Unless you live under a rock you have probably heard by now that soda (pop, soft drinks, Coke, whatever you might call it) is not so great for your health. I’d like to talk about the nuts and bolts of why soda, even diet soda, is something worth quitting or cutting back on. Generally speaking, all soda’s have a low pH, contain phosphorous and caffeine, all of which can have negative health implications.
-Soda has a low pH. The pH of soda is about the same as the pH of vinegar. It is, bar none, the most acidic beverage you can purchase. We all know that acid oxidizes whatever it comes in contact with. If you put soda or vinegar on metal, it rusts. Why does its acidity matter? Soda erodes tooth enamel which is the hardest substance in the human body and protects your teeth from decay. If you don’t believe me, check out this chart of the pH levels of many common sodas.
-The phosphorous in soda leaches calcium from your bones. We’re talking increased risk of osteoporosis, with more the tooth loss, AND broken bones. Phosphates also increases the signs of aging!
So with every bottle, glass or serving you get the a hefty dose of acid and the phosphorous, diet soda or otherwise. Don’t forget that many sodas are caffeinated. I’m a caffeine addict myself, so I’m on no high horse about this, but let’s not pretend that excessive caffeine consumption does a body good. Over consumption of caffeine can lead to insomina, irritability, stomach problems and muscle tremors.
But what about the specifics of diet vs. regular soda?
Regular Soda
-The biggest factor here is the sugar intake. Within the first 10 minutes of drinking a Coke, 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. Your blood sugar spikes, you have an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. Hello, midsection muffin top – there is a reason that the recommended daily dose of sugar for women is 5 teaspoons a day.
Diet Soda
-In case you are thinking that diet soda is going to solve your sugar problems, lets talk science. Per Carol Simotacchi, “One liter of an aspartame-sweetened beverage can produce about fifty-six milligrams of methanol. When several of these beverages are consumed in a short period of time (one day, perhaps), as much as two hundred fifty milligrams of methanol are dumped into the bloodstream, or thirty-two times the EPA limit.” What does this mean? Drinking diet soda poisons your body, beyond the legal limit set by the EPA. Aspartamine is also thought to be a migraine trigger.
Other artificial sweetners that are used in diet soda have been linked to bladder cancer in mice, although scientists now believe that the link does not carry over to humans. Saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose, and neotame are five artificial sweetners that have been approved for use by the FDA but they are considered nonnutritive, or carry none of the nutritional benefits of natural sugar. Any of these sweetners could cause an allergic reaction in humans, and are much sweeter than sucrose or sugar, which can train you to crave more sugar than necessary to get your sweet fix.
If you think you might be ready to take the leap and quit (or even cut back) on soda, some commonly suggested substitutions are as follows:
- flavored water
- seltzer/ sparkling water
- juice spritzers (like Juice Squeeze – they are basically carbonated juices)
- sports drinks (Gatorade, Powerade, etc)
- iced tea
- water w/ lemon, lime or other fresh fruit (Try a fruit infusion pitcher to give you fruit infused water all day)
Have you called it quits on a soda addiction? Are these health risks enough for you to give up your daily fix, or are you sticking by your favorite bubbly beverages?
Jenny Grace has been back in school for a year, raising her son for five, and growing up for twenty nine. She’s not quite done yet. Raised amongst goats and chickens on a ranch in the California countryside, she was sent off to high school at a Hindu yoga center, and spent her youth working at her family’s nightclub and bar. No really, Jenny grew up completely normal. Well, normal for a kid raised by hippies that is. Shrugging off her patchouli steeped roots, Jenny went on to get a Bachelor’s of Arts in Linguistics and a Master’s in Library and Information Science. Now she’s working on her Master’s in Accountancy. Don’t let degrees fool you though; she wastes most of her time with wine and crosswords. Jenny is a cunning linguist, honest beyond reason, and incapable of keeping her mouth shut. You can read more from Jenny Grace on her blog, Miss Disgrace.
I used to drink a lot of diet coke and I swore I would never cut back… Life’s too short, right? But when I read that the muscle soreness that was my constant companion (I blamed my job…) could be caused by aspartame, I cut back. And it really did make me feel better. Sometimes I fall into patterns where I still drink too much, simply out of habit, but I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would. It was very, very easy to cut back.
From my cold dead hands! I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t eat a lot of sugar – but I do want my diet Coke. A lot of it.
I think Gatorade/sports drinks are a terrible suggestion as a substitute for soda. There’s plenty of documentation that they are just as bad for you as soda – perhaps not in the same ways, but just as bad. For example: http://www.livestrong.com/article/73637-gatorade-health-risks/
I agree that the sports drinks are not a great substitute. My dentist told me to avoid them, as some are extremely acidic and can damage enamel.
I’ve been trying to completely cut soda out of my diet for years. It’s fits and starts. I don’t drink that much of it to begin with because I have acid reflux and after just half a glass, I can feel the burn start. But even after just half a glass, I can feel the negative effect it has on me.
Yet, I still crave it. At this point, I’ll have a few sips a week. To try to kick the craving, I use Crystal Light. If you’re going to go the flavored drink packet route, you have to know what you’re buying. If your main concern is decreasing your sugar intake, make sure you’re buying sugar free packets. If you want to cut back on caffeine, stay away from the “energy” packets. They’re still sugar free, but the one time I drank one I was vibrating out of my skin.
I’ve never drunk a lot of soda, but since losing weight, tracking some of my nutrients, and generally improving my diet, I’m more sensitive to the refined carbohydrate crash and therefore have no interest in drinking more than 6-8 oz of sugared soda at a time. I do like carbonation and caffeine, so I sometimes drink diet soda. When possible I get the Zevia brand, which is sweetened with the botanical stevia and made with tartaric rather than phosphoric acid (idk if it’s much better for your teeth, but I’ve read that it doesn’t leach calcium from bones). I would like to get my own carbonation flask though because 25-50% fruit juice in carbonated water is delicious and I would generally be able to tweak what goes in my “soda” – the carbonation is really the biggest draw for me.
As an aside, I’m always a bit bemused when caffeine is brought up as an issue with soda, because the content is so low compared to other drinks. Many people drink 2-3 cups of coffee per day without ill effects, and it seems you’d have to be drinking a 6-pack a day or more to accumulate that level of caffeine from soda alone.
The portion of this post regarding artificial sweeteners is just plain false. Aspartame, as well as other FDA approved sweeteners, are NOT TOXIC to humans at the levels people actually consume them. Even high-end consumption (the upper 5 % of artificial sweetener consumers) is only 13.3 mg/kg body weight/day, well under the FDA’s suggested intake limit (50 mg/kg body weight/day). That intake limit is also health protective by several orders of magnitude when compared to the quantities of aspartame necessary to cause actual toxicity in laboratory animals.
If all of that is too sciency, I can distill it: Even if you were a fish, living in an ocean of diet coke, breathing it in and out through your gills, the aspartame would not do a damn thing to you. It’s a total crock.
I should clarify that my ire is directed at folks like Ms. Simotacchi, rather than the author of this post, for perpetuating pseudo-science and using alarmist tactics.
Also, here is a safety evaluation with some of the information I cited: http://www.cspinet.org/new/pdf/aspartame912.pdf
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