It probably won’t come as a great surprise, but the answer to the question in the title of this piece is, of course, yes. What may surprise you, however, is just how bad soda really is for you.
Not all soft drinks are created equally, but if we use one of the world’s most popular as a baseline, you’ll get a pretty clear picture of what they do. So, let’s take a closer look at Coca-Cola, the most widely consumed soda in the world.
First and foremost, you should know that the drink is actually much sweeter than it seems to your taste buds, containing a staggering ten teaspoons of sugar in every can. That’s’ nearly twice as much as the WHO (World Health Organization) recommends for an entire day’s sugar consumption.
In fact, your body’s first natural reaction to that much sugar is to vomit it back up and purge it from your system, so why doesn’t that happen?
The answer lies in the phosphoric acid included in the drink. This helps mask the sickening sweetness and tricks your brain into letting you keep it down. Once it’s in your system, things go from bad to worse in a hurry.
In less than half an hour after consumption, your blood sugar levels spike, your body releases insulin, and all those calories are turned into fat. Within the hour, your body has fully absorbed the caffeine, which raises your blood pressure as dopamine begins to flood through you.
Dopamine is the “feel good” chemical in the brain, and is the reason Coke is so addictive. It is even more addictive than heroine, according to recent studies, which explains why we can’t seem to stop drinking the stuff, and none of Coke’s competitors are any better.
All of this shows that however bad you thought soft drinks were, it’s worse than you imagined. Kick the soda habit and drink more water if you want to be healthy!
