Soft Drinks: The Downfall of the American Diet

I have been jumping up and down, screaming until I’m blue in the face, about soft drinks. Now, the medical community is doing the same thing. It doesn’t matter if they’re regular or diet, soft drinks are a major cause of obesity and type 2 diabetes. I wrote about it in my book, Evolve or Die Single, and I blog about it quite a bit. Soft drinks never enter my house and never touch my lips. In my book I write:

Soft drinks are nothing but carbonated sugar water. A can of Coke contains no actual sugar since they use high fructose corn syrup; but, loosely translated, it is about nine teaspoons of sugar per can. In one of the latest studies published, Danish researchers discovered that drinking regular soda leads to dramatic increases in fat buildup around your liver and your skeletal muscles, both of which can contribute to insulin resistance and diabetes. The study revealed that people who drank a regular soda every day for six months saw about a 137% increase in liver fat, a 169% jump in skeletal fat, and about a 30% increase in both triglyceride blood fats and other organ fat. Their consumption also led to an 11% increase in cholesterol, compared with the people who drank other beverages such as water or milk.

Think diet drinks are better? Think again. Researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center found that those who drank diet soda had a 70% increase in waist circumference over the course of the 10-year study, compared with those who didn’t drink any soda. Those who drank more than two diet sodas per day saw a 500% waist expansion! People who drink diet sodas can gain even more weight because the artificial sweeteners cause your body to store fat. Women especially should not drink soft drinks because the high levels of high fructose corn syrup can cause potassium levels to drop.

If that’s not enough to make you cut down on your consumption of soft drinks then maybe this will:

A new study from France suggests that women who drink large amounts of diet soda are at increased risk for type 2 diabetes. The findings also support the previously documented association between high intake of regular sugar-sweetened beverages and the condition, report Guy Fagherazzi, from the Center for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health, Villejuif, France, and colleagues in a study published online January 30 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Highest Intake of Diet Soda More Than Doubles Diabetes Risk

The data come from a large prospective cohort study of 66,118 women in France investigating links between diet and cancer. There were 1369 new cases of type 2 diabetes diagnosed during the follow-up period from 1993 to 2007.

Based on self-reported dietary consumption, the average intake of regular sodas was 328 mL/week, while for diet sodas it was higher, at 568 mL/week.

The risk for type 2 diabetes was elevated among the women in the highest quartiles for both sugar-sweetened beverages (>359 mL/week) and artificially sweetened beverages (>603 mL/week) compared with women who did not consume those beverages….

Tapering off anything takes time. Try substituting one soft drink per day for a glass of water with lemon every day until you reach your goal. A sensible goal would be just one per day, perhaps none per day. It’s your body…you decide.

Still Rockin’ It
Scarlet Mom