Another Nail in the Soda Coffin

20 oz soda sugar content

20 oz soda sugar content

As anyone that has come into my office in the last few years will attest, I am a nut for making sure you are drinking enough water.

Water to your body, is like oil to your car engine. It makes everything run much more smoothly.

With that said, the opposite of water in terms of health benefits is soda. Soda is evil! Empty calories that wreak havoc with your body.

Diet soda you say? Take a look at the chemicals they put in diet soda to make it taste even remotely drinkable. UGH!

In the most recent version of JAMA Internal Medicine lead author Quanhe Yang states “A higher percentage of calories from added sugar is associated with significantly increased risk of CVD mortality.” CVD is short for Cardiovascular Disease.

The researchers analyzed national health and diet surveys between 1988 and 2010 of more than 30,000 Americans with an average age of 44. They found the fatal heart risk became elevated once added sugar intake surpassed 15 per cent of total calories.

15%!!! That’s not a lot of sugar, when you consider how pervasive sugar is in prepared foods and especially soda.

Ever wonder how much sugar is really in something? Take the number of grams of sugar on a package and divide by four to get the number of teaspoons.

Let’s look at a couple of popular products and see what the sugar content really looks like.

  • Average Soda…20 oz. bottle…65 grams…thats 16 teaspoons of sugar!
  • A small slice of pie with a small bit of ice cream…39 grams…almost 10 teaspoons of sugar
  • BBQ Sauce…13 grams… over 3 teaspoons of sugar
  • 1 Mrs. Field’s chocolate chip cookie (and let’s be honest does anyone eat just one?)…18 grams…4.5 teaspoons of sugar

The American Heart Association recommends no more than 25 grams a day or six teaspoons of sugar for women (five per cent of a 2,000-calorie a day diet) and 38 grams or nine teaspoons a day for men (7.5 per cent of daily calories).

As a chiropractor, I see a variety of different things that damage peoples spines. Excess weight due to high sugar intake is at the very top of the list. Please be more diligent in looking at labels.

If you need any help with this, please feel free to call or email us. We are here to help!

 

 

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