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Liquid Candy
How much hidden sugar are you drinking?
People love pop! Entire grocery store aisles are dedicated to it. It fills grocery carts. Fast food and pop go hand in hand. For some, a movie isn’t complete without popcorn and a soft drink. It is easy to gas up your car and buy pop at the same time. With handy vending machines just down the hall, we can drink pop all day long at work, school or the local recreation centre.
Pop is so readily available and has been so aggressively advertised over the past few decades that the amount being consumed has never been higher. Today, the average teenager drinks three times more pop than in 1978. A recent study shows that by age 13, teens drink more carbonated soft drinks than juice, fruit drinks and milk combined!
Is drinking pop and other sugary beverages in these quantities bad for us? Many think it is harmful, with the price being paid in our health. Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages is a very important factor in the rising rate of ‘super-sized’ kids and adults in North America.
If you watch your weight or want to reduce the sugar in your diet, you may be surprised to learn how many calories and how much sugar these drinks contain. It’s so easy to get excess calories from what you drink!
Sugar-sweetened drinks easily lead to weight gain since they contain a lot of calories. For instance, one can of pop has 150 calories. If you drink water or diet pop instead, you consume almost no calories. It may not seem like drinking one less can of pop will make much difference to your weight. However, by drinking water or diet pop instead of a can of pop every day for a year, you could weigh 15 pounds less!
Sugar-sweetened drinks can also lead to weight gain in other ways. Although they offer significant calories, your body does not get the same long-lasting sense of fullness as from the food that you eat.
Think about how filling an apple is in comparison to drinking one cup (250 mL) of apple juice. The fibre in the apple makes you feel full much longer even though the fruit contains about the same calories as a cup of apple juice. In fact, the body does not register the calories that we drink as well as it does the calories that we eat. Drinking more pop at a meal does not mean that we eat less food then or later in the day. To make matters worse, if we have a super-sized pop, we tend to drink more than if we are given a smaller serving. The more we are given, the more we drink.
In one study, customers at a fast food restaurant were given either a 355-mL can or a super-sized 900-mL glass of pop with their meal. On average, women and girls drank 250 mL more pop, while men and boys drank an additional 500 mL when given the larger size. However, the group with more pop didn’t eat less food. Instead, the extra pop added to the total calories of the meal – 100 extra calories for women and girls and 200 for men and boys.
What about diet pop?
Diet pop contains almost no calories and no sugar, while regular pop contains 50 mL (10 teaspoons) of sugar per can. Diet pop is sweetened with aspartame, which is 180 times sweeter than sugar but contains no calories. Aspartame is considered safe even when large amounts of diet pop are consumed. However, if your diet pop contains caffeine, moderation is still considered wise since drinking less will reduce caffeine intake. Drinking large amounts of diet pop might also crowd out more nutritious beverages like low-fat milk.
Is juice better to drink than pop?
Yes. 100 per cent juice has more nutrients than pop, especially vitamin C and potassium. Still, juice contains the same sugar and calories as pop. Even juices labelled ‘unsweetened’ or ‘no sugar added’ have seven teaspoons (35 mL) of sugar per cup (250 mL). For this reason, juice should be limited to 250 mL per day - a glass at breakfast or a juice box at lunch. Fruit drinks or punches contain only the vitamin C added to them, along with a lot of sugar.
BEVERAGE |
CALORIES |
SUGAR (tsp) |
| Water | 0 |
0 |
| Sparkling water | 0 |
0 |
| Crystal Light™ | 5 |
1 |
| Diet pop (1 can = 355 mL) | 1 |
0 |
| Regular pop (1 can = 355 mL) | 150 |
10 |
| Regular pop (1 bottle = 600 mL) | 260 |
17 |
| Unsweetened juice (1 box = 250 mL) | 100 |
7 |
| Cranberry Cocktail™ (250 mL) | 155 |
9 |
| Light Cranberry Cocktail™ (250 mL) | 40 |
3 |
| Fruit punch/drink (250 mL) | 114 |
7 |
| Sport drink (1 bottle - 355 mL) | 100 |
6 |
| Slurpee™ (680 mL) | 272 |
14 |
| Coffee with 1 cream and 1 sugar | 30 |
1 |
| Cafe mocha with skim milk (455 mL) | 240 |
9 |
| Frappuccino™ (455 mL) | 200 |
10 |
| Iced cappuccino with milk (300 mL) | 158 |
6 |
| Iced cappuccino with cream (300 mL) | 254 |
6 |
| 1 percent milk (250 mL) | 100 |
2.5 |
| Chocolate milk (250 mL) | 160 |
5 |
| Milk shake (600 mL) | 455 |
15 |
Take charge of what you drink
- Thirsty between meals? Drink plain or sparkling water, diet pop or Crystal Light™. They are almost or totally calorie-free.
- Physically active? Working out? Don’t reach for a sports drink unless your exercise session is longer than 90 minutes. Water is all you need to replace fluids. Drinking water before, during and after exercise improves performance. In general, drink 250 mL of water before starting to exercise and about 250 mL of water every 20 to 30 minutes while exercising.
- Buy a few water bottles so that you can have one at work, one at home and one in the car. Refill them with tap water and freeze. As they melt, you will have ice-cold water all day long. (Remember to wash out your water bottle with hot soapy water after each use.)
- Tired of plain water? Try mixing half water with half lemon-lime flavoured diet pop, or add a slice of lemon to your water.
- Drink light rather than regular Cranberry Cocktail™. There is a big difference of 115 calories in 250 mL! Some may find Diet Cranberry Cocktail™ mixed half-and-half with diet lemon-lime flavoured pop a great combination.
- Limit any juice to 250 mL per day. Choose 100 per cent juice since it offers nutrients such as vitamin C and potassium. Remember, though, that since unsweetened juice contains as much sugar and calories as pop, the calories add up quickly. This is important to remember if school vending machines are switched from pop to juice.
- When eating out, order ice water or milk with your meal. Milk is filling and reduces the urge to snack later on. Chocolate milk has all the nutrients of regular milk, with less sugar than pop or unsweetened juice.
- Moderation is key when it comes to iced cappuccinos, specialty coffees, and shakes. Treat yourself occasionally to the smallest serving available.
- Restaurants often offer bottomless cups of pop. There is such a large mark-up on pop that even if refills are free they still make money.
So forget the deals! Pop is cheap, but your health is priceless. The cost to the health care system from obesity and resulting poor health is paid by all of us.
FAMILY HEALTH is written with the assistance of |
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FAMILY HEALTH is written with the assistance of |
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