Soda. There’s No Excuse for It.

Written by Dr. Janice Asher – https://drjaniceasher.com

It’s time to ditch the soda! Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB’s) are the number one source of added sugar in our country’s diet and are the single biggest culprit in long-term weight gain . People get as many as ten percent of their daily calories from soda and almost two-thirds of children and adolescents drink soda every day.

Gulp

Here’s an astonishing fact: when you eat solid sugary food, your brain eventually says, “enough already!” Not so with liquids. The brain simply doesn’t register “fullness” from sugar in drinks. As a result, people who drink sugar-sweetened drinks don’t make up for it by eating fewer calories from solid food. To make matters worse, this effect seems to be even more pronounced in children and adolescents.

Why is soda so dreadful? After all, it contains fructose, and so does fruit. So how bad can it be? The answer is, very bad. When you eat fruit, the body gets a pretty small “dose” of fructose. On the other hand, high fructose corn syrup, which is the form of fructose in soda (as well as many processed foods), overloads the poor intestine with an amazingly large amount of free fructose. This fructose then goes on to increase fat production by the body and decrease the body’s sensitivity to insulin.  

How About Fruit Juice?

Fruit juice is better than soda, but that’s the best I can say about it. Even pediatricians do not recommend that children drink fruit juice freely. Juices just concentrate the sugar from fruit, while removing the fiber.  Unlike soda, though, at least fruit juice has vitamins and healthy phytochemicals. Just don’t drink a lot of it or give kids much of it at all. Let them have water with an apple instead of apple juice.

What about Diet Soda?

Sorry, Diet Coke is not the answer.  For one thing, people lose more weight when they drink water than when they drink diet drinks. This may be related to the continued craving for sweet-tasting food.

Final Thought

If you want to have soda or let your kids have soda as a special treat when you go out, go ahead. But try keeping it out of your home. You’ll be better off for it.

Written by Dr. Janice Asher – https://drjaniceasher.com