There's that much sugar is that?!

I have fallen victim to the marketing of reduced fat or fat free food products as better for you. It wasn't until I came to college that I realized that I was making a wrong decision for my health.

Added sugar is everywhere. In foods like cereals, granola bars, yogurt, and especially in beverages. Added sugar can be what breaks someone's every day diet. When fat is taken out of something, like reduced or fat free ice cream, potato chips, prepared and packaged foods, something needs to be put back in to replace the flavor that is lost when the fat is reduced or taken out. Therefore, sugar is added in to make up for that loss in flavor. The same is the case for sodium. When fat is taken out or reduced, sugar and salt are put in to give back some flavor to the food.

All the added sugar in everything can be partially to blame for the increasing obesity epidemic. Especially in sodas. The added sugar makes us pack on the pounds, and can lead to illness and disease like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and obesity. But that sugar just tastes so good! And that's what the big companies want, for us to like the taste, and also associate drinking sugar drinks like soda with happy times and occasions. I did not drink too much soda when I was younger. It was always a treat in my house. We could have it at partys and on vacations, but other than that, it was not a popular drink to have.  I will occasionally have a soda now and again, but not on a regular basis.

Soft drink companies have tried to train the public to correlate drinking soda with feeling happy and doing things fun. This is how they get people to repeatedly buy it.
We watched a video this past week in my life cycle nutrition class that really caught my attention, and I want to share it with you. It is about the unhappy truth of soda and uses a similar marketing tool that Coca-Cola uses. Here is the link- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myxwCEGcBYc


Also I wanted to share just how much sugar is in some of the most popular beverages and sodas

One can of Coke has 12 teaspoons of sugar

One can of Sprite has 9 teaspoons of sugar
 One bottle of mountain dew has 19 teaspoons of sugar

One can of an energy drink has 16 teaspoons of sugar
One bottle of Snapple has 11.5 teaspoons of sugar

One bottle of Orange Juice has 12 teaspoons of sugar
Lastly, One can of Arizona Iced tea has 18 grams of sugar


So next time you reach for a soda or sugar beverage, just remember how much sugar may be in there!