a carbonated beverage but orange juice, losing 0.86 grams of mass in three days. Next to the orange juice was the root beer which lost 0.3 grams. After the root beer was the energy drink Red Bull which had a loss of 0.06 grams. The rest of the test drinks show either no loss in mass or a gain in mass due to extra liquid weight from the test liquids.
The data from this experiment suggest that soda does not actually do very much damage to your stomach tissues. Drinks with citric acid in them will do the most harm to your stomach tissues. Using a more human like stomach tissue and letting the extra soda on the test tissues dry before gathering the end mass would provide more accurate results along with having a longer test period.
