Thirsty Thursday...Soft Drink Addiction

Good Morning All,

Welcome to my latest blog. Today is THIRSTY THURSDAY… My favorite drinks to have with meals are soda/pop. I know they are not good for my health, but I seem to crave them and I don’t know why. Is it that I am addicted to them? Can a person become addicted to carbonated drinks? This will be my research topic for today… Why do we crave soda/pop?

Soft drink lovers will testify that it can be awfully hard to give up the fizzy stuff. One reason is that when we consume something sweet, the taste triggers our brains to release chemicals called opioids -- which make us crave more pleasurable tastes.

So why would anyone want to swear off soft drinks? Experts say that, while soft drinks have few useful nutrients, it is among the many sources of excess calories contributing to the U.S. obesity epidemic. Several recent studies bear out the idea that drinking too many soft drinks can affect your health:

• Research presented at an American Diabetes Association gathering showed that women who went from drinking less than one, non-diet soda a day to one or more daily sodas were nearly twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes over a four-year period as women who drank less than one soft drink a day. (The women who drank more soda also gained more weight over the same period.)
• A study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism suggested that fructose, a sweetener found naturally in fruit juice and typically used in concentrated amounts in soft drinks, may induce a hormonal response in the body that promotes weight gain.
• Soft drinks, especially light-colored drinks, and canned iced tea appear to "aggressively" erode teeth enamel in laboratory tests -- and it didn't matter whether they were diet drinks or regular ones, according to a study published in General Dentistry.

Source: http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/help-soda-lovers

This is good information. Even though I know all this, it is still hard to cutback or stop. I have Type-2 diabetes, and I still have a hard time with the drinks. I am pledging today to cut back and eventually stop them all together.

That is all for today… Hope to see you tomorrow for FOOD FACT FRIDAY…

Until then,

Mysterychef1