Call it what you like; soda, tonic, pop, or the leading cause of the onset of type II diabetes in middle aged over-weight Americans; the experts agree that carbonated flavored beverages are not good for your health. While regular and diet sodas are both borderline dangerous, diet drinks seem to pose a much greater risk to the body. Still thinking about reaching for a soda??? Here are only 20 reasons not to drink one ever again:

1. Your diet soda could be loaded with saccharin. Saccharin(Sweet n’ Low) is a noncaloric petroleum derivative that has been linked to bladder cancer in laboratory animals. In fact, Saccharin was discovered by Ira Remsen in 1879 at the dinner table after not having washed the coal tar derivatives off of his hands. Coal tar derivatives – it’s what’s for dinner!

2. Your diet soda could be loaded with Aspartame. Aspartame (NutraSweet) contains ethyl or wood alcohol, which has been known to hinder fetal brain development.

3. Your regular soda IS loaded with sugar. Refined sugar and syrupy sugar, eg high-fructose corn syrup, are both linked directly to weight gain and adult-onset type II diabetes. Both of these can kill you.

4. Diet drinks are loaded with sodium which causes calcium to be excreted. This loss of calcium leads to osteoporosis, which causes your bones to become weak and brittle. We all know about the person that trips and falls and breaks their hip. Don’t let this be you.

5. Sodas tend to interact adversely with antacids, possibly causing headaches, constipation, hypertension, nausea, vomiting, and kidney damage.

6. Sodas contain a lot of phosphorus, which can also lead to excessive calcium loss and even they can even hinder the body’s ability to utilize calcium. Can we say osteoporosis? Soft drinks serve as the number one source of phosphorus in the American diet. Maybe Americans weren’t always so decrepit, eh?

7. Heavy soft drink consumption can interfere with the body’s metabolization of iron, which could mean diminished nerve impulse transmission. More soda, less sensation.

8. Caffeine withdrawal can occur in those that drink soft drinks daily. It’s a dreadful experience that can include symptoms such as headache, fatigue, mild depression, muscle pain and stiffness, flu-like feelings, nausea, and vomiting.

9. Women that consume at least one caffeinated beverage a day are more prone to PMS. In fact, the more caffeine a women consumes, the worse the PMS symptoms tend to be.

10. Listen up ladies. Just having one caffeinated drink a day reduces your monthly chances of conceiving a child up to 50%. In related news, having just 20-30 extra pounds of blubber on your body reduces your chances of ever being asked out by that hot, young, successful entrepreneur across that room that clearly sports 6-pack abs underneath his workout shirt.

11. Listen up men. Soda stored in plastic containers can decrease your testosterone levels, which could have any number of negative effects including increased fat retention, decreased muscle mass and strength, loss of libido, inability to maintain an erection, and an increased chance of developing certain types of cancer. Why? Because plastic is known to contain certain environmental estrogens that seep into whatever the plastic comes in contact with. Estrogen is essentially the opposite of testosterone in the same way that a woman in the opposite of a man.

12. When stored improperly, the artificial sweetener aspartame can turn into methanol, a poisonous alcohol which General Motors is considering using as a fuel. Even when stored properly, 10% of the consumed aspartame will be absorbed into the bloodstream as methanol. So, damned if you do, damned if you don’t….

13. Phosphoric acid found in soft drinks can actually corrode your stomach lining and your liver.

14. A high phosphorus intake can lead to gingivitis, tooth loss, and periodontal disease.

15. PET bottling is used exclusively for soft drinks. This Polyethylene terephthalate can release small amounts of dimethyl terephthalate into the beverage. Unfortunately, this compound is potentially carcinogenic.

16. One extra soft drink a day gives a child a 60% greater chance of becoming obese. Each daily drink adds 0.18 points to the child’s BMI score, regardless of exercise and other foods consumed.

17. One liter of aspartame-sweetened soda can produce about 56 mg of methanol. When several diet sodas are consumed daily, as much as 250 mg of methanol are stuffed into the bloodstream. Oh, and by the way, this is 32 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s limit.

18. The acidity of soda is about the same as vinegar, but the sugar content disguises the acidity. Clever, huh??

19. The sugar from one soft drink has the ability to weaken the white blood cells up to 7 hours.

20. Children who drink soft drinks are 3-4 times more likely to suffer from bone fractures than those who don’t.

In conclusion, drink water… and lots of it. If you aren’t drinking 8, 8 oz. glasses a day, you are only hurting yourself. Today is the day to make a change!

Related posts:

1. Workout 1
2. How Should I Eat?
3. Workout 7

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 9:27 am and is filed under Diet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.