Nutritionists: Soda making Americans drink themselves fat. (CNN)
If you’re searching for a villain in America’s obesity epidemic, most nutritionists tell you to put one picture on the wanted poster: a cold, bubbly glass of soda pop.
Full of sugar, soda adds calories without making a person feel full, nutritionists say.
“Liquid candy” to detractors, sweetened soft drinks are so ubiquitous that they contribute about 10 percent of the calories in the American diet, according to government data.
In fact, said Dr. David Ludwig, a Harvard endocrinologist whose 2001 paper in the Lancet is widely cited by obesity researchers, sweetened drinks are the only specific food that clinical research has directly linked to weight gain.
“Highly concentrated starches and sugars promote overeating, and the granddaddy of them all is sugar-sweetened beverages,” said Ludwig, who runs the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital in Boston.
I find the bacon fat milkshakes to be more of a problem, myself.
I find this very unlikely. People didn’t use to drink water. Water has for the most of history been rather unclean. People drank milk and juice and alcoholic beverages, all of which are as bad as soda. Now at least there’s diet soda.
Milk and juice are as bad as soda? About as bad as soda water, perhaps, but soda pop? I think not.
Unless by “juice” you mean the fruit flavored high fructose corn syrup that passes for juice these days, which for all intents and purposes is soda pop.
And I don’t think I even need to bring aspartame into the discussion…