Watch your cold drink

If you are astonished by the stunts your favourite actor performs holding a soft drink bottle or climbing a mountain, and if you are impressed enough to guzzle it; hold on! For the peanuts that you pay for the drink, you are just inviting significant harm to your health.

Right from weakening the bones, increasing the levels of harmful inflammation in blood vessels, and lowering levels of ‘good’ HDL cholesterol, the ingredients in the soft drinks are also qualified enough to disturb your metabolism and leave you with sleepless nights.

Recent journals in cell biology and American journal of clinical nutrition have again indicted sugar of causing obesity, diabetes and other chronic illness. Further cause for serious concern is that sugar can act like opium with addictive nature and your drink contains it all.

Of all the popular junk foods of empty calories, soft drinks are the culprits of the first order for they have nothing but sugar and gas. Speaking to City Express, K C Raghu, a food technologist said, “Human body with about five litres of blood can hold only five gms of sugar. A bottle of soft drink can flood blood with 45 gms of sugar creating a spurt in insulin. All excess sugar unless burnt, which is a rarity, becomes fat.”

He further said, “Continuous flood of sugar and resultant spike in insulin mismanages Lepton hormone. Lepton is the control switch for appetite and food intake. Then you will not know when to stop eating and you tend to eat more and add weight. While it is true that fat is calorie dense, it is often an ignored fact that sugar is fat, indirectly.”

Soft drinks contain little to no vitamins or other essential nutrients and give you no energy. However, what they do contain is the problem: caffeine, carbonation, sugar, sugar substitutes and often food additives such as artificial colouring, flavouring, preservatives and of course a lot acid which may harm you with tooth decay, obesity, diabetes, heart diseases, etc.

Dr Devaki Umesh, Chief Health Officer, BBMP said, “Soft drinks contain high sugar and high calorie which leads to obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes at early age. So, a drink can cause you dental problems because of the sugar which remains back in the mouth and the excess phosphorus plays a role in affecting and damaging the kidneys.”

“Excess amount of phosphorus damages microcapillaries of the entire body which have an affect on the retina,” she explained adding, “Carbon dioxide in the soft drink cause a sense of fullness which disturbs your food style and people will end up with Vitamins and Mineral deficiency.” A recent study by University of Miami/Columbia University revealed that the risk of heart attack and stroke is 43 percent higher among people who drink diet soda at least once a day. For people who never or rarely drank diet beverages, the risk was just 22 percent. And, there was no increased risk for regular soda drinkers.

No doubt, millions of people can’t seem to do without their soft drink and diet soda. But some recent research suggests a clear link between diet soda and heart disease. That may cause some people to make a different choice the next time they’re thirsty.