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Health News Archive 395 - Diet
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One Soda per Day Adds 15 Pounds per Year

A new review of available research pinpoints exactly how much soft drinks and other sugary beverages contribute to weight gain and obesity in the United States. Just one extra can each day can add as much as 15 pounds to your weight over the course of a single year.

Researchers at Harvard School of Public Health reviewed 30 nutritional studies conducted over the past four decades which revealed a number of other facts, including:

• Soft drinks contribute about half of the additional sweeteners in the average American diet, and that amounts to a third of all carbohydrate calories consumed.
• Limiting a child's intake of soft drinks over a year lowered his or her risks of obesity.
• Consuming more sugary drinks led to higher weight gains and greater obesity risks. A nutritionist commenting on the review noted that satiety studies show that people do not compensate for calories from beverages by consuming less food. As a result, when caloric beverages are consumed, those calories are simply added on top of the rest of the total daily caloric intake.
• Many studies show that heavy adults and children are more likely to drink sugary beverages.
• A one-year intervention study showed that reducing the intake of soft drinks in school-age children reduced the incidence of excess weight and obesity.

Consider stevia as an alternative zero-calorie, zero-glycemic sweetener.

Source: Malik VS, Schulze MB, Hu FB. Intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain: a systematic review. Am J Clin Nutr. 2006 Aug;84(2):274-88.

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