Guidelines To Kick Your Soda Habit.

Soda and other sugary drinks have replaced milk and water as the drinks of choice for teens and adults alike. Yet these drinks are actually more like desserts because they are high in added sugar and calories. In fact, soda and sugar-laden drinks may contribute to weight problems in kids and youths.


Be Healthy! Find Alternatives!


Healthy drink choices for you and your family, which your can also start at home to set a good example, might include:

1) Drink milk.

2) Limit juice to 100% fruit juice, which is usually going to have less sugar and more vitamins and nutrients than other fruit drinks. Keep in mind that even 100% fruit juice has a lot of sugar in it, there is just no extra sugar added, and they can have almost 100 calories per 6 ounce serving.

3) Drink water.


4) Avoid soda, fruit drinks, sports drinks and other sugary, high calorie drinks.



5) Remember that when you are choosing what to drink, you aren't simply looking at calories and sugar. Getting other vitamins and minerals from your drinks is important too, such as the calcium, vitamin D, and Vitamin A you get from milk and fortified orange juice. Or the Vitamin C you can get from 100% fruit juice.


6) Avoid caffeine.


Old habits are hard to break and new ones, especially those related to eating and physical activity, can take months to develop and stick with. Here are some tips to help you in the process:


Set a few realistic goals for yourself. First, try cutting back the number of sweetened sodas you drink by replacing a couple of them with unsweetened beverages. Once you have reduced your sweetened soda intake, try eliminating these drinks from your diet. Then set a few more goals, like drinking low-fat or fat-free milk, eating more fruits, or getting more physical activity each day.


Identify your barriers. Are there unhealthy snack foods at home that are too tempting? Is the food at your cafeteria too high in fat and added sugars? Do you find it hard to resist drinking several sweetened sodas a day because your friends do it? Use the tips above to identify changes you can make. Get a buddy at school or someone at home to support your new habits. Ask a friend, sibling, parent, or guardian to help you make changes and stick with your new habits.


Know that you can do it! Use these informations to help you. Stay positive and focused by remembering why you wanted to be healthier - to look, feel, move, and learn better. Accept relapses - if you fail at one of your nutrition or physical activity goals one day, do not give up. Just try again the next day. Also, share this information with your family. They can support you in adopting healthier behaviors.

4 Reasons to Kick the Soda Pop Habit.

Do you drink soda pop?

Chances are you do. The average American consumes 1.6 cans of soda pop every day, for a grand total of 597 cans of soda pop per year. That’s 32 pounds of sugar–an amount that’s both impressive and frightening all at once. The soft drink industry is certainly glowing about this, BUT YOU SHOULDN’T BE.

Keep reading to learn more about why you MUST stop drinking soda pop:

Your Weight

Do you want to lose a few pounds and be healthier? Most of us do. Scientists at Harvard have narrowed in on one of the key reasons for rising obesity in western countries: soda pop. The new study finds that one-third of all carbohydrate calories in the American diet come from added sweeteners, with half of these calories coming from sweetened beverages. They point the finger of blame at the main sweetener used in soft drinks: high fructose corn syrup. It contains more calories than regular refined sugar and some studies suggest it reduces the body’s ability to process calories.

Of course, obesity is a complex issue – one must take into account diet, genetics, eating patterns, and physical activity – but it is not rocket science to figure out that if you were forced to consume an extra can of Coke per day (155 calories), with all other factors held constant, you could pack on at least 10 pounds by the end of the year. Studies have also found a connection between drinking large amounts of soda pop and consuming more calories through food. Either those taking sugared drinks lack the same restraint with food, or sugared drinks cause a rise in insulin that makes individuals hungrier, causing them to eat more.

But there is some good news: if you’re a regular soda pop drinker, and you want to lose some weight and improve your health, banishing soda pop from your diet is an easy way to start down this path. If you cut out two cans of pop per day from your diet (and maintain the same level of physical activity and eat the same number of calories), you can lose 1 pound in 12 days. Not bad at all.

Your Teeth

As you already know, soda pop contains a high concentration of simple sugars. When you drink pop, the bacteria in your mouth ferment the sugars and produce acid. The problem being that acid dissolves tooth enamel; hence, soda pop is likely to increase your risk of cavities – holes or structural damage in your teeth. Moreover, a large number of soda pop drinks are acidic, with some even having a pH of 3.0 or lower. Sipping on acidic drinks over a long period of time will also erode your tooth enamel. Avoid soda pop and you can reduce your chances of a painful trip to the dentist and a mouthful of fillings.


Your Brain

Most of the caffeine intake in a teenager’s diet is through soft drinks that not only is a source of caffeine, but also gives substantial amount of sugar – empty calories and artificial flavor. Caffeine when taken in moderate amounts can increase mental alertness. However when taken in higher doses, it can cause anxiety, headaches, moods, dizziness and may also interfere with normal sleep. Some teenagers may be unaware of the fact that caffeine in high amounts can cause nervous disorders and may also aggravate heart problems.

Your Heart

Drinking more than one soft drink daily — whether it’s regular or diet — may be associated with an increase in the risk of developing the metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk factors including excess waist circumference, high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL “good” cholesterol) and high fasting glucose levels. The presence of three or more of the factors increases a person’s risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease.


In conclusion, even if the above ingredients or health problems do not bother you for whatever reason, just understand that optimal health is about putting in your body ONLY items that benefit the body and NONE that harm it. It has nothing to do with benefiting your body and everything to do with harming it. Hence, it is obvious that it does not belong in a person's diet who is seeking optimal health, but I would go even further and state that it does not belong in the diet of a person who is even seeking average health.


Today, we simply know too much about health and are continually learning more. Today, major preventable conditions are almost one could say out of control. Today, we are living in a new era where people just don't want to be lied to anymore - we have simply come too far to be amused with things that serve companies' wallets and not our own health and well-being or the greater global good.

8 Reasons Why People Drink Soda.

People love soda because sodas tastes really good and it give you a feeling of being refreshed. Everday you’ll see people around you consume at least a can of carbonated drink. All sorts of sodas can be found everywhere; 7eleven,the supermarkets, restaurants.

Instead of occasionally having these drinks, people of today have started using sodas as an alternative for water and other natural drinks. Studies have linked soda to obesity, tooth decay, heart disease, and mental disorders Doctors and nutritional experts caution against consuming large amounts of soft drinks because of their high sugar levels. A 12-ounce serving of regular soda contains 40 grams of sugar, or 13% of the Food and Drug Administration’s recommended daily allowance.

We certainly need to know more about soda drink that we love so much. And so here are 8 reasons why we drink soda:

1.It’s Very Tasty!

The taste could be one thing that gets us addicted to drinking soda, it is delicious. In fact, it is so good, that many people drink it with every meal!

2.It’s Everywhere!

Even if you wanted to drink something else, you would be hard-pressed

to find it as prominently displayed in vending machines, at fast-food chains,

and supermarket checkouts. You might not realize how ubiquitous Coke,

Pepsi, and the like are in our society until you try to stop drinking soda.

3.Convenience, “Grab-n-Go”!

The most addictive thing about soda is the convenience. If you want something quick or are in a hurry, it is so easy to grab and convenient to drink.

4.Promotion and Advertising

Soft drinks are heavily consumed in part because companies promote them vigorously - Billions of dollars are spend on advertising sodas - and market them everywhere - in stores, restaurants, gas stations, museums, and even schools.

5.Soda Habit

For some people, drinking several sodas a day is a force of habit. You know drinking soda is a habit when you find yourself going to the grocery store at 10 p.m. because your refrigerator is tapped out.

6.It Is Cheap

Soda may be pretty inexpensive when compared with fruit juice and milk. With combo meals, a large soda is only an extra dollar, and you get fries!

7.Thirst

Often people drink soda to quench the thirst. However, this is probably the worst time to drink soda, because when you are very thirsty or dehydrated you have low levels of saliva. And saliva helps to neutralize acids (soda is the most acidic beverage you can buy) and wash your teeth clean.

8.Caffeine Addiction

Many soft drinks contain caffeine and caffeine is mildly addictive. This fact is part of the reason soda is such a hard habit to break. If you’re addicted to the caffeine in soda, you’re really having two habits - the soda habit and the caffeine habit.

The 3 Types of Soda (And Why You Should Avoid All of Them)

Sugar Soda:

Originally, all soda beverages were sweetened with natural sugar. Today the number of sugar sweetened drinks is dramatically lower due to the development of other types of sweeteners. However, some drinks like Jones Soda, still use natural sugar as apposed to the chemical stuff. This makes their product taste great and is much more natural than other substances. However, sugar is sugar and we all know that too much sugar can be bad for you. For example, one can of Jones Soda contains almost 200 calories. Even though this may be natural, it is still a lot of calories.

HFCS Soda:

This type of beverage is by far the most common. Coke, Pepsi, Mtn. Dew, Sprite and tons of others are all sweetened with a chemical known as High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). This is a chemically altered substance created by corn farmers at a time when their business was low. HFCS is sweet, cheap and is more preservable than sugar. However, because it is so chemically altered, it is also much worse for you than beverages sweetened with sugar. HFCS soda contains 10 times more harmful carbonyl compounds which are blamed for causing diabetic complications. Also, studies show that HFCS can actually block the receptors in your brain that tell you when you are full. So you keep guzzling the sodas even after you should have stopped a while ago. This results in consuming loads of excess calories.

Aspartame Soda:

Aspartame is the artificial sweetener that is found in most “diet” drinks. It is also a chemically altered compound that was intended to provide sweetening without those pesky calories. However, there have been some troubling findings on this substance as of late. Some studies have shown that aspartame is directly linked with brain tumors, cancer and other forms of disastrous health consequences. Of course, there are also studies that report no such link. However the shady past of this sweetener, and the unpleasant taste that I never grew to like, are enough for me to pass on most diet drinks.

Fact: Soda is Poison !

To get to the truth, let’s start with the ingredients. The average cola contains carbonated water, caramel color, natural flavors, caffeine, phosphoric acid and high-fructose corn syrup. Carbonated water is plain water infused with carbon dioxide, which creates the bubbles. Caramel color is a natural additive that tints food products, providing the familiar color consumers expect to see. Natural flavors are often of the citrus variety and added for taste. All of these are simple, harmless ingredients. Next is caffeine, a diuretic and stimulant known to be addictive. What’s left on the list of ingredients is what solidifies soda’s bad name: sugar. Phosphoric acid is a chemical that adds a tangy or sour flavor by breaking down starches into sugar. Many products on supermarket shelves contain the final ingredient on our soda list: high-fructose corn syrup. It’s a manmade sugar.

What is Soda?

What are soda drinks? Soda drinks by definition are carbonated beverages that are non-alcoholic, also referred to as soft drink, carbonated drink, soda pop or fizzy drink.

Canned soft drinks

In plastic & glass bottles and have various sizes.