You don’t realise it yet, but in the next few minutes you are going to learn some of the sad truths about sugary drinks
It seems that drinking sugary drinks is highly dangerous and extremely harmful for your heart and your state of health, far more than you would think. It seems apparent that the diet drinks are four times more dangerous to drink than the non sugary ones.
At the American Heart Association’s annual meeting they presented some research that claimed that women who drank only two sugary drinks a day were in danger of having high triglycerides (four times more likely) which is a predictor of heart problems in women. For these women the research seemed to show that even when they were not eating or drinking their blood sugar levels where highly likely to be weak. ( Shay, C., et. al. Beverages that are sweetened with sugar may increase cardiovascular risk in women.” American Heart Assoc. www.heart.org. Scientific Sessions. Nov. 13, 2011.)
The reason sugary drinks increase triglycerides is because they consist almost entirely of carbohydrates. A triglyceride is an ester that is obtained from glycerol through esterfication of three hydroxyl groups with fatty acids occurring naturally in th tissue of vegetables and animals and is an important source of energy that forms a lot of the fat which is stored by the body. When the body is fed too much carbs of this type then is does not really have any other way out than to store it as fat. To do this the carbohydrates are turned into triglycerides which are transported by the blood to the liver which transforms them into adipose cells to store.
The problem, however, is often one that cannot be seen. People who appear to be thin may still have this fat gathering around their organs and they do not even know it. It is called visceral fat. It is the cause of inflammation and can evolve into other inflammatory related illnesses and diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.
So sugary drinks are not a healthy choice judging by the results shown above, and the diet drinks are possible even worse. Researchers have been studying some results from the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging. These results that they discovered are very worrying. They followed 474 people for close to 10 years. They looked at the changes in waist size for people who drink diet sodas against people who do not (the ones drinking sugary drinks and the non sugary drink drinkers). The ones with a diet soda consumption had a larger increase in waist size and for the people drinking more than two diet sodas a day, they had belly growth of more than 500 percent. (Sansom, W. “New analysis suggests ‘diet soda paradox’ – less sugar, more weight.” Univ Tex SA Health Sci Ctr. www.uthscsa.edu. June, 2005. Retrieved Dec 1, 2011.)
So drinking diet sodas can give you a waist that is five times bigger than other people. Looking at this statistically, if you drink a diet soda everyday you are 65 percent more likely to become over weight in the next seven to eight years and 41 percent more likely to become obese.
Unfortunately, sodas are not the only baddies in the world of sugar drinks. Packaging juices means that most of their goodness is lost. Everything get destroyed when it is prepared to be packaged because it needs a shelf life. They need to homogenise, pasteurise or even reproduce it from concentrate which naturally spoils the vitamins and unfortunately also increases the glycemic index of the juice drinks. Only when you chose the fruit yourself and crush the juice to make fresh drinks will you get all the health benefits from juice without making problems for your body.
Hmmm, so what can you drink? Tea is a beverage that is full of goodness and is a great alternative. Tea is a beverage that can be hot or cold, can be taken with a squeeze of lemon or lime and if needed can have a natural sweetener like honey to give jus the right taste.
Plain water is the alternatve choice of drink that has numerous combinations. Drunk plain, with or without ice, with lemon or lime squeezed into it, or another fruit juice freshly squeezed into it for taste. Use cucumber slices to flavour the water, or add freshly squeezed cucumber bits, and even putting mint into the water gives it a refreshing taste.
Staying thin is no easy task in a world of sodas and juices advertised as being good for you.
