Soft Drinks – Liquid Sugar or Refreshing Beverage.

This post follows on from our last post on “Regular Colas – What to look for”, taking the considerations from that article and applying it to our list of regular colas to find which colas are the best. In the following discussion we will compare the soft drinks for sugar / calorie values, color properties, preservative properties and the presence of “high fructose corn syrup”.

Foodessential regular cola lists:

• List of Regular Cola and Sugar – sorted low-high

• List of Regular Cola and Colors – click a title to see which color

• List of Regular Cola and Preservatives – click a title to see the preservative

Sugar:

As is always the case when choosing a “best” product it really depends on what you’re looking for and what your and your family’s dietary priorities are. In the case of soft drinks it is a pretty safe bet to look at the added sugar levels first. In fact when you do, you will see that in fact there is not a massive difference between the different products. The lowest sugar sodas are the Pibb Xtra sodas which contain between 10.83g – 10.99g per 100ml depending on the size – the variance is most probably due to rounding and the stated serving size. We compare the products’ values per 100ml as comparing by per serve (as is written on the label) can be misleading because it largely depends on what serving size the manufacturer has chosen to list. This way when comparing between products by per 100ml we’re comparing apples to apples.

The sugar in softdrinks initially doesn’t seem like much when compared to the kids cereals which had values of sugar at 50+g per 100g – and this is true. As a percentage of calories, the cereals have a lot more sugar in them. The difference is that in one serving of cereal (about 30 – 50g) you would consume between 15 – 25g of sugar. However in one serving of soft drink (about 240 – 300ml / 8flo) you would consume between 29-35g of sugar. So, if you had a couple of servings, say a 600ml / 20oz bottle, that’s a fair bit more. A super gulp 64oz at the cinema is too scary to work out…but I’ll do it anyway…

If 8floz = 29g sugar then,

64floz = 232g sugar and so if,

1 teaspoon = 4g of sugar then……

One 64floz Super Gulp in the cinema equals 58 teaspoons of sugar!!!!

That’s almost 900 calories consumed in a 2 hour movie not including anything else you might have eaten. That’s almost 50% of your recommended daily caloric intake consumed whilst sitting in the dark watching the latest blockbuster!! When you look at it this way, it almost makes you want to be a little more selective with the movies that you watch.

Incidentally, before we wrap up with sugar, the two leading brands, Coke and Pepsi fall middle of the field with approximately 11.5g of sugar each depending on which flavor you’re looking at.

Colors & Preservatives:

Another considerable concern with soft drinks were the additives and in particular colors and preservatives. All the products in this list contain colors as you can see by going to the dynamic list. The most often used color is caramel color, which is pretty harmless or as the International Program on Chemical Safety states, “commercially-produced caramel color has the same toxicological properties as caramel produced by cooking or heating sucrose”. Only the Shasta Cherry Cola product contained another color – Red 40.

Preservatives are also prevalent in every regular cola, largely in the form of Phosphoric Acid and Citric Acid. Neither of these has any particular reputation as being considerably toxic ingredients in the volumes produced in soft drinks. However, the acidity of these drinks is often blamed for the corrosive effect of these products on consumers’ teeth.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS):

This is the most controversial of the ingredients found in soft drinks and unfortunately it is found in all of them in this list. HFCS is a sweetening agent and has been controversially associated with increase in satiety and obesity – see our last report for more details. Furthermore, and possibly more disturbing, HFCS has also been documented as containing mercury in 50% of products tested according to a recent release by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Which one is the best?

With all this bad news, how is it possible to choose a best soft drink? In fact why would you consume these drinks at all knowing what we now know? We at Foodessentials, always striving to present a reasonable and balanced view of an issue, will definitely be more aware of how many soft drinks we consume and will probably stick to the lower sugar ones as much as possible.

We hope this and the Food Comparison Tool help you to make better and more efficient choices about the food you and your family consume

Does this make you want to cut down on drinking soft drinks?  What’s the alternative?

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• Mexican Foods – Ready To Go
• Research: Orange Juice – What people are looking for
• Choosing Canned Meat
• The Goodness of Grapes