Health Risks of Drinking Soda

(Dr. Mercola) One of the most straightforward steps you can take to improve your health in the New Year is to give up soda, and with that I’m talking about both regular and diet varieties. The problem with soda stems from its high sugar content — particularly the liquid high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) variety — and, in the case of diet, its artificial sweetener content, among other issues.

Research suggests sugary beverages are to blame for about 183,000 deaths worldwide each year, including 133,000 diabetes deaths, 44,000 heart disease deaths and 6,000 cancer deaths.¹ Even drinking one or more 250 ml (about 8 ounce) servings of soda per day raises your risk of Type 2 diabetes by 18 percent.² Soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are a leading source of added sugar in the U.S. diet, with 6 in 10 youth and 5 in 10 adults drinking at least one such beverage on any given day.³

Related: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states, “Frequently drinking sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with weight gain/obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney diseases, nonalcoholic liver disease, tooth decay and cavities, and gout, a type of arthritis.”⁴

However, the CDC only suggests that “limiting the amount of SSB intake can help individuals maintain a healthy weight and have a healthy diet,” stopping far short of advising Americans to ditch these unhealthy drinks to avoid chronic disease.

This isn’t entirely surprising, considering CDC director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald received $1 million in funding from Coca-Cola⁵ to combat childhood obesity during her six-year stint as commissioner of Georgia’s public health department and has a history of promoting the soda industry’s “alternative facts.” Her Coke-funded anti-obesity campaign focused on exercise. None of the recommendations involved cutting down on soda and junk food, yet research shows exercise cannot counteract the ill effects of a high-sugar (i.e., high soda) diet.

Health Risks of Drinking Soda

Downing cans of sugary soda isn’t only a matter of consuming “empty” calories that may lead to weight gain, as some public health organizations would have you believe. You can’t simply undo the effects of soda consumption by cutting back on calories elsewhere in your diet, as the sugar itself wreaks havoc on your body and your gut flora.

Related: Fungal Infections – How to Eliminate Yeast, Candida, and Mold Infections For Good

Researchers have known since the 1960s that your body metabolizes different types of carbohydrates, like glucose and fructose, in different ways, causing very different hormonal and physiological responses that absolutely may influence fat accumulation and metabolism.⁶

One 12-ounce can of regular soda has about 33 grams of sugar (8 1/4 teaspoons) and 36 grams of net carbohydrates, which is more than your body can safely handle, especially at one sitting.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that sugar should make up less than 10 percent of your total daily energy intake, with additional benefits to be had if you reduce it to below 5 percent (which amounts to about 25 grams, or 6 teaspoons of sugar a day).⁷ For optimal health, I recommend limiting your intake of net carbs to under 40 to 50 grams per day, which is virtually impossible to do if you drink soda.

Gary Taubes, co-founder of the Nutrition Science Initiative and the author of “The Case Against Sugar,” expertly documents sugar’s link to chronic disease and much more, including whether sugar should more aptly be described as a drug instead of a food. It doesn’t cause the immediate symptoms of intoxication, like dizziness, staggering, slurring of speech or euphoria, associated with other “drugs,” yet perhaps this only allowed its long-term medical consequences to go “unasked and unanswered.”

Most of us today will never know if we suffer even subtle withdrawal symptoms from sugar, because we’ll never go long enough without it to find out,” Taubes wrote, adding that sugar has likely killed more people than tobacco and that tobacco wouldn’t have killed as many people as it did without sugar.⁸ Harvard School of Public Health further compiled a list of additional studies demonstrating the link between soda and chronic disease:⁹

• Men who drank an average of one can of soda per day had a 20 percent higher risk of having a heart attack or dying from a heart attack than men who rarely consumed soda¹⁰
• Women who consumed a can of soda daily over a 22-year study had a 75 percent higher risk of gout than women who rarely consumed soda¹¹
• Reducing soda consumption can reduce the prevalence of obesity and obesity-related diseases like Type 2 diabetes¹²

Related: Sugar Industry Has Had Evidence Linking Sugar to Heart Disease for Nearly Half a Century

Why Diet Soda Is Not a ‘Healthier’ Alternative

The idea that diet soda is a healthier option than regular soda is one of the biggest prevailing myths in the nutrition realm today. If you’re one of the nearly half of U.S. adults who consume artificial sweeteners, mostly in the form of diet soda, daily (even one-quarter of kids do so as well),¹³ it’s important you’re let in on the truth: Drinking diet soda puts your health at risk of the following conditions:

Stroke and Dementia

Heart Attack

Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes

Depression

Weight Gain

Industry Ties Perpetuate the Flawed ‘Energy Balance’ Theory

Despite soda’s strong links to disease, public health officials have been slow to place blame on the industry and instead continue to perpetuate the “energy balance theory,” which suggests weight gain is simply a matter of consuming more calories than you burn off, and increasing exercise is therefore the solution to lowering rates of obesity (in lieu of eliminating soda).

Realted: Start Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

The soda industry has been instrumental in shifting the blame away from soda and toward virtually any other scapegoat. In 2015, for instance, Coca-Cola Co. was outed for secretly funding and supporting the now defunct Global Energy Balance Network, a nonprofit front group that promoted exercise as the solution to obesity while significantly downplaying the role of diet and sugary beverages in the weight loss equation.²²

Public health authorities accused the group of using tobacco-industry tactics to raise doubts about the health hazards of soda, and a letter signed by more than three dozen scientists said the group was spreading “scientific nonsense.”²³ Yet, the soda industry maintains many close ties with organizations that continue to promote the energy balance myth (and directly funds such organizations).²⁴ Among them:

• The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), which was funded by Coca-Cola until 2015. They also founded a program called “Energy Balance 4 Kids With Play” in partnership with the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF), “an industry organization representing Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, General Mills and other distributers of sugar-sweetened products.”²⁵
• The International Food Information Council Foundation, which is funded by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, promotes the idea that “when it comes to weight management or weight loss, it’s the total calories that matters most.”
• The National Institutes of Health “We Can!” Campaign. Coca-Cola has donated millions to the NIH Foundation, and the campaign advises drinking soda only “once in a while” and suggests balancing out days when kids eat lots of high-sugar foods/drinks with more physical activity.
• The American College of Sports Medicine, which is also funded by Coca-Cola, suggests that while water should be your first choice of beverage, “there is no harm in drinking juice or even soda in moderation.”
• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which also receives funding from Coca-Cola via the CDC Foundation, also promotes “energy balance” and the idea that “Healthy eating is all about balance. You can enjoy your favorite foods even if they are high in calories, fat or added sugars. The key is eating them only once in a while … ”²⁶

Try Hibiscus Tea Instead

If the idea of swapping your daily soda with water sounds less than enticing, consider swapping it with tea instead. This gives you the best of both worlds: flavor and a healthy boost to your diet, as high-quality tea can have quite a few health benefits. Hibiscus tea is one such option. It has a pleasingly sharp flavor, similar to the tartness of cranberry, and you can find it in liquid extract form that allows you to add a few pumps to your glass of water.

Unlike soda that will overload you with sugar and/or artificial sweeteners, hibiscus tea is high in vitamin C, minerals and antioxidants, and studies suggest it may improve blood pressure, help prevent metabolic syndrome, protect your liver and even provide anticancer effects.²⁷ It’s the opposite of drinking soda in terms of what it does to your health! It’s not only hibiscus tea that offers benefits, of course. If you prefer green or white tea, these are healthy choices as well.

Studies show green tea consumption improves brain function, as well as staves off cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s, helps prevent dental cavities, fights inflammatory disease such as arthritis and even combats several cancers, much like hibiscus tea. The idea is that by making this one healthy switch — swapping your daily soda for a daily cup of tea instead — you can significantly lower your risk of chronic disease and obesity.

In addition, if a soda craving strikes, fit in a quick workout, drink a cup of organic black coffee or consume something sour (like fermented vegetables or lemon water). All can help you to kick your sugar cravings to the curb. The Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is another great option, which has been shown to significantly reduce cravings while increasing peoples’ ability to show restraint — even after six months.²⁸ A video demonstration is below, but here is the basic approach, which you can start using right now:

• Identify a food or beverage you crave by visualizing it or imagining you’re eating/drinking it
• Tap on your activated thoughts (for example, “I want this,” “I have to have it”)
• Tap on each of the specific sensations or thoughts you have about the food (sweetness, saltiness, creaminess, crunchiness, how it feels in your mouth, how it smells)
• Scan your body for any tension, and tap on that too