The most valuable brand in the history of mankind is Coke. “Coca-Cola” follows “hello” as the second most recognized word in the world. No wonder we drink so much of the stuff!
While cola sodas are especially popular liquid drinks, there are solid reasons to consider limiting or eliminating soda as a beverage you often drink. This includes diet sodas, which have their own set of unhealthful ingredients.
Did you know colas have an acidity level that is comparable to battery acid? Or that most colas can also outwork almost any toxic household cleaner on the market? Nasty.
Sodas have 15 teaspoons of sugar. Take 15 teaspoons from your utensil drawer. Lay them on your counter. Do you really want to drink this much sugar in one beverage? That’s more than most people should drink in a day. If you drink several sodas in a day, you’re drinking a lot of sugar!
Here’s what happens inside…
Within 10 minutes of drinking a soda, all 15 teaspoons of this liquid sugar hit your system. This incredible sweetness should make most of us vomit, but the phosphoric acid in the soda keeps this from happening.
In the first 20 minutes after drinking a soda, your blood sugar goes ballistic and the liver strives to turn this huge amount of sugar into fat. Your blood pressure rises so your liver allows even more sugar into your bloodstream. At this point, the pleasure centers in the brain go wild! They love it! More, more! They are stimulated by all this sugar – similar to what would happen if you were using heroin. Within an hour of drinking soda, your body has a sugar crash. Boom!
If the sugar activity in your body isn’t bad enough, the carbonation in soda irritates your stomach lining, so your body compensates, and takes calcium from your blood to try to heal this irritation. Uh oh! Your blood senses it is now low in calcium, so it pulls it from your bones to compensate. Adding insult, the phosphoric acid in soda also reduces the calcium in bones. Yikes!
Over 50 % of Americans drink an average of 2.5 sodas each day. One study author suggests we would be better off to clean with soda, rather than drink it! Perhaps a good idea….
If this information resonates with you, and you’d like to reduce your soda intake, try some of these ideas:
- Make a concerted effort to cut back. Gradually reduce how much soda you consume. Cut back by one soda each day for a week, then by two for the next week, and so on. Soon, you won’t miss it!
- Learn to love fresh cold water! Add lemons, limes, any kind of fruit to jazz it up.
- If you really need the fizz, at least switch to club soda. You are still getting carbonation, but none of the sugar, caffeine, and “natural” flavors.
- Try sparkling water – just get the plain flavor and add your own fruit, like above.
And, actually, if you HAVE to have a soda, I’d rather you choose regular over diet - at least you won’t get the artificial sugars your body doesn’t recognize. Think about it!
To Your Vitality!
Sources: The Alternative Daily; http://nutritionresearchcenter.org/healthnews/what-happens-to-your-body-if-you-drink-a-coke-right-now
