Drinks Diet Soda example essay topic

1,075 words
The Detrimental Effects of Soda What is your favorite soda? Coke? Do you know what is in soda? Cutting down on soda can lead to a healthy and better lifestyle.

Studies show that soda, though it tastes good, has many negative effects that outweigh the positive effects. Soda, especially diet, is detrimental to the health of your body. My cousin's teacher did an experiment with coke. She put a tooth in coke and left it for at least a week.

The next time they checked the tooth had disintegrated. The coke had eaten away at the tooth. If this can happen to a tooth imagine what it does to your body. How healthful are these drinks, which provide a lot of sugars, calories and caffeine but no significant nutritional value? And what happens if you drink a lot of them at a very young age? Soda is a sweetened, carbonated, acidic, often caffeinated drink.

Forty-five gallons of soda is consumed per person / per year by the average American. Even adults are just as vulnerable to tooth decay, from drinking excessive amounts of soda, even though they have good enamel and well calcified teeth. In America soda manufacturers are the biggest users of sugar. At least ten teaspoons are in each, 12 ounce, can which provides you with the maximum recommended intake of sugar a day. Sugar creates insulin which tells the body to store all carbohydrates as fat. Sugar in soda can cause heightened cholesterol levels, heart disease, diabetes, weight gain, and premature aging.

(Mercola) Sugar isn't the only thing in soda that is bad for teeth, but the acids included in many soft drinks eat away enamel and make teeth more vulnerable. The pH, measure of acidity or alkalinity of a solution, of regular and diet sodas ranges from 2.47-3.35, the lower the pH the more acidic it is. The pH in our mouth is normally about 6.2 to 7, slightly more acidic than water. A pH of 5.2 to 5.5 or below can dissolve the hard enamel of our teeth.

Phosphoric acid is in all soda and interferes with the use of calcium which can lead to osteoporosis. Phosphoric acid also neutralizes hydrochloric acid and so digestion cannot properly take place. Aspartame is another ingredient in sodas, particularly Diet Soda. Aspartame is a carcinogen and becomes wood alcohol also known as methanol. In large amounts Aspartame can make someone who drinks diet soda, constantly, feel depressed, fatigued, dehydrated, and / or hungry. Aspartame also can lead to brain tumors, birth defects, diabetes, emotional disorders, and seizures.

Caffeine is an ingredient in most sodas and does not promote health. A 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew has 93 milligrams of caffeine almost an equivalent to an adult dose of NoDoz, a caffeine pill to keep you awake. Caffeine can cause jitters, insomnia, heightened blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, breast lumps, birth defects, and more. Kids and adults alike drink soda. The soda company pays some lunch services a commission for every soda they sell with lunch. This motivates these lunch services to sell soda instead of healthier milk or juice because they are getting paid to sell it.

(Squires) Sixty percent of all public and private schools have vending machines to sell soda. The person responsible for selling the soda places the vending machines in public areas and might even heat the room so the people around would buy a cold drink. This is how most of sodas are sold to the population. In ten years drinking soda doubled. Teen boys now drink an average of three to seven cans and teen girls drink two to five cans a day. This amounts to fifty cans per student / per year.

These students drink sodas at home, parties, meal time, and throughout the day. Most probably will become obese, fracture or break bones and have no enamel to protect the teeth. By the time they are middle aged adults it will be too late to switch to water and juice. Obesity is now an epidemic in the US. For every soda a child drinks every day, their obesity risk appears to jump 60%. The link between obesity and soda isn't too strong but it is there.

Soda consumption increased by five hundred percent and obesity jumped up ninety four percent. Coke's new C 2 and Pepsi Edge hope to solve this problem without compromising taste but there are still many other ingredients in C 2 and Edge that can lead to obesity. Tooth Decay is another problem affecting the US. Both sugar and phosphoric acid from sodas contribute to it and the soft drink industry admits to it.

But the NSD A (National Soft Drink Association) also says that soft drinks aren't the sole cause of tooth decay. A lot of sugary foods, from fruit juices to candy and even raisins and other dried fruit, have what dentists refer to as cariogenic properties, which means they can cause tooth decay. Though other foods have cariogenic properties soda definitely has the largest percentage of these properties. A federally funded study of nearly 3,200 Americans 9 to 29 years old conducted between 1971 and 1974 showed a direct link between tooth decay and soft drinks. Numerous other studies have shown the same link throughout the world, from Sweden to Iraq. Soda has become the number one choice beverage in the US.

The younger you start drinking soda daily the more likely you are going to develop osteoporosis, tooth decay, and a myriad of other ailments when older. Soda is okay in moderation but there are many alternatives. (Duff) Soda is not the only beverage that can quench your thirst there are a bonanza of other fluids. These are healthier than soda and can help you stay away from the detrimental beverage, soda, drinks like Gatorade, fruit juice, carbonated water, water, and club soda. (Mercola) In the end the good tasting beverage known as soda is okay if enjoyed occasionally, but if drank excessively one will not have a good life in a couple of years.