According to a Swedish study from Lund University published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, it takes a single daily can of soda to increase a man's  risk of prostate cancer by 40 percent, compared to a man who never touches the stuff.

So where is the public outcry warning Americans, who are always in search of newer and better drugs anyway, off these lucrative yet carcinogenic vehicles for addictive substances like caffeine, sugar and perhaps worse? They are likely hiding, at least for now, from an industry loathe to let cold-hearted science and much-needed reason lead the way.

"When it comes to studies of soda consumption and chronic disease risk, the only superior alternative to a prospective cohort study would be to conduct a randomized, controlled trial, where you assign one group to drink high amounts soda over 20 years, and the other group to not consume soda," senior researcher  Isabel Drake, who led Lund University's soda cancer study, told AlterNet. "This, of course, is unethical and never going to be feasible. There are situations like this one, to assess for causal associations between soda consumption and cancer or other chronic diseases, where observational studies are realistically the best study design to address causal associations."

Causality is the central question when it comes to  sodas, whose lineage leads to 18th and 19th century druggists, scientists and other whitecoats. Since then, sodas have metamorphosed from chemical experiments into ubiquitous commodities pounded out by powerhouse multinationals like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, who together lord over about 90 percent of the market. Clocking around $60 billion a year,  soda competes for drug market share with cannabis and its godfather, cocaine.

You'll notice that nowhere in that short history lesson did you hear anything about health and wellness. That's because sodas have zero redeeming nutritional value.

But they have had lethal additives like  4-methylimidazole, the ammonia-sulfite caramel coloring that is also a known animal carcinogen. The flavorless dye brought nothing to products like Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper and more that carried it, and was toxic enough to activate a new California law requiring disclosure of cancer risk — which, in turn, was enough to  motivate Coke and Pepsi to quickly discard it while protesting the controversy as "scientifically unfounded." An  appeal to the FDA for ban from the Center for Science in the Public Interest likely helped. But 4-methylimidazole is just one soda headache among many.