A Small Change That Has Big Health Benefit

Photo by Karolina Grabowska: https://www.pexels.com/photo/muffin-with-miniature-us-flag-and-coke-bottle-placed-on-white-table-4389641/

Sugar.

Most of us know it’s not good for us. Excess sugar intake is associated with weight gain, diabetes, and a host of other secondary health issues caused by being overweight and/or diabetic.

Some things are pretty obviously high in sugar. Candy, cookies, cakes, pies, and other sweets should obviousy be limited in one’s diet.

But there’s one big source of sugar that a lot of people are not as aware of:

Soft drinks.

These beverages are astoundingly high in sugar, and many people drink several of them a day, unaware of the mass quantity of sugar they are taking in.

When I say astoundingly high, I don’t think I’m overstating it.

An average 12 ounce can of soda contains in the neighborhood of 30 grams of sugar. Certain soft drinks are even higher in sugar. Now, most of us in the United States aren’t super familiar with the metric system. 30 grams doesn’t mean that much to us. I have a feeling that’s why soft drink manufacturers give us their sugar number in grams.

Let’s convert those grams into a more familiar measurement. There’s 4 grams of sugar per teaspoon, so...

30 grams is 7.5 teaspoons!

7.5 teaspoons from just a single can of soda! You can do the math on how much you’re getting from your daily number of soft drinks.

Even if you like coffee or tea pretty sweet, chances are you’re not putting anywhere near that much sugar in those self-sweetened drinks.

If you went through the process of tearing open 7 or 8 sugar packets to put in your iced tea at a restaurant, people would start to look at you funny – but nobody blinks an eye if you down a can of coke in one sitting!

Every soft drink you consume hits your blood sugar control mechanisms hard! At first, your blood sugar spikes rapidly as your pancreas kicks into high gear to produce insulin. The high blood sugar typically energizes you and makes you feel good, but as the insulin kicks in, it rapidly drops off. This tends to make you crave… another soda!

For a lot of people, the blood sugar roller coaster pushes them to drink more and more of their favorite soft drink, and the pancreas takes a real beating trying to keep up. Eventually, the wear and tear on it takes its toll and the result is diabetes.

The high sugar intake also causes weight gain, because not only is the sugar a source of empty calories, but the persistently high insulin actually blocks your body’s ability to burn fat, so that excess sugar gets converted to fat and stays locked in your fat cells, regardless of your other diet and exercise efforts.

About now, you may be thinking it’s time to switch to diet soda. Well, that solves the sugar problem, but unfortunately, artificial sweeteners often create problems of their own. That’s a topic for another time, but the short version is, chemical sweeteners often “confuse” the body’s blood sugar control mechanisms and may actually interfere with maintaining a healthy weight too.

So, the solution is not to switch to diet. The solution is to switch to water.

I prefer “still,” but sparkling is fine too if you want something with bubbles to remind you of the glory of your soft drink days.

Yes, I know for some of you the idea of switching to water is pretty extreme!

But it’s not so bad.

Really, you can and will get used to it – I believe in you!

If you can’t deal with plain water, add a little lemon or lime juice to it.

Or consider at least transitioning to self-sweetened iced tea, which you can control how much sugar is in it.

While you may be distressed at the thought of saying goodbye to your favorite soda, it’s actually one of the simplest changes you can make that will dramatically reduce your sugar intake and the odds of suffering from the chronic ill-effects that sugar has.

It’s well worth-it to break the soft drink habit.

Until next time,

George Best, D.C.