When consumed in excess, added sugar can have disastrous effects on your health.
However, some sources of sugar are worse than others… and sugary drinks are the worst, by far.
This primarily applies to sugary soda, but also to fruit juices, highly sweetened coffees and other sources of liquid sugar.
If you've been reading health magazines and websites for any length of time, you've read a litany of reasons why soda is bad for you. It's nothing but sugar water. It's devoid of any nutritional value. It leads to obesity and diabetes. Keep reading to find out all nine reasons you should kick soda to the curb.
1. Sugary Drinks do Not Make You Feel Full and Are Strongly Linked to Weight Gain
Added sugar is highly fattening… and liquid sugar even more so.
One of the reasons for this, is that sugar supplies large amounts of the simple sugar fructose, which does not lower the hunger hormone ghrelin in the same way as glucose, the main carb found in starchy foods.
Studies have also shown that fructose does not seem to stimulate the satiety centers in the brain in the same way as glucose.
The brain is actually supposed to regulate your calorie intake. If you eat more of one food (like potatoes), you should automatically eat less of something else instead.
Liquid sugar doesn’t work in this way… when people consume it, they usually add it on top of the total calorie intake.
In other words, sugary drinks don’t make you feel full, so you eat the same amount of food as before, but with a whole lot of extra sugar calories on the side.
In one study, people who added soda on top of their current diet ended up consuming 17% more calories than before. That is a huge amount, which could easily lead to obesity over a few years.
Not surprisingly, studies have shown that people who drink sugar-sweetened beverages consistently gain more weight than people who don’t.
In one study in children, each daily serving of sugar-sweetened beverages was linked to a 60% increased risk of obesity.
The truth is… sugary drinks are THE most fattening aspect of the modern diet. If you want to lose weight, or avoid gaining it over time, then you should seriously consider removing these drinks from your life.
2. Sugar Drastically Increases Belly Fat Accumulation
Sugar consumption makes you prone to storing more body fat.
Fructose in particular appears to dramatically increase the dangerous fat around the belly and organs. This is known as visceral fat, or belly fat.
In a 10 week study, 32 healthy people consumed beverages sweetened with either fructose or glucose.
Glucose consumers only had an increase in subcutaneous fat (not linked to metabolic disease), while fructose drinkers had a significant increase in the harmful visceral fat.
3. Soda Drinkers Have a Higher Risk of Cancer
The risk of cancer tends to go hand-in-hand with other chronic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
For this reason, it is not surprising to see that sugary drinks are frequently associated with an increased risk of cancer.
One study of over 60,000 men and women found that those who drank two or more sugary sodas per week were 87% more likely to develop pancreatic cancer than those who did not drink soda.
Another study on pancreatic cancer found a strong link in women, but not men.
Postmenopausal women with high intakes of sugary soda also appear to be at greater risk for cancer in the inner lining of the uterus, called endometrial cancer.
Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption has also been linked to cancer recurrence and death in patients with colorectal cancer.
4. Large Amounts of Sugar Are Turned into Fat in The Liver
Sugar is composed of two molecules… glucose and fructose.
Glucose can be metabolized by every cell in the body, whereas fructose can only be metabolized by one organ, the liver.
Sugary drinks are the easiest (and most common) way to consume excessive amounts of fructose.
When we consume too much, in the context of a high-carb, high-calorie Western diet, the liver becomes overloaded and turns the fructose into fat.
Some of the fat gets shipped out as blood triglycerides, while part of it remains in the liver. Over time, this can contribute to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
5. Sugar-Sweetened Beverages May be The Leading Dietary Cause of Type 2 Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is a very common disease, affecting about 300 million people worldwide.
It is characterized by elevated blood sugars in the context of insulin resistance or a deficiency in insulin.
Given that sugary drinks can lead to insulin resistance, it is not surprising to see that numerous studies link soda consumption with type 2 diabetes.
In fact, as little as one can of soda per day has been consistently linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
In a recent study looking at sugar consumption and diabetes in 175 countries, each 150 calories (about one can of soda) of sugar per day was linked to a 1.1% increase in type 2 diabetes.
To put that number in perspective, if the entire US population added one can of soda to their daily diet, almost 3.5 million people might become diabetic.
6. Numerous Studies Link Sugar-Sweetened Beverages to Heart Disease Risk
Sugar intake was first linked to heart disease risk back in the 60’s and 70’s.
Since then, it has been established that sugar-sweetened drinks increase some of the main risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
This includes blood sugar, blood triglycerides, small, dense LDL particles and numerous others.
More recent studies in humans have found strong links between sugar intake and heart disease risk in men, women and adolescents.
One study following 40,000 men for two decades found that those who drank one sugary drink per day had a 20% higher risk of having a heart attack, or dying from a heart attack, compared to men who rarely consumed sugary drinks.
7. The Sugar and Acids in Soda are a Disaster For Dental Health
It is a well known fact that sugary soda is bad for your teeth.
Soda contains acids like phosphoric acid and carbonic acid.
These acids create a highly acidic environment in the mouth, which makes the teeth vulnerable to decay.
While the acids in soda can themselves cause damage, it is the combination with sugar that makes soda particularly harmful.
Sugar provides easily digestible energy for the bad bacteria in the mouth. This, combined with the acids, wreaks havoc on dental health over time.
8. Sugary Soda Contains No Essential Nutrients… Just Sugar
Sugary soda is “empty” calories. No doubt about that.
It contain absolutely no essential nutrients… no vitamins, no minerals, no antioxidants and zero fiber.
It literally adds nothing to the diet except excessive amounts of added sugar and unnecessary calories.
9. Sugar Consumption is Linked to an Increased Risk of Dementia
Dementia is the collective term used to describe neuron degenerative conditions that can occur as we grow older.
The most common form is Alzheimer’s disease.
Research has found that any incremental increase in blood sugar is strongly associated with an increased risk for dementia.
In other words, the higher your blood sugar, the higher the risk of dementia.
Because sugar-sweetened beverages lead to rapid spikes in blood sugars and can raise blood sugar by causing insulin resistance, it makes sense that they could increase your risk of dementia.
Rodent studies support these findings, showing that large doses of sugary drinks can impair memory and decision-making capabilities.
So… not only do sugary drinks wreak havoc on metabolic health, they appear to be seriously harmful for your brain as well.
If you want to lose weight, avoid chronic disease and live longer with a sharper brain, then consider avoiding sugary drinks like the plague.
