Several reports have labelled soft drinks as extremely harmful to your health and a lot of people are already aware of the dangers. But this doesn’t seem to affect the addiction people have, doesn’t stop the manufacturers flooding the market and certainly hasn’t stopped parents giving to their children.
On average we can consume up to 23 teaspoons of sugar per day, some consume more. It is important to understand that reduction in consumption is a necessity, not punishment. Many people know the dangers of too much sugar but fail to apply it to their lives.
Drinking soft drinks or sodas is an easy habit to fall into, it’s everywhere and it’s easy to consider diet versions to be a relatively harmless vice. A sip for nostalgia’s sake or a quick caffeine hit can lead back to a three-a-day habit. This is what happens to your body when you finally give up the colorful carbonated menace. In my view, soft drinks aren’t just bad for you – they’re barely even liquid.
Cutting the calories from sugar-spiked soft drinks is a no-brainer: At 150 calories a can, those can add up to serious poundage. But diet soda packs on the pounds also – it’s just more passive-aggressive about it. Artificial sweeteners affect our sense of satiety. Our bodies have involutionarily developed to expect a large amount of calories when we take in something exceedingly sweet, and those artificial sweeteners are from 400 times to 800 times sweeter than sugar. It causes a couple things, the muscles in your stomach relax so you can take in food, and hormones are released. With artificial sweeteners, your body says, ‘Wait a minute, you told me you were going to give me all this high-calorie food.’ It can actually send some people searching for more food, out of lack of satisfaction.
You Lose Weight
Even though diet drinks are calorie-free, they cause insulin to be released in your gut because their artificial sweeteners are sweet like sugar, and that actually prevents weight loss. Insulin is your body’s primary fat-storage hormone, so it will have the body hold on to any extra fat. Trying to lose weight by trading a Coke for a Diet Coke is doing the body just as much harm, if not more, because of all the chemicals in the calorie-free version.
You Improve Your Immune System
The acidity in a soft drink is bad news for your digestive system, eroding tooth enamel and worsening acid reflux. But diet sodas are especially treacherous for your gut, and the far-reaching bodily systems it affects. Researchers are finding that artificial sweeteners may affect your healthy gut bacteria, which can affect everything from blood-sugar control to weight management to disease – how our immune system works and how our body responds to infection.
You Stop Your Bones From Breaking Down
The caramel color in soft drinks contains artificially created phosphorus that can be bad for long-term bone health. Phosphorous is a natural chemical found in foods like beans and grains, but the mutant variety found in dark soda is like a dinner guest who refuses to leave. Basically, you’re taking something that exists in nature but making this hyper-absorbable form of it. Your body doesn’t have the choice whether to absorb it or excrete it, so it can cause calcium to leach out of bones. It’s particularly bad for anybody with kidney disease.
You Have More Energy
The caffeine in soda is not your friend. Drinking too much caffeine can make you dehydrated, and it can over stimulate the nervous system, making you fatigued and exhausted. When people cut back on caffeine, they have more energy because the caffeine causes very big highs and lows. There is way more energy for our bodies in real food than in processed foods. When people cut back on processed items, they often look for more fresh foods and make better choices. By giving up soft drinks, it may seem like you’re making one change, but it can actually change a couple aspects of your diet for the better.
Now that you’ve learned a few facts behind soft drinks, reverse these harmful eating habits and start making smarter diet choices. You can lose weight fast without spending hours at the gym, but more importantly you will be healthier. There is a strong link between certain soft drinks and cancer and it is no mystery why there has been a push back in the first world. What are we doing here in Nigeria to protect our people? Why are there no clear warning labels, why are children being used to advertise these products?
If you still think you should be drinking soft drinks, then let me ask you a simple question, why is the life expectancy of the average Nigerian so low?
