The hard truth on soft drink

Simple health tip

What if there was one simple thing you could do from tomorrow that would dramatically improve your health, drop your weight and even lighten your mood ? Well there is. All you need to is swap out soft drink for sparkling water.

Why ? Well read on

Imagine you are meet a good friend at your local cafe. You order coffees and then they reach for the sugar cubes and slide one into there latte. You would not care to notice.

Now imagine they put it 2. It might cross your mind to think, wow quite the sweet tooth, remember that if I ever make coffee for them at home. Now imagine they start to put 3 then 4 then 5 then 6… . by around cube 7 You might be thinking Wow, this person got a bit of a problem here. Once they got to cube 9 you might wonder if they have gone mad.

Well that’s how much sugar is in a 250ml can of coke. 39 grams to be precise which accounts for 9 teaspoons of sugar. (1) and that info is from Coca cola themselves. Nobody bats an eyelid if somebody orders a coke with their lunch.

Commercial soft drinks first appeared in the US with a drink called ” Moxie ” and by 2018 the world was producing 1 billion litres of soft drink per year with a value of 60 billion dollars. In 1776—at the time of the American Revolution—Americans consumed about 1.8 of sugar per person each year. By 1850, this had risen to 9kg , and by 1994, to 54kg (4) . Move aside big pharma and make way for ” Big sugar ” . The issue with soft drinks is they are simply packing an energy density we are not evolved to handle. Soft drinks alone are estimated to account for up to 47% of added sugars in a typical modern diet (3).

In the US alone 64% of the population is now considered overweight with 30% considered obese (3). Whilst Japan’s figures are not as alarming it’s clear we are headed in worsening direction.

If you are looking to drop a few kilo’s dropping soft drink is going to be easiest and simplest thing you can do for yourself to dramatically cut your sugar intake.

And it’s not just the weight. Drinking just 500ml of soft drink per day for 6 months induced features of the metabolic syndrome and fatty liver and type 2 diabetes (4). Drinking just one serve day is thought to raise your blood pressure by at least 2 mm of Mercury (5).

Your mood is also affected by increased soft drink intake. It might give you that ” buzz ” whilst you are consuming it but just like any recreational drug when abused in can affect your mood. When controlled for other factors soft drink intake correlates with an in increase in depression and anxiety scores. ( 7).

And if all that is not enough consider your teeth. Coca cola tops the list with an acidic PH of 2.3 (6) which puts has a pretty nasty effect on the quality of your tooth enamel (6). It’s crazy to think teenage kids are needing regular trips to the dentist for fillings.

So if there is just one easy thing you are willing to try to get healthier, give up the soft drink.