Most of us drink soda. Some drink
more than others. And probably many regular soda drinkers are aware that soft
drinks are bad for the health. At the same time, United States ranks first
among countries in soft drink consumption.
I think we need to know more about
this drink that we love so much. And so here are 8 reasons why we drink soda:
1.It's
Very Tasty!
The taste could be one thing that
gets us addicted to drinking soda, it is delicious. In fact, it is so good,
that many people drink it with every meal!
2It's
Everywhere!
Even if you wanted to drink
something else, you would be hard-pressed to find it as prominently displayed
in vending machines, at fast-food chains, and supermarket checkouts. You might
not realize how ubiquitous Coke, Pepsi, and the like are in our society until
you try to stop drinking soda.
3. Convenience,
"Grab-n-Go"!
The most addictive thing about soda
is the convenience. If you want something quick or are in a hurry, it is so
easy to grab and convenient to drink.
4. Promotion
and Advertising
Soft drinks are heavily consumed in
part because companies promote them vigorously - Billions of dollars are spend
on advertising sodas - and market them everywhere - in stores, restaurants, gas
stations, museums, and even schools.
5. Soda
Habit
For some people, drinking several
sodas a day is a force of habit. You know drinking soda is a habit when you
find yourself going to the grocery store at 10 p.m. because your refrigerator
is tapped out.
6. It
Is Cheap
Soda may be pretty inexpensive when
compared with fruit juice and milk. With combo meals, a large soda is only an
extra dollar, and you get fries!
7. Thirst
Often people drink soda to quench
the thirst. However, this is probably the worst time to drink soda, because
when you are very thirsty or dehydrated you have low levels of saliva. And
saliva helps to neutralize acids (soda is the most acidic beverage you can buy)
and wash your teeth clean.
8. Caffeine
Addiction
Many soft drinks contain caffeine
and caffeine is mildly addictive. This fact is part of the reason soda is such
a hard habit to break. If you're addicted to the caffeine in soda, you're
really having two habits - the soda habit and the caffeine habit.
16
Reasons To Stop Drinking Soda
These were reasons why we drink
soda and here are 16 powerful reasons to give up soda drinking.
Do you know the extent to which
drinking carbonated, caffeinated, sugared, or artificially sweetened beverages
harms your body? Giving up soft drinks can be one of the best things you can do
to improve your health.
1. Soda
Is Useless.
First of all, there are no
nutritionally beneficial components in soft drinks. Soft drinks mostly consist
of filtered water and refined sugars. Yet the average American drinks about 57
gallons of soft drinks each year.
2. Weight
Gain & Obesity
Many people either forget or don't
realize how many extra calories they consume in what they drink. Drinking a
single 330 ml can a day of sugary drinks translates to more than 1lb of weight
gain every month.
Several scientific studies have
provided experimental evidence that soft drinks are directly related to weight
gain. The relationship between soft drink consumption and body weight is so
strong that researchers2 calculate
that for each additional soda consumed, the risk of obesity increases 1.6
times.
According to the results of high
quality study3
reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages helped reduce body mass index
in the heaviest teenagers.
3. Diabetes
This is a consequence of #2.
Anything that promotes weight gain increases the risk of diabetes. Drinking
soda not only contributes to making people fat, but it also stresses the body's
ability to process sugar5. Some
scientists now suspect that the sweet stuff may help explain why the number of
Americans with type 2 diabetes has tripled from 6.6 million in 1980 to 20.8 million
today.
Rapidly absorbed carbohydrates like
high fructose corn syrup put more strain on insulin-producing cells than other
foods. When sugar enters the bloodstream quickly, the pancreas has to secrete
large amounts of insulin for the body to process it. Some scientists believe
that the unceasing demands that a soda habit places on the pancreas may
ultimately leave it unable to keep up with the body's need for insulin. Also,
insulin itself becomes less effective at processing sugar; both conditions contribute
to the risk of developing diabetes.
Interestingly, women who consumed a
lot of fruit juice--which is high in natural fructose--were not at increased
risk of diabetes, leading researchers to speculate that naturally occurring
sugars may have different metabolic effects than added sugars. They also
speculate that vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals in fruit juices
may have a protective effect against weight gain and diabetes, counterbalancing
the adverse effects of sugar.
Researchers from Brigham and
Women's Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School4 analyzed
data from the Nurses' Health Study II, a trial tracking the health of more than
51,000 women. None of the participants had diabetes at the onset of the study
in 1991. Over the following 8 years, 741 women were diagnosed with the disease.
Researchers found that women who drank one or more sugary drinks a day gained
more weight and were 83% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who
imbibed less than once a month.
4. Weakened
Bones And Risk Of Osteoporosis
Frequent consumption of soft drinks
may also increase the risk of osteoporosis,6 especially
in people who drink soft drinks instead of calcium-rich milk7. High soda
consumption (particularly cola15) in
children poses a significant risk factor for impaired calcification of growing
bones.
In the 1950s, children drank 3 cups
of milk for every 1 cup of sugary drinks. Today that ratio is reversed: 3 cups
of sugary drinks for every cup of milk. Tellingly, osteoporosis is a major
health threat for 44 million Americans. Most experts now say that the real
culprit is soda's displacement of milk in the diet, though some scientists
believe that the acidity of colas may be weakening bones by promoting the loss
of calcium.
5. Dental
Caries And Erosion
Soda eats up and dissolves the
tooth enamel8.
Researches9
say that soft drinks are responsible for doubling or tripling the incidence of
tooth decay.
The acidity can dissolve the
mineral content of the enamel, making the teeth weaker, more sensitive, and
more susceptible to decay. Soda's acidity makes it even worse for teeth than
the solid sugar found in candy.
Dental experts continue to urge
that people drink less soda pop, especially between meals, to prevent tooth
decay and dental erosion.
6. Kidney
Damage
People who down sugary drinks don't
feel as full as those who consume the same amount of calories in solid food.
This theory was born out by researchers at Purdue University who, in 2000, gave 15 volunteers 450 calories a day of either soda or jelly beans for a month and then switched them for the next month, while monitoring their total calories. The candy eaters compensated for the extra calories by eating less food and maintained their weight; during the soda phase, the volunteers ate more and gained.
This theory was born out by researchers at Purdue University who, in 2000, gave 15 volunteers 450 calories a day of either soda or jelly beans for a month and then switched them for the next month, while monitoring their total calories. The candy eaters compensated for the extra calories by eating less food and maintained their weight; during the soda phase, the volunteers ate more and gained.
There is good evidence that cola
beverages can increase the risk of kidney problems, more so than non-cola
sodas.
Researches clearly demonstrated
that large quantities of cola result in enhanced kidney stone formation16-17. If you're
wondering exactly how soft drinks cause kidney stones, it's because of their
acidity and radical mineral imbalances. Your body must buffer the acidity of
soft drinks with calcium from your own bones. As this calcium is eliminated
through your urine, it slowly forms kidney stones.
In a study published in the journal
Epidemiology14,
the team compared the dietary habits of 465 people with chronic kidney disease
and 467 healthy people. After controlling for various factors, the team found
that drinking two or more colas a day (whether artificially sweetened or
regular) was linked to a twofold risk of chronic kidney disease.
7. Increased
Blood Pressure
Experts have reasons to believe
that overconsumption of fructose, particularly in the form of soft drinks,
leads to an increase in blood pressure22.
8. Likely
To Cause Heartburn
9. Metabolic
Syndrome Risk Factor
Soft drink consumption is a
significant risk factor for developing of metabolic syndrome18, a
combination of the symptoms such as high blood pressure, obesity, high
cholesterol, and insulin resistance.
10. Harmful
Effects On Liver
There is evidence that consumption
of too many soft drinks puts you under increased risk for liver cirrhosis
similar to what chronic alcoholics have19.
11. Impaired
Digestive System
Soda, no matter who makes it, is
the most acidic beverage you can buy, with a pH of about 2.51, about the
same as vinegar, but the sugar content disguises the acidity. To put that into
perspective, consider that battery acid has a pH of 1 and pure water has a pH
level of 7.
Interesting fact: A pH below
4 or above 10 will kill most fish and very few animals can tolerate waters with
a pH below 3 or above 11.
Why does that matter? Throughout
the digestive system, that starts from the mouth and ends up at the anus only
the stomach can resist an acidic environment up to pH 2.0. But before the
acidity of soft drink reaches the stomach it passes through all the other
organs involved in the digestive system thus causing an abnormal acidic
environment. The linings of the mouth, pharynx and esophagus are highly
sensitive to acids.
The phosphoric acid present in soft
drink competes with the hydrochloric acid of the stomach and affects its
functions. When the stomach becomes ineffective, food remains undigested
causing indigestion, gassiness or bloating (swelling of stomach).
12. Dehydration
Another problem with sodas is that
they act as dehydrating diuretics. Both caffeine and sugar cause dehydration.
Caffeine is a diuretic and causes
an increase in urine volume. High concentration of sugar is drawing off water
because your kidneys try to expel the excess sugar out of the blood. When you
drink a caffeinated soda to quench your thirst, you will actually become
thirstier.
13. High
Caffeine Content
Another advantage of avoiding sodas
is that you will avoid the unnecessary caffeine. Soda drinks are a major source
of caffeine in the American diet.
High doses of caffeine can cause
irritability, restlessness, tension, insomnia, high blood pressure,
gastrointestinal disturbance, excessive urination, irregular heartbeat and
other side effects.
14. Toxins
- Aspartame
If you think diet soda is better
think again. The poison in diet soda is an artificial sweetener aspartame.
Aspartame is made up of three chemicals: aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and
methanol. It is used because it's about 200 times sweeter than table sugar.
Despite US FDA approval as a
"safe" food additive, aspartame is one of the most dangerous
substances added to foods. After you drink an aspartame-sweetened product,
aspartame breaks down into its starting components: phenylalanine, aspartic
acid, and methanol (that further converts to formaldehyde and formic acid,
which are known carcinogens.). There are over 92 different health side effects
associated with aspartame consumption10-13.
15. Possible
Cell Damage Ability
A new health scare erupted over
soft drinks recently amid evidence that they may cause serious cell damage.
Research from a British university suggests a common preservative E211, known
as sodium benzoate, found in drinks such as Fanta and Pepsi Max has the ability
to switch off vital parts of DNA.
Sodium benzoate occurs in small
amounts naturally in berries, but is used in large quantities to prevent mould
in soft drinks.
16. There
Are So Many Healthy Alternatives!
Soda replaces healthier drinks. By
drinking soda, you cut the intake of fresh juices, milk, and even water and
deprive yourself from essential vitamins and minerals.
·
Water.
Water is the best drink in the world.
·
Tea.
Any kind of tea - herbal, green or black - is rich in antioxidants, which were
shown to protects the body form many health problems.
·
100%
Juice. Fruit juice can be also useful for flavoring your water and teas.
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