Soda: The Fat Maker
CNN.com reported that nutritionists say soda is making Americans "drink themselves fat".
Soft drinks contribute 10 percent of the calories in the American diet
Center for Science in the Public Interest: Soda is "quintessential junk food"
CSPI wants obesity warning labels on the sides of soda cans
Scientists: Body reacts differently to liquid calories than solid food
I've never been a soda drinker. The carbonation hurts my nose, and it's way too sweet for me. My husband, on the other hand, drinks soda like there's no tomorrow. He's drinking more Jones Soda now instead of Pepsi or Coke (Jones is using pure cane syrup now, instead of the high-fructose corn stuff), but it's still soda. (My husband isn't obese by any stretch of the imagination - I want to make that clear. He just drinks a lot of soda. A lot.)
I hope Baby C doesn't pick up his father's sweet tooth. I try to limit the amount of refined sugar I ingest. I water down the juice I drink, I combine Lucky Charms with plain Cheerios, and I mix plain oatmeal with the flavored packets, all in efforts to cut the amount of sugar I consume. My dad's mother was diabetic, and my mom's father had a heart condition, so I do whatever I can to lower my risks for either disease.
Now, don't get me wrong. I still love sweets. But it feels completely different when I eat a plate of cookies with a glass of milk, versus downing a single 24-ounce soda. Sure, both hurt my tummy afterwards, but there's so much more joy in savoring a chocolate chip cookie that you can't get from a can of Coke.
Comments
Ugh, yes, I wish that pop had never been invented!
I am thankful that when I was a kid, my mom went on this anti-sugar crusade that lasted a decade... and which didn't keep me from sneaking into the drugstore on my way home from school and using my allowance to score contraband candy, which I hid under the cushion of my bedroom easy chair. SweeTarts were a fave. But even though I have always had a sweet tooth, I never developed a taste for pop, because it just was not in the house. And it's a lot harder to smuggle in a six-pack of pop and hide that under the cushion of your easy chair.
Yeah, I really that my mom for that gift, though -- the no-pop habit. Hopefully I can bequeath it on to my own kids. My husband drinks pop constantly outside the house, but he's pretty cooperative on not stocking the fridge with it or drinking it at regular meals at home.