Softdrinks: how bad are they?

Health food campaigns when I was growing up were all about avoiding fatty foods. Not much was said about sugar, which allowed advertisers to imply that fat free, high sugar products were healthy. Now, people are a lot more suspicious of sugar. This comes partly from the low-carb diet movement, and partly from research into the causes of obesity and type II diabetes.

There's still a lot of debate about which macro-nutrients we should be consuming more of. If the goal is to feel full with minimum kilojoules, then there's conflicting evidence on whether protein, complex carbohydrate or fat will give you the best bang for your buck. But everyone seems to agree that sugar is one to avoid. And if you want to reduce sugar, then the first thing to cut out is sugary beverages. After all, marshmallows may be 66% sugar, but at least that comes along with 2.5% protein and 14% complex carbs. Soft drinks are the definition of empty kilojoules.

But are kilojoules from sugar really any worse than the energy you get from, say, white bread? Starch is quickly broken down to glucose, while sucrose is broken down to glucose and fructose. Perhaps that fructose molecule is the cause of all the havoc. This is a complicated topic, and one that I'll come back to, but what is becoming very clear indeed is that soft drink consumption is not only associated with, but also causes weight gain.

In spite of all this though, we drink huge amounts of them. A recent Australian report suggested that more than half of 19-24 year-olds consume more than half a liter of soft drink per day. For some groups, soft drink is accounting for 10% of daily energy consumption, and there's evidence that this is not adjusted for by eating less of other things. Interestingly, after the age of 12, males consistently consumed more soft drink than females. This goes against the stereotype that women are the ones with the sweet tooth.