Tuesday, April 24, 2012

{Food For Thought Tuesday: The Impact of Pop/Soda}

An apple a day keeps the doctor away and a soda just keeps them in business. Now I may lose many of you on this one, but as I’ve weened myself off of pop, soda, soda pop, whatever you call it {except for when I go to the movies and when I’m at the Nordstrom Cafe – they have the best Cherry Coke} – I thought I would shed a little light on the subject. 

Drinking just one soda a day can add up to over 91,000 calories a year. That’s like eating over 300 Big Mac’s or 182 large fries. That’s a lot of empty calories, sodium, sugary corn syrup goo running through your veins. According to the American Beverage Association, the average American drinks an estimated 54 gallons of soda per year. Insane,right? 

And don’t think by switching to diet pop…because diet is just as bad. It does all the tricks that regular soda does, but in a very insidious way. Diet sodas are loaded with sugar substitutes. Our bodies are programmed to deal with certain substances in certain ways, but our bodies don’t know what a sugar substitute is. Here is what happens - when you drink a diet soda, your body guesses by the sweet taste that it is ingesting sugar. So your body prepares to process the sugar by releasing extra insulin to deal with the sugar. But…there is no sugar. This causes an excess of insulin floating around in your bloodstream. Too much insulin in your blood stops fat loss and causes weight gain.

The best remedy to this problem is good old water. If you put a little lemon in the water, it tastes nice and has a detoxifying effect on your digestive system and kidneys. Just think of it as a grease buster. In addition to lemon, you could add just a touch of unsweetened cranberry juice to a glass of water for the same effect.
Harmful Soda
Via: Term Life Insurance Jessica Signature

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this! Many people do not know about the harm thaht can be done by soda or diet soda. I've weaned myself off as well, after noticing that Aspartame (one of the sweeteners in all diet drinks by Coca-Cola and most other brands) gave me trouble breathing. I had it one and off for years until I noticed that it was my Coke Zero. I had to have breathing problems daily until I finally noticed what's up. Had been to the doctors and all with no results. I didn't drink Coke Zero for a year and the problems didn't resurface. Only when I accidentally took a sip (!) of Coke Zero last week I spent the whole evening with a feeling of needing to breathe in deeply but not really being able to do so. I only noticed the next day that I consumed aspartame again. As a scientist I know that these kind of effects (pseudoallergies) can go unnoticed in the HUGE studies done to test aspartame, and thus it is labeled harmless. For many people it probably is, but you never know your own risk until you've already got the side effects.

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    1. Wow that's amazing...yes, people really need to know what they are putting in their bodies and what affects it has on them short and long term - it's scary!!!

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