Water Water Everywhere, But Everyone’s Drinking Soda
This is a second inquiry into the links between drinking soda and obesity rates. It follows High-Fructose Corn Syrup, Its Place in the Obesity Epidemic:
Consumption of sugary drinks has been on the rise since the 1970’s and it is though to be a key factor in the simultaneous rise in obesity rates. Frighteningly, soda and sugar sweetened juice drinks now make up 10-15% of the calories in the average kid’s diet. A more recent survey of 810 adults found that sugar-sweetened drinks made up 37% of their liquid calories.
What does all this mean when it comes to keeping a healthy weight? The study with adults found that those who drank the fewest sodas (and did nothing else in terms diet or exercise) had a pound of weight loss at six months and more than 1.4 pounds at 18 months. And, the study reviewing the drinking habits of children found that drinking more water caused significant drops in total calories consumed. For, “each 1 percent drop in sugar-sweetened drinks was associated with a 6.6 drop in calories consumed, and this reduction was not filled by increases in other food or beverages.” By replacing all of the kids’ sodas with water, they could cut out an average of 235 calories per day.
The findings in both of these studies suggest rather small improvements in total caloric intake when water or other calorie free drinks are the main liquids in a diet. However, as the dietitian Connie Diekman suggests, baby steps are the best way to achieve an overall healthy lifestyle:
“If one small diet change can trigger a one-half- to one-pound weight loss in six months, adding other small changes or boosting activity even 15 minutes a day could make ‘healthy’ more attainable,” she said. “As a registered dietitian, this study indicates to me that helping people make gradual changes will help them comfortably achieve a healthier weight.”
“Weight loss from liquid calories is greater than loss of calorie intake from solid food,” concluded lead researcher of the adult study Dr. Liwei Chen, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the LSU Health Science Center in New Orleans.
Dr. Chen explains that the body self-regulates solid food a lot better than liquids. If you ate at King Buffet for lunch, you’ll tend to eat less at dinner. But, the same regulation does not apply to drinks. Your body does not adjust to liquid calories, so over time, you gain more weight, says Dr. Chen.
So we can all save money and lose fat simply by switching to water. It sounds so simple. But, soda tastes good. It’s designed that way. So…
Can we have the sweet taste and loss of poundage with diet soda?
One study showed “the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.” (Metabolic syndrome is a host of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels, and elevated blood pressure.)
Another study from eight years of data collected by Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio found that the risk for obesity was raised by a whopping 41% with each daily can of diet soda.
“What didn’t surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity,” Fowler told WebMD. “What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher.”
Of course, these studies do not show that drinking diet soda specifically causes obesity. Drinking any soda may simply be correlated to less healthy lifestyles overall. Making positive changes in food choices and exercise patterns may be neglected because of the health halo around diet soda. For some, drinking diet soda could be the excuse needed take an extra serving at dinner or another trip to the fast-food restaurant. Or maybe diet soda affects us in some completely different way via its chemical structure. As it stands, like they say in academia, further research is necessary.
I, for one, am going to get up close and personal with my tap water. Now, should it be filtered…?
May 13, 2009
Tags: fast-food, nutrition, obesity, soda, sugar Posted in: Health, Science & Technology
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