To Lose Weight with Soft Drinks and Fruit Juices?

To Lose Weight with Soft Drinks and Fruit Juices?
Many working men who want to lose weight fall into the trap of cutting back on alcohol and drinking soft drinks, such as cola, instead.

It’s not uncommon for such men to have up to ten – or even twenty – bottles of coke in a day.

Soft drink is often more of a problem for men wanting to lose weight than beer or alcohol.

Most people think of fruit juices as healthy and they are because they contain more vitamins than soft drink. But fruit is high in fruit sugars and when juice is separated from the fiber of the fruit, the bulk is reduced and it becomes easy to take in all the sugar and kilocalories from three to four pieces of fruit in one drink.

This might be fine for someone who’s not fat, but it’s not much use to anyone trying to solve a waist problem.

There’s no real need to drink fruit juices. The hype that says you must have orange juice breakfast is a bit of a con.

It’s better to eat a few pieces of fruit (say, three to four a day) and get your fiber intake up.

Fruit cordials are even worse because they have concentrated sugar in place of most of the nutrients of the fruit.

The obvious solution is to cut back on, or cut out, regular soft drinks, fruit juice and cordials.

The best alternative is water or mineral water. They have no calorie.

If you can’t stomach these and you really want a sweet drink, diet drinks are the next best thing.

They have no kilocalories, although some researchers have found that their artificial sweeteners might increase appetite so you end up eating more than you’ve saved by having the low energy drink.

Fat is a great insulator so an overweight man gets hot easily. When this happens, you sweat and then you need to replace the lost fluid.

If you replace fluids with alcoholic drinks, soft drink or fruit juice you’ll take in lots of energy.

If you have a high fat content in your daily food intake on top of this, you’ll get fatter, sweat more, drink more of these drinks and continue in a vicious cycle.

Alcohol is also a diuretic – it makes you lose more fluid in urine than the drink provides.

Far from rehydrating the body, alcohol causes dehydration as you’ll know from the amount of time you spend at the urinal in any pub.

If you’re going to drink alcohol, always drink water first especially if you’ve been sweating heavily.

Water is not a diuretic nor is it high in sugar.
To Lose Weight with Soft Drinks and Fruit Juices?

Low sugar soft drinks can improve young people's diets

The recent publication of the National Diet and Nutrition Survey of young people (aged 4 - 18 years) in the United Kingdom has given all of those interested in food, health and diet a new databank of statistics to analyse and interpret.

Undertaken as part of a programme which will cover all age groups, this survey provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the dietary habits, nutrient intakes and nutritional status of British young people.

At a time when childhood obesity, dietary disorders and the quality of childrens' diet receive widespread media coverage, it is perhaps some comfort to know that few British children are likely to suffer from the quantity or content of their diet. Of far more concern is the fact that they are getting far too little exercise, particularly once they reach their teens.

Of course, the key issue is the balance of the diet, rather than simply the amount of energy consumed, and it is here that the survey provides some very interesting findings.

Boys derived 51.6% of their energy intake from carbohydrates while girls get 51.1% of their energy intake from this source. However the nature of these carbohydrates leaves room for some improvement. Simple sugars (NMES - Non-Milk Extrinsic Sugars) accounted for 16.7% of energy intake for boys and 16.4% for girls - this exceeds the recommended average of 11% set by COMA (Committee for Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy).

The main source of NMES intake is carbonated soft drinks which account for almost a quarter of NMES in older boys and girls. A switch to low or no sugar soft drinks could have a significant impact, not least on the incidence of dental caries.

Carbonated soft drinks are by far the most popular beverages among young people, with full sugar products consumed by three quarters of the survey sample, though market figures show that juice drinks are gaining significant 'share of throat'.

New low and no sugar products in the soft drink sector provide the opportunity to reduce extrinsic sugars without compromising on taste, which is very important in gaining product acceptance among children and teenagers.

For example, Britvic's new Juice Up in Smooth Orange, Sunshine Tropical and Cool Berry Flavours contains 17% fruit juice, 8% skimmed milk and 17% of the RDA for calcium (per 200ml). But it contains no added sugar and is sweetened with aspartame.
Low sugar soft drinks can improve young people's diets