|
by Mike Adams
extracted from "Grocery
Warning"
from
Scribd
Website
Now let’s take a look at the next
problem found in everyday foods and groceries consumed by most
Americans: soft drinks.
Generally speaking, we are a nation of people hooked on soft drinks.
As I know from personal experience - and perhaps your own experience
agrees with this - many of us became overweight or obese in the
first place by engaging in diets very high in soft drink
consumption. As a result, we are “addicted” to these soft drinks and
have a very hard time eliminating them from our diet.
This addiction operates at many levels. It’s more than just a
desire: it’s a biochemical, multi-sensory addiction that can be
exceedingly difficult for people to break.
I know this very well: I grew up on a
diet that was high in soft drink consumption. During most of my
younger years, I hardly drank water at all and, instead, relied on
soft drinks. It only took me six months to break the habit. And I’m
happy to say today that I have been 100 percent free of soft drinks
for nearly 10 years. And I don’t miss it one bit.
Obviously, this is the goal you should shoot for: the complete and
permanent elimination of soft drinks from your dietary patterns.
Unfortunately, it isn’t so easy to
arrive at the goal, and many people attempting to lose weight
inevitably turn to diet soft drinks to avoid the extraordinary
amount of refined sugars contained in regular soft drinks.
The damaging
health effects of soft drink consumption
While it’s a smart decision to avoid refined sugars, especially when
they are presented in liquid candy form as they are in soft drinks,
there are characteristics of soft drinks that pose tremendous risks
to your health that go way beyond corn syrup.
People universally overlook these
characteristics.
As an example, I’ll show you an overwhelming amount of evidence that
demonstrates soft drinks leach minerals from your bones, resulting
in decreased bone mass and the onset of osteoporosis. There are many
other problems associated with the frequent consumption of even diet
soft drinks, as you will see.
Let’s start by looking at a few statistics that show an alarming
increase in the consumption of soft drinks over the years and the
massive expenditures by the soft drinks manufacturers to market this
disease-promoting substance
Soft drink consumption and marketing
statistics
-
The Coca-Cola Company spends
nearly $300 million per year on soft drink advertisements
-
The average American eats over
200 pounds of sugar and artificial sweeteners per year
-
The typical teenage male who
drinks soda drinks over 42 ounces every day, and the habits
of girls are only slightly better
-
The average American drinks more
than 50 gallons of soft drinks per year.
Soft drink portions - Super size me!
At the same time advertising
expenditures on soft drinks are skyrocketing, and fast food
restaurants, movie theaters, quick stop convenience marts and other
retail establishments that sell soft drinks are upsizing their
portions to ridiculous levels:
The largest movie-theater soft drink
contains 800 calories if not too diluted with ice. Larger
portions can contribute to weight gain unless people compensate
with diet and exercise. From an industry standpoint, however,
larger portions make good marketing sense. The cost of food is
low relative to labor and other factors that add value.
Large portions attract customers who
flock to all-you-can-eat restaurants and order double-scoop ice
cream cones because the relative prices discourage the choice of
smaller portions. It does not require much mathematical skill to
understand that the larger portions of McDonald’s french fries
are a better buy than the “small” when they are 40 percent
cheaper per ounce
-Marion Nestle, Food
Politics
Diet soft drinks don’t cause you to lose
weight
Despite all of this increase in the consumption of soft drinks -
especially diet soft drinks - it turns out diet soft drinks don’t
help people lose weight in the first place.
If you haven’t already experienced this
yourself (you know, years and years of buying “diet” soft drinks
without shedding a single pound), just walk into any grocery store
and look at the people who are buying diet soft drinks. These are
not thin people.
From my own observations, the more diet
soft drinks a person buys in line at the grocery store, the more
overweight they tend to be.
There have been absolutely no scientific studies showing that “diet”
soft drinks help people lose weight. In fact, the experience of most
people is quite the opposite. Soft drink manufacturers certainly
don’t claim their products cause people to lose weight, because they
know they couldn’t get away with that kind of claim without some
sort of proof - and they have none.
Technically, then, all diet soft drinks are mislabeled.
There’s nothing about them that
qualifies as “diet,” and the FDA should require soft drink
manufacturers to either prove their drinks help people lose weight
or disallow the use of the word “diet” in the product names.
A closer look at the
health problems linked to soft drink consumption
Now, let’s take a look at the various problems and health risks
associated with diet soft drinks. First, the most obvious:
artificial chemical sweeteners:
Artificial chemical sweeteners
Factoid: One liter of most
aspartame-sweetened soft drinks contains about 55 mg of
methanol.
- H.J. Roberts, M.D.,
Aspartame: Is It Safe?
We’ve already covered artificial
chemical sweeteners in some detail, so I’ll limit my comments in
this section.
But allow me to summarize what we’ve
learned so far:
-
Most diet soft drinks are
sweetened with aspartame. It is well known that aspartame
breaks down into methanol (free methyl alcohol) which is a
chemical regulated by the EPA and considered an
environmental pollutant. This methanol, in turn, breaks down
into formic acid and formaldehyde inside the human body.
-
Formaldehyde is a potent nerve
toxin, which may explain why so many users of aspartame
complain of nerve-related symptoms such as blindness,
dizziness, migraine headaches, and seizures. Aspartame alone
is responsible for 75 percent of the food and
beverage-related health complaints to the FDA.
-
Aspartame remains legal solely
due to the financial and political interests of those who
profit from its sales and consumption. The FDA does not
protect the public from aspartame because the FDA generally
acts in collusion with private industry, rather than in the
interests of the general public.
It is my belief that when the truth
about aspartame becomes publicly known, this substance will join the
artificial sweetener cyclamate on the list of highly toxic chemicals
permanently banned from use in the food supply.
When this ban is put in place, I predict
the FDA will champion that ban, claiming they are “protecting the
public!”. Sure they are, but only after tens of millions have been
unnecessarily harmed.
As a reminder of the toxic nature of aspartame, here’s a quote from
the book Aspartame: Is It Safe?
The unknowing consumption of
aspartame, whether by ingestion or the chewing of gum,
predictably triggered subsequent grand mal seizures. The amount
of aspartame ingested in some patients was remarkably small.
This is illustrated by (1) an infant
who developed convulsions when his nursing mother drank an
aspartame soft drink, and (2) a young woman believed to have
aspartame-related epilepsy who convulsed within minutes after
chewing one piece of “sugar-free” gum.
- H. J. Roberts, M.D.,
Aspartame: Is It Safe?
Soft drinks, phosphorus, meat and osteoporosis
In addition to the significant health
risks posed by the artificial chemical sweeteners found in diet soft
drinks, another major health risk exists.
This one is rarely discussed, however,
and because few people know about it. They happily drink gallons and
gallons of diet soft drinks each year, thinking they are “protecting
themselves” from the ravages of refined sugars and high-fructose
corn syrup.
What they don’t realize is that while they may be avoiding the
refined sugars, they are not at all avoiding another problem that’s
perhaps worse: the dangerous mineral imbalance.
To understand how this works, however, you’ll first need a
fundamental understanding of how minerals operate in the human body.
Minerals like calcium and magnesium must be present in a specific
ratio (2 to 1, in this case) in order to support healthy, balanced
function in the human body. If this ratio is substantially altered,
imbalances begin to occur.
These mineral imbalances can create
destructive health consequences.
One crucial mineral ratio in the human body is the
calcium-to-phosphorus ratio. For optimum balance and healthy
function throughout the body, calcium and phosphorus must exist in a
ratio of around 1:1. In other words, for every 500mg of calcium you
consume, you should ideally get 500mg of phosphorus as well.
The standard American diet is way too high in phosphorus due to its
heavy reliance on foods and beverages with a high phosphorus content
such as meats and dairy products. All by itself, this dietary
pattern presents possible imbalances in the calcium-to-phosphorus
ratio.
Many people are simply not getting
enough calcium in their bodies, but they are consuming an excess of
phosphorus through meats and other high-protein foods (protein, in
general, contains a high phosphorus content). Remember: phosphorus
isn’t a “bad” mineral, in fact it is essential to your health.
What’s bad here is the ratio of these minerals when phosphorus is
consumed in excess.
There’s also the issue of the acidity of soft drinks.
When you consume these highly acidic
beverages, your body must neutralize that acid by buffering it with
alkaline minerals such as calcium. And where do you think your body
might find stores of calcium? Your bones, of course, which are sort
of like “calcium banks” as far as your body is concerned.
In this way, eating or drinking soft drinks results in your body
tapping your bones in order to find the calcium needed to “balance”
the phosphorus ratio in your body.
This calcium is stripped from your bones
and then eliminated through your urine.
When you drink soft drinks, you are peeing
away your bones
To put it simply, if you frequently drink soft drinks, you are
initiating a series of biochemical cause-and-effect events that
result in you literally peeing your bones away.
As explained in The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine:
Soft drinks have long been suspected
of leading to lower calcium levels and higher phosphate levels
in the blood. When phosphate levels are high and calcium levels
are low, calcium is pulled out of the bones. The phosphate
content of soft drinks is very high, and they contain virtually
no calcium. It appears that increased soft-drink consumption is
a major factor that contributes to osteoporosis.
The link between soft-drink
consumption and bone loss is going to become even more
significant as children who were practically weaned on soft
drinks reach adulthood. Soft-drink consumption in children poses
a significant risk factor for impaired calcification of growing
bones.
Since there is such a strong
correlation between maximum bone-mineral density and the risk of
osteoporosis, the rate of osteoporosis may reach even greater
epidemic proportions.
The severe negative impact that soft drinks exert on bone
formation in children was clearly demonstrated in a study that
compared fifty-seven children with low blood calcium levels,
aged eighteen months to fourteen years, to 171 matched controls
(children with normal calcium levels). The goal of the study was
to assess whether the intake of at least 1.5 quarts per week of
phosphate-containing soft drinks is a risk factor for the
development of low blood calcium levels. Not surprisingly, a
strong association was found.
Of the fifty-seven children who had
low blood calcium levels, thirty-eight (66.7 percent) drank more
than four bottles (12 to 16 ounces per bottle) of soft drinks
per week, but only forty-eight (28 percent) of the 171 children
with normal serum calcium levels consumed as much soft drink.
For all 228 children, a significant correlation between serum
calcium level and the number of bottles of soft drink consumed
each week was found. The more soft drinks consumed, the lower
the calcium level.
These results more than support the contention that soft-drink
consumption leads to lower calcium levels in children.
This situation that ultimately leads
to poor bone mineralization, which explains the greater risk of
broken bones in children who consume soft drinks.
Although this study focused on children,
the same is true for adults: the more soft drinks you consume (diet
or otherwise), the lower your levels of calcium. These soft drinks
literally leach calcium right out of your bones.
Loss of calcium and bone mass, not
surprisingly, leads directly to osteoporosis and other bone
disorders:
The skeletal system suffers most
from calcium deficiency. Teeth minerals are more stable, though
there is a possibility of poor dentition with insufficient
calcium. Tooth loss, periodontal disease, and gingivitis can be
problems, especially with a high phosphorus intake, particularly
from soft drinks. All kinds of bone problems can occur with
prolonged calcium deficiency, which causes a decrease in bone
mass.
Rickets in children, osteomalacia
(decreased bone calcium) in adults, and osteoporosis (porous and
fragile bones) can occur when calcium is withdrawn from bones
faster than it is deposited. Fractures are more common with
osteoporosis - almost eight million yearly in the United States
are related to this prevalent nutritional deficiency disease
The typical American diet provides too much phosphorus and not
enough calcium, leading to reduced body storage of calcium;
thus, many of the problems of calcium deficiency discussed
earlier may develop. Phosphorus and calcium can compete for
absorption in the intestines. High consumption of meats or soft
drinks increases phosphorus intake and may contribute to this
imbalance. The ideal ratio of calcium to phosphorus in the diet
is 1:1.
In recent years, the increased consumption of soft drinks, which
are buffered with phosphates, has been a concern. There may be
up to 500 mg. of phosphorus per serving of a soft drink, with
essentially no calcium.
- Elson Haas M.D., Staying
Healthy With Nutrition
High phosphorus content combines with high
meat consumption to spell disaster
As the statement above
describes, most Americans’ diets are too high in phosphorus to begin
with. If you add diet soft drinks, your phosphorus consumption
skyrockets.
This only accelerates the loss of
calcium from bones and the subsequent bone disorders that naturally
result.
...one of the leading contributors
to osteoporosis in the U.S. is carbonated soft drinks containing
phosphorus. Research has shown a direct link between too much
phosphorus and calcium loss. If you’re guzzling down a couple of
fizzy soft drinks a day, you’re most likely creating bone loss.
Our other source of excessive
phosphorus in the U.S. is eating too much meat. The average
American gets more than enough protein, so for most of us it can
only help to cut down on our meat consumption.
- Earl Mindell, Ph.D.,
Prescription Alternatives
Dr. James Balch, author of the
A to Z Guide To Supplements, supports the same line of thinking:
The average American diet of meats,
refined grains, and soft drinks (which are high in phosphorus)
leads to increased excretion of calcium. Consuming alcoholic
beverages, coffee, junk foods, excess salt, and/or white flour
also leads to the loss of calcium by the body
- James F. Balch, M.D., A
to Z Guide To Supplements
The meat connection to excess dietary
phosphorus is also well explained in The Doctor’s Complete Guide
to Vitamins and Minerals:
Excess dietary phosphorus, found in
meat, soft drinks, grains, and potatoes, may promote bone loss
by interfering with calcium balance. In theory, the higher your
phosphorus intake, the greater your tendency to leech calcium
out of bones, which could weaken the bony foundation beneath
your gums. Recommendation: ...try not to drink carbonated soft
drinks, diet or otherwise.
As you can see, high-protein diets and
soft drink consumption multiply each other’s mineral imbalances.
While avoiding refined carbohydrates is
a very healthy way to lose weight, if people don’t pay attention to
their calcium / phosphorus ratios, some of their weight loss may
actually be due to their loss of bone mass!
Calcium supplements alone won’t solve
this problem
You might think you could solve this problem by simply taking
calcium supplements.
But think again: the high consumption of
phosphorus actually makes it difficult for your body to absorb
calcium. Phosphorus competes with calcium for absorption in the
intestines, meaning that the more phosphorus you have in your diet,
the less calcium you can actually absorb.
In this way, taking calcium supplements in order to “balance” the
consumption of diet soft drinks may not be nearly as effective as
you hoped:
If your diet contains an excess of
phosphorus, from too much animal protein or too many carbonated
soft drinks, you may fail to absorb calcium from your food as
well as lose more calcium from your urine. Americans tend to eat
more phosphorus than calcium, which looms large if you are at
risk for bone thinning. ...Avoid carbonated soft drinks and
yeast products.
- Mary Dan Eades, M.D.,
The Doctor’s Complete Guide to Vitamins and Minerals
Eventually, with enough bone loss and
depleted calcium stores, bone fractures start to occur at an
accelerated rate.
This has been well demonstrated in
clinical studies of soft drink consumption, even in young adults who
typically have stronger bones than those who are older:
Significant calcium imbalance can
come about as a result of high intakes of phosphorus. Phosphorus
is present in high quantities in protein-containing foods and
soft drinks. There is some evidence that due to the large
increase in soft drinks in the last decade that this factor
alone may contribute to poor peak bone mass in younger
individuals.
Based on data from more than 4,000
children aged 2-17 years, soda consumption among children and
adolescents rose 41 percent in the time period of 1989-1991
compared to 1994-1995. A 1994 study of 127 children aged 8-16
found that 39 percent of the girls and 41 percent of the boys
had a history of bone fracture.
Girls who consumed greater amounts
of cola beverages had a higher incidence of fractures than those
who consumed low amounts. A high calcium intake was found to
protect against fractures, particularly among girls who had high
physical activity (Ballew et al. 2000).
- Disease Prevention and
Treatment by the Life Extension Foundation
(If you noticed, this study also showed
that high physical activity helped protect against bone fractures -
something I’ve advocated for years. The more physical you get on a
daily basis, the stronger your bones.)
This study showed that calcium supplementation helped prevent bone
fractures. It only makes sense: if you get more calcium, you will
help balance out the ratios. But as the earlier quotes mentioned,
the absorption of that calcium may be seriously impaired by the
excessive phosphorus. This is why the best strategy is to reduce
phosphorus intake in order to balance the calcium / phosphorus ratio
in your body.
And the easiest way to do that is to
simply avoid soft drinks for life.
Milk is not
the answer to calcium deficiency
Many people think they are getting “plenty of calcium” from all the
milk they consume, and therefore, they think they can drink diet
soft drinks without worrying about the imbalance.
The more milk they drink, they say, the
more soft drinks they can safely consume.
This position is sadly misinformed. Milk doesn’t have much calcium
in it to begin with, regardless of the hype and promotional efforts
of the dairy industry (which will be discussed in greater detail
later). A cup of broccoli juice, for example, has more calcium than
a cup of milk. An ounce of
spirulina (a micro-algae superfood)
has far more calcium than milk, along with magnesium and zinc as
well.
Secondly, the calcium in milk isn’t well utilized by the human body
unless magnesium and vitamin D are also present - and both of these
are typically lacking in the American diet.
Milk also contributes to the phosphorus
mineral imbalance due to its own high phosphorus and protein
content:
Too much protein - milk again, as
well as meat - increases calcium loss. Also, phosphates (in
processed foods and soft drinks, common in the average child’s
diet) can cause calcium loss or excretion.
-Robyn Landis, Herbal
Defense
Supplementing with magnesium would help
your body absorb more supplementary calcium, and increased exposure
to healthy, natural sunlight would increase vitamin D stores, but
even then, there are far better places to get calcium. Namely: whole
food complexes and superfoods like
chlorella and spirulina.
Plant sources of calcium are clearly
your best choice:
Obtain as much calcium and magnesium
and other trace minerals from your diet as possible by ...eating
dark green leafy vegetables, broccoli, nuts, and seeds;
eliminate or reduce the use of colas and other soft drinks in
order to decrease phosphorus intake.
Postmenopausal women should probably
supplement with calcium/magnesium capsules.
Calcium citrate is generally better
absorbed and utilized than calcium carbonate. Daily intakes
should reach at least 1,000 mg of calcium and 500 mg of
magnesium, along with sufficient trace minerals including zinc,
boron, and copper.
- Disease Prevention and
Treatment
Soft drinks
make you ugly by altering your facial bone structure
Consuming soft drinks can even alter your physical appearance by
slowly destroying the bone structure of your face and jaw.
Much of the calcium loss that impacts
bones affects the dominant jawbone, which makes a person’s face look
old, weak and sunken:
The differences between people who
had eaten their ancestral diet from birth and people who had
feasted on sugar, white flour products, and soft drinks are
astonishing. The traditional wholesome diet produced wide faces
with jaws wide enough to accommodate all thirty-two teeth with
proper spacing, high cheekbones, few to no cavitations, and wide
foreheads to house their brains.
The facial structures of the people
who enjoyed a more “civilized” diet are not so beautiful. Their
jaws are narrow with so little room that the teeth crowd
together in two crooked rows. Cavities are common, and in
cultures where dental care is inadequate, the pain and suffering
are intolerable.
Their foreheads are also narrow, or
misshapen, with scarcely enough room for a growing brain.
-Carol Simontacchi, The
Crazy Makers
The solution to everything presented
here is deceptively simple: drink water, not soft drinks. It’s the
only liquid I consume: no soft drinks, no juices, no milk.
And yet so many people simply refuse to
drink water:
Americans don’t drink very much
water. We drink coffee, a beverage that pulls even more minerals
out of the tissues and excretes them in the urine. Americans
drink soft drinks that are often loaded with more sodium and
which further unbalance the mineral stores. We drink V8, loaded
with sodium. We drink everything but water, which would pull the
excess sodium out of the blood and out of the brain.
We defeat the body’s own mechanism
of balancing the critical sodium-to-potassium ratios by
overindulging in these entrees and beverages that contain so
much sodium, and then by not drinking water to flush it out of
the system.
-Carol Simontacchi, The
Crazy Makers
So just how serious is this problem of
calcium depletion and bone mass loss in the first place? It’s a
hidden, destructive health consequence that comes from drinking any
kind of soft drinks, and very few people are aware of this.
Here’s an extended collection of
additional quotes from doctors and authors on this subject:
Diets high in sugar alter calcium
uptake; coffee, alcoholic beverages, and phosphorous-rich soft
drinks also promote increased calcium excretion.
- Disease Prevention and
Treatment by The Life Extension Foundation
Many general dietary factors have
been suggested as a cause of osteoporosis, including: low
calcium-high phosphorus intake, high-protein diet, high-acid-ash
diet, high salt intake, and trace mineral deficiencies. It
appears that increased soft-drink consumption is a major factor
that contributes to osteoporosis.
- Michael T. Murray, N.D.,
The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine
Avoid soft drinks. One study of 460 young, very active girls
found that those who drank colas were five times more likely to
suffer fractures than girls of equal activity who avoided soft
drinks. It is suspected that because phosphorus draws calcium
from bone, it is the culprit in such cases. Cows’ milk is also
high in phosphorus, as well as protein. Avoid all soft drinks,
especially those sweetened with aspartame. Carbonated soft
drinks deplete the body’s magnesium.
- Russell Blaylock, M.D.,
Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life
Phase out soft drinks. Canned soda contains excess phosphorus, a
mineral that could lead to the leaching of calcium from your
bones, a potential cause of osteoporosis. Some researchers
believe that calcium is first robbed not from your hips or spine
but from your jaw, leading to tooth loss, says Ken Wical, D.D.S.,
professor of restorative dentistry at Loma Linda University in
California.
- Healing With Vitamins by
Prevention Magazine
Action Item:
Avoid soft drinks for life.
Drink water or tea, but no “acidic”
drinks like fruit juices
or nutritionally imbalanced drinks like
cows’ milk.
The truth about
caffeine, a highly addictive, psychoactive drug
About sixty-five percent of all soft
drinks sold contain caffeine, and the average American drinks
over 576 twelve-ounce cans of soft drinks per year.
-Carol Simontacchi, The
Crazy Makers
Beyond the bone disorders, mineral
imbalances and osteoporosis problems mentioned in the section above,
soft drinks manage to serve up yet another dangerous ingredient:
caffeine.
It is arguably the lesser of the evils when consideration everything
that goes into soft drinks, but caffeine also presents serious
problems when consumed to excess. For one thing, it is acidic and
accelerates the mineral imbalances detailed in the previous section.
Most notably, however, caffeine is highly addictive. Soft drink
manufacturers, in fact, depend on caffeine to keep people hooked on
their products in much the same way that cigarette manufacturers
rely on nicotine for repeat sales. Caffeine makes it hard to “quit”
soft drinks because your nervous system keeps telling you, “You need
caffeine!”
But in fact, you don’t need caffeine, especially if you are
battling mineral depletion problems or osteoporosis.
This situation is especially crucial for
women:
If you are at risk for osteoporosis,
reduce your intake of caffeine to less than two servings of
coffee, tea, or caffeinated soft drinks per day. If you already
have osteoporosis, you should totally eliminate caffeine from
your diet. This includes regular coffee and tea, chocolate, and
many soft drinks (although carbonated beverages will already be
on your list of things to avoid, as just noted).
Women who consume four to 15
caffeine-containing drinks per day (coffee, tea, soft drinks, or
chocolate) suffer PMS at higher rates than women who drink
little caffeine. Recommendation: Reduce your daily caffeine
consumption to fewer than four caffeinated drinks per day.
Reduce your intake of caffeine even
more strictly (to no more than two caffeine-containing drinks)
at least three days prior to the usual time of symptoms each
month.
- Mary Dan Eades, M.D.,
The Doctor’s Complete Guide to Vitamins and Minerals
There are, in fact, many health problems
associated with the excess consumption of caffeine:
Caffeine is a problem for people
with heart disease, as it heightens the blood pressure and puts
stress on the circulatory system. I tell my patients with angina
to limit themselves to no more than one caffeinated drink per
day.
Most people opt for a cup of coffee
in the morning and cut out all additional coffee or caffeinated
sodas or teas. I might mention here that some of the bottled
iced teas and soft drinks (even “un-colas” like Mountain Dew)
have a great deal of caffeine in them.
- Robert M. Giller, M.D.,
Natural Prescriptions
When it comes to caffeine, soft drinks
aren’t the only concern, either.
Most people are getting an overdose of
caffeine from other sources regardless of whether they consume soft
drinks:
Caffeine is clearly the most
prevalently used stimulant in the world. Coffee, tea, chocolate,
cocoa, many soft drinks, diet pills, aspirin, various analgesics
used for migraine headache and vascular pain, and even some
herbal preparations contain either caffeine or very closely
related substances.
Examples of such caffeine-like
substances are
theobromine in chocolate and
cocoa and
theophylline in tea.
When caffeine and similar compounds
are taken in excess, any of several symptoms usually result:
anxiety and nervousness, insomnia or light sleep patterns,
various types of heart disease, stomach and intestinal maladies,
and moodiness.
When consumed regularly, as little
as two cups of coffee can initiate these symptoms. Children who
exhibit hyper activity are often victims of diets rich in
chocolates and cola drinks.
- Paul Pitchford, Healing
With Whole Foods
Elson Haas, M.D., describes
caffeine as a “lifetime drug” for many, and puts it in the category
of the most frequently abused drug in our modern society:
Caffeine can be a lifetime drug for
many. We begin with hot chocolate or chocolate bars, which
contain some caffeine, move into colas or other soft drinks with
caffeine, and then add coffee and tea. Many adults use caffeine
daily, but this is slowly changing with education and experience
revealing the long-range problems resulting from caffeine abuse.
Physiologically, caffeine is a central nervous system (CNS)
stimulant. The amount needed to produce the wake-up and
stimulation effect increases with regular use, as is typical of
addictive drugs. Larger and more frequent doses are needed for
the same effect, and symptoms can develop if we do not get our
“fix.”
Eventually, we need the drug to
function; without it, fatigue and drowsiness occur. So caffeine
is a natural stimulant with both physical and psychological
addiction potential and withdrawal symptoms similar to the
symptoms of its abuse.
- Elson Haas M.D., Staying
Healthy With Nutrition
Caffeine
consumption results in even more calcium loss
Even mild caffeine consumption has been linked to serious health
disorders such as miscarriages, in addition to promoting yet more
calcium loss.
From Food Additives:
Caffeine is the number one
psychoactive drug. Obtained as a byproduct of caffeine-free
coffee. It is a central nervous system, heart, and respiratory
system stimulant. Caffeine can alter blood sugar release and
cross the placental barrier. It can cause nervousness, insomnia,
irregular heartbeat, noises in ears, and, in high doses,
convulsions.
It has been linked to spontaneous
panic attacks in persons sensitive to caffeine. It has been
found to be addictive. It also causes increases in calcium
excretion. Because of its capability to cause birth defects in
rats, the FDA proposed regulations to request new safety studies
and to encourage the manufacture and sale of caffeine-free
colas.
A University of Montreal study
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association,
December 22, 1993, said that women who consume the amount of
caffeine in one and a half to three cups of coffee a day may
nearly double their risk of miscarriage.
In summary, caffeine is not only the
most frequently-abused psychoactive drug in America, it carries
significant a significant negative health risk as well.
Dr. Elson Haas jokes about honest
labeling requirements for products containing caffeine:
All products containing caffeine
should carry a warning saying something like,
“Caffeine can be hazardous to
your health. Regular use may be addicting and injurious.”
The problem here is less with the
drug itself and more with the amounts consumed and the constant
stimulation on which people depend many times daily. The
caffeine creates an addiction to the drink.
- Elson Haas M.D., Staying
Healthy With Nutrition
What hasn’t been mentioned in any of
this literature is caffeine’s ability to also deplete the adrenal
glands. This causes long-term exhaustion, a condition that most
caffeine drinkers solve by, of course, drinking more caffeine!
Aluminum cans
may present yet another health danger for soft drinks
The news on soft drinks keeps getting worse, it seems, and another
toxin present in soft drinks isn’t something added by manufacturers:
it’s something leaching out of the containers in which soft drinks
are stored and shipped: aluminum cans.
No educated person in their right mind would eat or drink aluminum,
and yet nearly everyone will gladly drink highly acidic substances
that have been rubbing molecules with aluminum for any number of
days, weeks or months.
No metal is “100 percent solid,” as any
physicist knows.
Some of the aluminum inevitably leeches
into the soft drink itself.
Although aluminum is not a heavy
metal, environmental exposure is frequent, leading to concerns
about accumulative effects and a possible connection with
Alzheimer’s disease.
In the home, we are in constant
contact with aluminum in foods and in water; from cookware and
soft drink cans; from consuming items with high levels of
aluminum (e.g., antacids, buffered aspirin, or treated drinking
water; or even by using nasal sprays, toothpaste, and
antiperspirants).
- Disease Prevention and
Treatment by The Life Extension Foundation
The ability of aluminum to contaminate
beverages stored in aluminum cans is well explained by Elson Haas:
One of the most common sources of
aluminum fluoride complexes is in liquids packaged in aluminum
cans, a combination that is especially hazardous with acidic
fruit juices and diet drinks. Acidic juices leach aluminum from
the wall of the can and disperse it throughout the juice. Soft
drinks also present special hazards.
While all soft drinks containing
fluoride will leach aluminum from the can, diet sodas may be
worse than regular sodas because the fluoride content, at least
in one study, was higher in the diet drinks. Although most
aluminum cans now have inner linings, the coating may be
defective and can also be fractured during shipping.
Furthermore, the longer a canned drink sits, especially at
higher temperatures, the more aluminofluoride compound will be
created in the drink. This would be a major consideration, for
example, in the millions of diet soft drinks donated to soldiers
in the Persian Gulf. These drinks sat in the blazing heat, over
105° F, for weeks.
In addition, the drinks contained
the toxic sweetener, aspartame, which in the heat breaks down
very quickly into the carcinogenic compound, diketopiperizine,
as well as formaldehyde and formic acid.
- Russell Blaylock, M.D.,
Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life
Soft drink manufacturers, of course,
claim that their aluminum cans are perfectly safe.
But they also claim that their
high-sugar products don’t cause obesity, either, and they staunchly
defend the safety of
aspartame.
So it’s difficult to lend credibility to
anything stated by soft drink manufacturers. Clearly, they are
primarily interested in selling products, not in protecting the
health of their customers. After all, sick customers don’t demand
reimbursements from soft drinks companies for their medical bills.
Making people sick and promoting diseases like osteoporosis has
absolutely financial consequences to soft drink companies
themselves.
The medical costs of dealing with these
diseases are fully shouldered by the customer.
Soft drink companies
spin the science to claim their products are harmless
There’s a tremendous amount of spin coming out of the public
relations departments of soft drink companies.
Not surprisingly, the soft drink spin
machine has infected all sorts of scientific-sounding groups and
organizations whose employees unabashedly defend the soft drink
manufacturers:
Corporations also fund ‘’nonprofit
research institutes” which provide “third party experts’’ to
advocate on their behalf. The American Council on Science and
Health (ACSH), for example, is a commonly-used industry front
group that produces PR ammunition for the food processing and
chemical industries.
Headed by Elizabeth Whelan,
ACSH routinely presents itself as an “independent,” “objective”
science institute.
This claim was dissected by
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post in the March 1990
Columbia Journalism Review, which studied the special interests
that fund ACSH.
Kurtz reported that Whelan praises
the nutritional virtues of fast food and receives money
from Burger King. She downplays the link between a high fat diet
and heart disease, while receiving funding from Oscar Mayer,
Frito Lay and Land O’Lakes.
She defends saccharin and receives
money from Coca-Cola, Pepsi, NutraSweet and the National Soft
Drink Association.
- John Stauber, Toxic
Sludge Is Good For You
Despite all the spin efforts, it is
generally recognized that soft drinks are unhealthy and certainly
not “wholesome beverages” as claimed by soft drink makers.
Yet, every time a lawmaker attempts to
ban soft drinks in schools, for example, or pass new “junk food
taxes” that would help dissuade consumers from buying so many soft
drinks, they are steamrolled by a seemingly unstoppable political
influence machine.
The combined industries of food producers, media owners, and
pharmaceutical companies, when taken as a whole, simply aren’t
interested in making people healthy since that would destroy their
profits.
This phenomenon is described by
Marion Nestle in Food Politics:
Ethical or not, a message to eat
less meat, dairy, and processed foods is not going to be popular
among the producers of such foods.
The message will not be popular with
cattle ranchers, meat packers, dairy producers, or milk
bottlers; oil seed growers, processors, or transporters; grain
producers (most grain is used to feed cattle); makers of soft
drinks, candy bars, and snack foods; owners of fast-food outlets
and franchise restaurants; media corporations and advertising
agencies; manufacturers and marketers of television sets and
computers (where advertising takes place); and, eventually, drug
and health care industries likely to lose business if people
stay healthier longer.
The range of economic sectors that
would be affected if people changed their diets, avoided
obesity, and prevented chronic diseases surely rivals the range
of industries that would be affected if people stopped smoking
cigarettes.
Perhaps for this reason, USDA
officials believe that really encouraging people to follow
dietary guidelines would be so expensive and disruptive to the
agricultural economy as to create impossible political barriers.
Rather than accepting the challenge
and organizing a concerted national campaign to encourage more
healthful eating patterns, they propose a more politically
expedient solution: the industry should work to improve the food
supply through nutrient fortification and the development of
functional foods with added nutritional value.
-Marion Nestle, Food
Politics
To get an idea of the power of this
political / economic machine, take a look at the influence of just
one player: big sugar companies.
In 1991, 1,700 farms raised
sugarcane and 13,700 raised sugar beets in the United States,
but 42 percent of the sugar subsidies went to just 1 percent of
these growers. The owners of these few farms give generously to
both political parties.
The Fanjul family, for example,
controls about one-third of Florida’s sugarcane production and
collects at least $60 million annually in subsidies.
The Fanjuls contributed more than
$350,000 to the two political parties - more to Democrats than
to Republicans - through their Flo-Sun companies in 1997-1998.
Alfonso Fanjul hosted a dinner attended by President Bill
Clinton that raised more than a million dollars for the Florida
Democratic party.
-Marion Nestle, Food
Politics
Four simple
steps to rebalance the mineral content of your body
As you can see from all this, the risks to your health from
consuming diet soft drinks extends far beyond the artificial
chemical sweetener contained in those drinks.
You may have avoided the sugar, but you
haven’t avoided the acidity of the beverage. If you continue to
drink these beverages, you will undoubtedly suffer additional health
consequences in the long term that you never intended. Now that you
know about the dangers of consuming soft drinks, you are hopefully
considering giving them up for good.
In order to finally rid yourself of soft
drinks forever, be sure to check out the report, “The
Five Soft Drink Monsters”.
You may also wish to take the following steps to rebalance the
mineral content of your diet:
-
Supplement with calcium
Coral calcium is a good choice,
but plant-derived calcium from dark green vegetables is even
better. The best source? Chlorella. In addition to assisting
with your calcium / phosphorus ratio, supplemental calcium
provides a long list of additional health benefits.
-
Supplement with magnesium to
help your body better assimilate the additional calcium
you’re eating. Most Americans are deficient in magnesium.
Best source? Once again, chlorella.
-
Get more natural sunlight
By exposing your skin to natural
sunlight, without sunscreens (in moderation, of course),
your body will naturally produce vast stores of Vitamin D,
which is critical for the construction and maintenance of
healthy bones. Without adequate Vitamin D, your body cannot
efficiently use the extra calcium you’re taking. Also, by
the way, the darker your skin, the more sunlight you need to
generate Vitamin D. This is one reason why most American
males of African descent are highly deficient in Vitamin D
and suffer from skyrocketing rates of prostate cancer. To
learn more about this, read “The
Healing Sun: an interview with Dr. Michael Holick.”
-
Engage in physical exercise:
both cardiovascular and strength training
These activities promote healthy
bone mass and actually increase your bone mass density,
regardless of your age or gender. Older women especially
need to engage in strength training activities to combat the
hormone-related and age- related bone mineral deficiencies
so common in modern society.
If you’re interested in chlorella, my
recommended source is
Jenny Lee Naturals, which also
sells spirulina and various superfood nutritional
supplement products.
Learn more about soft drinks at:
http://www.newstarget.com/soft_drinks.html
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