Today’s What NOT to eat and why (WNEW anyone?) is actually about what not to DRINK.

This time: Soft drinks (A.K.A “soda”, “soda pop”).

Why?

1. It’s full of refined sugar – Refining sugar means extracting out the sugar from the plant materials and then removing other unwanted materials from the extracted raw sugar. What’s left is 99.9% sucrose – which doesn’t contain ANY nutritional value. These are actually “empty calories” – they don’t contribute any value to your body (but fat).

   Don’t believe us about the quantity of sugar? Just look at this picture, taken from sugarstacks.com (you can see other beverage equivalents there).

    

   Besides being an excellent fat-gaining method, the sugar in these drinks also promotes tooth decay.

2. They contain a lot of calories – As you can see in the nutritional data for a bottle of cola drink (16 oz):

   
   (Data by nutritiondata.com)

   A regular small bottle contains about 200 calories. It may not sound like a lot, but considering the fact that (as can be seen in the label) it contains no nutritional value whatsoever (no dietary fiber – only sugars, no protein, no vitamins), our body doesn’t have anything to do with it except convert it to fat.

3. If it’s a cola drink, it probably contains caffeine – It’s added to the drink by the soft drink company. Caffeine is a mildly addictive stimulant drug. What does this mean? It means you’ll want more of it, and so get in the habit of drinking more of these drinks.
4. It can contribute to bone problems in the future – Teenagers are maybe the main consumers of soda pops. Our bones need calcium to strengthen. As you can see in the label above, soft drinks contain nearly zero calcium (as opposed to milk). It is crucial for females in their teens and twenties to build up bone mass to reduce the risk of osteoporosis (a disease which can lead to bones breaking) later in life.
5. Drinking a lot of those may lead to kidney stones – The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) includes cola beverages on a list of foods that doctors may advise patients to avoid.

What’s an alternative?

Of course, the best thing for your body would be switching to water. Most people don’t like the taste of plain water. If you’re one of those, you can try flavored water.

You can also try artificially sweetened drinks (“diet drinks”). Don’t go overboard with those either, since their safety hasn’t been completely proven. Other options are tea and fruit juices (again, not too much, since they contain a lot of sugar).

We turn to you again: Do you have any alternatives for soft drinks or do you just go with them?

What next?

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Related posts:

1. 20 Worst Drinks
2. What NOT To Eat, and Why – No. 2 – Doughnuts
3. Soda Fountain Machines Contain Fecal Bacteria
4. What NOT To Eat, And Why – No. 4 – Bacon
5. How Much Caffeine Are You Drinking? (Infographic)