Why Drinking Just One Can of Regular Soda a Day Will Kill You

Don't you just love those attention-grabbing headlines? They're fun to write once in a while, just to make sure your audience is listening.

The truth is, drinking one can of soda a day will most likely not kill you, though it could contribute to a myriad of other health problems.

But hyperbolic headlines aside, here's an example of how easy it is for someone to pack on the pounds from just drinking one regular soda a day. Before that, though, it's necessary to jump ahead and say what's NOT the moral of the story: Drink diet soda.

Diet soda has more dangerous, toxic chemicals than the periodic table of elements and can leach calcium from your bones, so don't go assuming that after reading this you can chug diet soda until the cows come home.

So here's how one can of soda per day can lead to someone becoming obese:

One can of coke has 140 calories, all of which are from simple sugars. Drink one every day and that's 980 calories per week and 3,920 per month.

There are 3,500 calories in one pound of fat. You do the math. Actually, I've been doing it so far, so I'll finish the fat formula. Just from drinking one can of coke every day, you'll put on over one pound a month, which of course is over 12 pounds a year. After making lifestyle choices like this for a few years, it's easy to see how someone can put on 40 pounds or more in a short time.

This of course assumes that someone's basal metabolic rate (calories burned at complete rest) plus activity level equals the amount of calories consumed, i.e. take in 2,000 calories, burn the same amount. Considering that 66% of adults in the U.S. are either overweight or obese, you can assume that it's not just the can of coke that's tilting the scale towards rapid weight and fat gain.

Most nutrition-illiterate individuals aren't just guzzling one-12 oz. can of Coke; they're filling up their Big Gulps and parking as close to the front door as possible and getting no exercise.

Please do your part in helping educate your friends and family how harmful junk food and a sugar-rich diet is for them and for the country. Almost 20% of the U.S. economy is devoured by health care costs. It shouldn't be only up to wellness coaches to lead Americans towards a health paradigm shift that emphasizes prevention; it should be up to all of every single one of us that gets it.

I think using the can of Coke example is an easy way to show someone how easy it is to pack on the pounds. The Centers for Disease Control predicted that by the year 2050, a full one-third of U.S. adults  could be diabetic. Obesity and diabetes are highly preventable. Now is the time for the U.S. to make a radical shift in consciousness towards health.

Reversing the Diabetes Trend

In October 2010, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) projected that by the year 2050, as many as one-third of all adults in the U.S. could have diabetes. Despite the dire prediction, it’s quite possible to prevent, manage or even reverse diabetes.

According to one diabetes-prevention website, almost 60 million Americans are on the verge of becoming diabetic, while over 20 million already—about 8 percent of the U.S. population—have type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes accounts for approximately 90 percent of all diabetes diagnoses. Commonly referred to as a “lifestyle disease”, diabetes currently costs the global economy almost $400 billion per year.

That number is expected to jump to almost $500 billion in 20 years.

Diabetes, though, can usually be prevented, controlled, or possibly even reversed by:

• Managing blood sugar levels
• Losing weight
• Exercising
• Making dietary changes

In order to stem the tide of the diabetes epidemic, Al Pirnia, president of a diabetes-prevention company called Transformations, says that education and communication is crucial to managing and preventing diabetes.

“Every diabetes educator will encourage those with diabetes to lose weight and eat fewer carbohydrates, but what few people are saying is that you don’t need to have a huge belly in order to become pre-diabetic or diabetic,” says Pirnia.

Although it’s estimated that 80 percent of people with type 2 diabetes are obese, Pirnia says just a little extra abdominal fat can lead to a pre-diabetic condition.

“Just 10 pounds of extra abdominal fat,” he says, along with a stressful lifestyle that makes no time for exercise, “can get you over the top and make you become a diabetic,” cautions Pirnia.

More important than weight loss, says Pirnia, is educating people how to be in total control of their blood sugar.

“Diabetes is easy to correct at the early stage with simple food habit changes. Unfortunately, the [healthcare] system usually waits until it’s a disease condition before any action is taken,” Pirnia says.

Rather than educating the populace on how to regulate blood sugar levels, Pirnia claims that often times, a person’s blood sugar fasting levels are at 100 or even 110 before any comment is made by a healthcare professional.

Pirnia encourages those with pre-diabetic and diabetic conditions to frequently monitor blood sugar levels by using a self-administered glucometer.

Fasting blood sugar levels, says Pirnia, should not exceed 90.

Rather than simply telling someone with diabetes to modify their diet, Pirnia suggests educating those with diabetes on how to:

• Eat protein at every meal, including snacks
• Take a healthy snack between meals
• Never eat large meals full of starchy foods
• Learning, through use of the glucometer, which foods spike up blood sugar
• Eliminating or minimizing those foods which spike blood sugar
• Biochemically boosting the body’s fat burning process by adjusting carbohydrate to protein ratios
• Encourage hydrochloric acid (HCL) supplementation to support digestion and nutrient absorption
• Support healthy pancreatic function, especially those who have been on medication
• Educate pre-diabetics on the consequences of not changing their lifestyle

“It’s meaningless to tell someone, ‘lose weight’ if they are not going to learn how to burn abdominal fat,” says Pirnia.

“If people lose muscle mass when they lose weight, they are doing more harm than good. Furthermore, if those with diabetes or at risk of getting diabetes aren’t properly educated, they will just end up on medication and ultimately, their pancreas will be undermined or completely destroyed,” adds Pirnia, referring to the organ that secretes insulin to regulate blood sugar.

Failure to reverse diabetes could also lead to developing Alzheimer’s disease, certain cancers and heart disease, according to several contemporary studies.

The Gycemic Index scale, a measure of how quickly and for how long carbohydrates in a given food raises blood sugar levels, is one tool that nutritionists and dieticians frequently use to educate their clients.

But Thomas Wolever, Ph.D., a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto cautions that people often think that the GI tells you what your individual glycemic response will be all the time for a specific food.

“It doesn’t,” he says, in HealthCommunities.com’s Diabetes Focus.

“The GI of any food is consistent from day to day…what changes is a person’s response.”

For example, white bread has the same GI regardless. But if someone eats bread three days in a row, Wolever claims the GI response could vary by as much as three fold because of activity, stress levels, sleep quality, and what other foods have been eaten at other times of the day and at the same time as the bread.

The aforementioned Pirnia would no doubt educate those interested in managing their diabetes to avoid white bread at all costs.

“The bottom line,” says Pirnia, “is to empower people to learn how to manage and be in control of their blood sugar so they can impact their need for medication if they are already a diabetic, and for those who are pre-diabetic to never become a diabetic.”

Judd Handler is an Encinitas, CA-based health reporter and wellness consultant.