Soft drinks - hard facts

Soft drinks are a noxious cocktail of substances that play havoc with your body. They‘re highly acidic, contain artificial colours and flavourings and high levels of sugar or artificial sweeteners. Over the next 10 years you are going to read a lot more literature on the toxic effects these drinks have on our kids.

Most (if not all) soft drinks have huge amounts of sugar (such as 10 or more teaspoons per can) that creates a sugar rush into the blood, in the same way as other high GI foods. The sugar is quickly converted to body fat. If it stays in the blood, it causes some free radical damage. The general guidelines for sugar consumption for a 70-kilogram teenager are no more than 10 – 12 teaspoons of sugar a day. One average can of soft drink will exceed that amount. For younger and smaller children the amount of sugar should be substantially less.

Recent research has shown that the high acidity of soft drinks – which generally have a pH (acidity scale) of around 2.8 – is a major factor in tooth decay, literally dissolving the enamel from the teeth. Moderate drinkers had a 200 per cent increase in dental problems while heavy soft drinkers were had a 500 per cent increase in dental caries. This was solely the effect of the acid on the teeth, without even considering the impact of the sugar content.
The high phosphate content of soft drinks increases their acidity and also binds with important macro and micro minerals such as iron and zinc; so, even if you eat any nutritious food with a soft drink, you’ll lose these important minerals. This mineral leaching process is further compounded by the high acidity, which causes minerals to be drawn from the bones, as the body to works to stabilise the acidity and keep the blood acid level constant. This can lead to serious depletion of bone calcium.

The table below shows the results from one of my student’s analysis of the pH and ingredients of many common soft drinks.




Now the medical solution to this problem is to come up with a drug (which has adverse side effects) to reduce the calcium loss from the bone. My solution is to eat more vegetables and to reduce the intake of soft drinks. (For more information on soft drinks, keep an eye out for my next book, “Soft Drinks - Hard Facts”).

• Drink less soft drinks;
* Drink more water;
* A little tea is okay, but remember a strong cup of tea can contain as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. Tea is full of antioxidants, even tea with milk, but don’t make it too strong.
• Coffee is full of stimulants that trigger of the production of dopamine then adrenaline and noradrenaline. That is, it triggers a mini stress response. A little coffee is fine, but remember, it’s a stimulant and takes about six hours for half of it to be excreted from your body, so don’t have it late in the day.

Tea

A study published in February, 2004 showed that when heavy smokers drank four cups of green tea per day for four months there was a significant decrease in a urinary marker of DNA damage (Hakim 2004). Green tea might also be beneficial for those undergoing conventional treatment for cancer, although that is far from proven.

Hakim IA, Harris RB, Chow HH, Dean M, Brown S, Ali IU. Effect of a 4-month tea intervention on oxidative DNA damage among heavy smokers: role of glutathione S-transferase genotypes. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2004;13:242-9.