Soda: Why You Should Avoid it

Choose Water Over Soda

It is widely understood that soda has no nutritional value, can lead to obesity and diabetes, but nonetheless, we Americans each drink an average of 56 gallons of it per year. In fact, soda accounts for a fourth of all drinks consumed in this country. This is alarming when you stop to consider just how unhealthy even the moderate consumption of soft drinks can be.

A 12 ounce can of soda usually contains the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar. When that much sugar is in liquid form, and consumed, it will spike the body’s blood sugar level which triggers the pancreas to release the hormone insulin in order to regulate the abnormally high sugar levels. This in turn can lead to insulin resistance and diabetes over time. Soda also contains phosphoric acid which has been proven to inhibit the body’s ability to absorb calcium. This naturally leads to cavities and more seriously, can result in osteopenia and ultimately, osteoporosis, especially in older folks.

If you think drinking a diet soda is a better health choice, you’d be mistaken. In place of the copious amounts sugar in regular soda, diet sodas contain the artificial sweetener aspartame. Aspartame has been linked to a myriad of health problems ranging from seizures to brain tumors and multiple sclerosis.

Caffeine is present in a great many soft drinks, diet or otherwise. As a culture with coffee shop chains at virtually every corner, we have grown very accustomed to the ingestion of caffeine but it too comes at a price. Caffeine has been linked to high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, and even cancer.

The caramel coloring of soda is artificially made using certain chemicals. The problem is that 2-Methylimidazole as well as 4-Methylimidazole which are used in the coloring process, have been proven to cause cancer in laboratory animals. The risk is so real in fact that it only would require the daily ingestion of just 16 micro grams per day of 4-Methylimidazole to pose a cancer risk. This is alarming considering that most colas whether diet or not, have over 200 micro grams in a 20 ounce serving.

One battle I’ve had over the years as an Austin personal trainer, is getting people to drink more water and put down the soda. Soda actually dehydrates the body with the amounts of sugar and sodium it contains so not only are you dumping a lot of sugar and dangerous chemicals into your body, but you’re also depleting it of much needed water. Our bodies are comprised of roughly 65% water on average so it’s a very unhealthy proposition to remove water while simultaneously replacing it with a toxic sugary liquid which not only has no nutritional value, but has been proven to be very unhealthy as well.