Sugary Drinks or Diet Drinks Essay Example for Free

Sugary Drinks or Diet Drinks Essay Abstract Better beverage choices can help fight and prevent obesity and diabetes. Water, of course, is the best beverage option. It delivers everything the body needs—pure H2O—with zero calories. But for some tastes, plain water is just too plain—and it may be unrealistic to ask everyone to kick the sugar-water habit overnight. We must instead work to retrain the American palate away from sweet drinks. Cutting our taste for sweetness will require concerted action on several levels—from creative food scientists and marketers in the beverage industry, as well as from individual consumers and families, schools and worksites, and state and federal government. Sugary Drinks or Diet Drinks? What’ the Best Choice? Soft drinks are the beverage of choice for millions of Americans. Some drink them morning, noon, night, and in between. They’re tasty, available everywhere, and inexpensive. They’re also a prime source of extra calories that can contribute to weight gain. Once thought of as innocent refreshment, soft drinks are also coming under scrutiny for their contributions to the development of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions. Diet soft drinks, made with artificial sweeteners, may not be the best alternatives to regular soft drinks. The term â€Å"soft drink† covers a lot of ground. It refers to any beverage with added sugar or other sweetener, and includes soda, fruit punch, lemonade and other â€Å"ades,† sweetened powdered drinks, and sports and energy drinks. In this section of The Nutrition Source, we focus on non-alcoholic sweetened drinks. Drunk every now and then, these beverages wouldn’t raise an eyebrow among most nutrition experts, any more than does the occasional candy bar or bowl of ice cream. But few people see them as treats. Instead, we drink rivers of the stuff. According to figures from the beverage industry, soft drink makers produce a staggering 10. 4 billion gallons of sugary soda pop each year. That’s enough to serve every American a 12-ounce can every day, 365 days a year. The average can of sugar-sweetened soda or fruit punch provides about 150 calories, almost all of them from sugar, usually high-fructose corn syrup. That’s the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of table sugar (sucrose). If you were to drink just one can of a sugar-sweetened soft drink every day, and not cut back on calories elsewhere, you could gain up to 15 pounds in a year. Soft Drinks and Weight Historians may someday call the period between the early 1980s and 2009 the fattening of America. Between 1985 and now, the proportion of Americans who are overweight or obese has ballooned from 45 percent in the mid-1960s to 66 percent today. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has an online slide show that shows the spread of obesity in the U.S. ) There’s no single cause for this increase; instead, there are many contributors. One of them is almost certainly our penchant for quenching our thirst with beverages other than water. Once upon a time, humans got almost all of their calories from what nature put into food. That changed with the advent of cheap sugar, and then cheaper high-fructose corn syrup. High-fructose corn syrup has been fingered as one of the villains in the obesity epidemic, but in fact, table sugar and corn sweeteners likely have the same physiological impact on blood sugar, insulin, and metabolism. Sugar added to food now accounts for nearly 16 percent of the average American’s daily intake. Sweetened soft drinks make up nearly half of that. Dozens of studies have explored possible links between soft drinks and weight. It isn’t an easy task, for several reasons (read Sorting Out Studies on Soft Drinks and Weight to learn why). Despite these research challenges, studies consistently show that increased consumption of soft drinks is associated with increased energy intake. In a meta-analysis of 30 studies in this area, 10 of 12 cross-sectional studies, five of five longitudinal studies, and four of four long-term experimental studies showed this positive association. A different meta-analysis of 88 studies showed that the effect appeared to be stronger in women, studies focusing on sugar-sweetened soft drinks, and studies not funded by the food industry: Studies in children and adults have also shown that cutting back on sugary drinks can lead to weight loss. On the surface, it makes sense that the more ounces of sugar-rich soft drink a person has each day, the more calories he or she takes in. Yet that runs counter to what happens with solid foods. People tend to compensate for a bigger than usual meal or for a snack by taking in fewer calories later. That’s how weight stays stable. This compensation doesn’t seem to happen with soft drinks. No one knows for sure why this happens, but there are several possibilities: Fluids may not be as satiating as solid foods. That means they don’t provide the same feeling of fullness or satisfaction that solid foods do, which might prompt you to keep eating. The body doesn’t seem to â€Å"register† fluid calories as carefully as it does those from solid food. This would mean they are added on top of calories from the rest of the diet. It is possible that sweet-tasting soft drinks—regardless of whether they are sweetened with sugar or a calorie-free sugar substitute—might stimulate the appetite for other sweet, high-carbohydrate foods. Use headings and subheadings to organize the sections of your paper. The first heading level is formatted with initial caps and is centered on the page. Do not start a new page for each heading. Subheading Subheadings are formatted with italics and are aligned flush left. Citations Source material must be documented in the body of the paper by citing the authors and dates of the sources. The full source citation will appear in the list of references that follows the body of the paper. When the names of the authors of a source are part of the formal structure of the sentence, the year of the publication appears in parenthesis following the identification of the authors, for example, Smith (2001). When the authors of a source are not part of the formal structure of the sentence, both the authors and years of publication appear in parentheses, separated by semicolons, for example (Smith and Jones, 2001; Anderson, Charles, Johnson, 2003). When a source that has three, four, or five authors is cited, all authors are included the first time the source is cited. When that source is cited again, the first author’s surname and â€Å"et al. † are used. See the example in the following paragraph. Use of this standard APA style â€Å"will result in a favorable impression on your instructor† (Smith, 2001). This was affirmed again in 2003 by Professor Anderson (Anderson, Charles Johnson, 2003). When a source that has two authors is cited, both authors are cited every time. If there are six or more authors to be cited, use the first author’s surname and â€Å"et al. † the first and each subsequent time it is cited. When a direct quotation is used, always include the author, year, and page number as part of the citation. A quotation of fewer than 40 words should be enclosed in double quotation marks and should be incorporated into the formal structure of the sentence. A longer quote of 40 or more words should appear (without quotes) in block format with each line indented five spaces from the left margin. 1 References Anderson, Charles Johnson (2003). The impressive psychology paper. Chicago: Lucerne Publishing. Smith, M. (2001). Writing a successful paper. The Trey Research Monthly, 53, 149-150. Entries are organized alphabetically by surnames of first authors and are formatted with a hanging indent. Most reference entries have three components: Authors: Authors are listed in the same order as specified in the source, using surnames and initials. Commas separate all authors. When there are seven or more authors, list the first six and then use â€Å"et al. † for remaining authors. If no author is identified, the title of the document begins the reference. Year of Publication: In parenthesis following authors, with a period following the closing parenthesis. If no publication date is identified, use â€Å"n. d. † in parenthesis following the authors. Source Reference: Includes title, journal, volume, pages (for journal article) or title, city of publication, publisher (for book). Appendix Each Appendix appears on its own page. Footnotes 1Complete APA style formatting information may be found in the Publication Manual. Table 1 Type the table text here in italics; start a new page for each table [Insert table here] Figure Captions Figure 1. Caption of figure [Figures – note that this page does not have the manuscript header and page number].