What’s your take on drinking soda?

As a mom trying to teach my kids healthy habits I have to share one of my hot button issues – soda. Specifically soda in kids. We all have a hot button issue, right?

I used to drink a lot of Diet Coke. But, I used to do a lot of things that weren’t good for me – eat too much, not exercise, all that. I’ve learned a lot and the more I learn, the more comfortable I feel with the changes I’ve made to my life. No one is perfect, we can only try to learn and grow, right?

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So, back to my soap box:

Soda is basically an empty calorie can of sugar and chemicals and rarely do people consume just one.

Did you know what the common ingredients in soda are? (my apologies that I can’t remember where I found this information)

• Carbonated Water

• Fructose corn syrup or sucrose

• Caramel color

• Phosphoric acid

• Natural flavors

• Caffeine

• Citric acid

• Sodium citrate

• Sodium benzonate

• Modified food starch

• Ester gum

• Red 40

• Yellow 5

• Malic acid

Do you know what much of that means? I don’t. Did you know that the carbonated water ingested with every soda bottle decreases the oxygen in blood by 25% for up to 3 hours. I’m not really sure what that does (I’m still on my first chemistry class), but it doesn’t sound good right?

Here is a great article about all the bad things that soda does – from Nutrition Vista.

Even a Sprite, with no caffeine – has 140 calories for a can. I know many parents are okay with their kids drinking Sprite. But, really do they need 140 empty calories? One can of soda has 26 grams of sugar. Did you know that a regular Hershey Milk Chocolate bar has 31 grams of sugar? So, there’s no caffeine – but there’s a candy bar worth of sugar… we all know what sugar overload does to kids.

Now imagine if kids are drinking regular soda – so they’re getting all the same sugar PLUS the caffeine. Totally unnecessary.

One of the most common weight loss tips is to not consume empty calories and not to drink your calories. Why would you subject your kids to that? Here’s another link to a research study that showed that drinking 2 cans of sugar sweetened soda per day increases a person’s risk of developing Type II Diabetes. In addition, research has shown a link between drinking diet soda and an increased appetite, especially an increase in cravings for sugary foods.

I’m happy that my kids don’t even like soda. I’d like to keep it that way.

The awkward moments come when we have guests in our house. We only drink water or milk (or coffee and tea) with the occasional batch of lemonade. I feel awkward offering our beverage choices sometimes. I know I shouldn’t. It’s my house, that’s the way things go.

I don’t have an answer, I just have to rant sometimes.

I’d love to hear your $.02 on the issue.

Welcome Fitness Friday Friends.