Let’s Talk About Your Soda

One of the most popular beverages is actually one of the scariest.

Billions of Americans regularly drink sodas, energy drinks, sports drinks, and almost all of us have. Here’s what studies suggest, and how to break the habit if you want.

Come on, you can tell us anything. That cold soda can right out of the fridge chilling your hands, that ka-chink that releases all that fizz when you pop the tab, the first sparkling taste, when the sugar and flavor hit your tongue all at once, the flashbacks from childhood… you’ve drank soda, and you’ve loved it before.

We actually can’t blame you. We all seem to have an idea how bad it is, but the soda industry is a 193 billion dollar industry. Whether in the form of energy drinks, or your classic fountain variety flavors, a lot of people are obviously drinking it, very regularly. The marketing is genius, we’re hardwired to love sugar, and the variety of flavors to make our tastebuds dance is astonishing. Plus, it is near us at all times, the industry has made sure of it.

We’ve heard before that sugar is bad for you, but that’s not the whole picture. Sugar, in and of itself, isn’t an inherently evil substance. People have been making neighbors and families happy with cookies and pies for generations. A spoonful of pudding has been one of the best hiding places known to man for parents to get children to take their medicine on the sly. You can’t even make ‘booch without sugar. The problem is quickly ingested megadoses of it, on a regular basis.

The American Heart Association recommends for healthy sugar intake, no more than 25g a day for women, and 37g a day for men. A single 12oz can of soda contains about 39g of sugar, not only meeting, but well overshooting your daily quota. Excess sugar, we all know means excess weight, and excess calories, so we won’t tell you things you know. But massive intakes of sugar through these types of beverages has been shown to have extremely far ranging effects on systems you might not expect.

Drinking soda actually affects your cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure. It been shown to raise your LDL (bad cholesterol) levels, but if that weren’t enough, as your body weight goes up through increased intake, your body produces more cholesterol, in general, as it does this, creating a terrible loop. There have been studies that show increased risk in development of metabolic syndrome by up to 50% with drinking just one soda per day.

The phosphoric acid content of soda has been shown to affect bone density over periods of time, especially in women, increasing osteoporosis and fracture risks. This same phosphoric acid has also been linked to kidney stones, and kidney disease, in women and men.

Blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, pancreatic cancer, and stroke all have correlations with soda intake, too. Sadly, this is only a small sampling of the effects this all takes on your body, as the more research is done, the more soda, and large sugar intakes, seem to affect nearly every bodily system. It might taste good, and be a very pleasurable habit,  but our tastebuds could be very literally leading us to an early grave.

There’s a concept in psychology called a habit replacement loop. This process essentially explains why just simply quitting something is so hard. Humans don’t do well cold turkey, with anything, so the secret is to replace the habit that you’re trying to eliminate with something in its place, thus forming a new, and better, habit. Repetition is what makes the good thing a whole new habit, so in this sense we don’t really change, we just “rehabituate”.

Now, if you’d want to kick your can of soda to the curb, you’d probably do well to find another beverage to slide in your hand around the times you usually grab for it. It’d be even better if this beverage were cold and fizzy too. You’d definitely want this beverage to be low in sugar, and you could even make it an opportunity for something that would add to your overall health, rather than simply subtracting the bad stuff. This beverage could maybe include things like, oh, say, for instance... probiotics. We thought it was a good idea for you to maybe look for things with antioxidants too. Yeah... antioxidants, like in tea. Maybe there’s something out there that even includes some healthy fruit juices… or beneficial extracts and herbs…?

Looking to quench your thirst and kick your soda addiction? Kombucha is a delicious and healthy alternative to soda and is a great opportunity for you to take control of your health.

Kombucha is an antioxidant-rich drink with organic acids, enzymes, probiotics and B vitamins. When purchasing kombucha make sure it’s raw. Pasteurized kombucha is high in sugar and doesn’t have the health benefits compared to its raw counterpart because all the good bacteria and yeast has been destroyed.

NEW YORK’S PREMIUM KOMBUCHA

If you’re ever in doubt, seek health, seek flavor, Seek North. Seek North kombucha is Certified Organic and Certified Kosher and always 100% raw, all-natural, and undiluted.