Diet buster Carbonated beverages

12/5/2005

There’s a reason these are referred to as “pop” hereabouts.

Drink too many, and that’s what will happen to the button on your trousers.

Julia Just and Kathy Wehrle, registered dietitians at Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne, are adamant on this one – pop adds a lot of empty calories, and one way for many people to lose pounds is to cut back, switch to diet or stop drinking pop altogether.

A 12-ounce can of regular Coke – more or less a typical pop – carries 140 calories. That’s the equivalent of (roughly) 9 teaspoons of sugar.

Drink five cans of pop a day, as a 1998 study revealed 5 percent of American men between ages 13 and 18 do, and you’ve got more than a third of your daily calories on a 2,000-a-day plan – and all without consuming a single nutrient.

So don’t let your diet fizzle out. Drink water to quench your thirst. Drink more milk, or add some juice to get actual vitamins and minerals along with the calories. If you must have a regular pop now and then because you crave the taste, look for the 6-ounce cans or drink even less poured over ice.

– Rosa Salter Rodriguez,

The Journal Gazette