Liquid Calories Ruining Diets as Reported by DiabeticLive.com - PR Web (press release)

Tampa, FL (PRWEB) September 20, 2011

Are Liquid Calories Ruining Your Diet: Soda in all its various forms and flavors have been a staple of the American diet for years now. Along with fruit juices and the recent wave of energy drinks, sodas are typically packed full of sugar. But how much could these beverages be contributing to the obesity epidemic that currently plagues the Western world and is responsible for a range of disorders including diabetes? According to many experts, these drinks are far from harmless; they're typically packed full of so many calories that they can quickly ruin any diet, even the drinks that are considered "healthy" as newly reported by diabeticlive.com.

Sign up for a free glucose meter at diabeticlive.com.

"It's a huge problem," says Katie Warwick, a dietitian at Toronto Western Hospital who recently reported research on liquid calories. Warwick works with patients who will be undergoing bariatric surgery. "A lot of our patients aren't aware of how many calories they're actually drinking. There's the misperception that if it's healthy, such as milk or juice, the calories don't cause weight gain." Even drinks typically considered healthy, such as fruit juices, are typically high in calories and can wreak havoc on our metabolisms.
Beverage companies in Canada and the U.S. are initiating efforts to more clearly display the number of calories contained in such drinks on the packaging so that consumers are more aware of those sometimes surprising numbers.

As our consumption of sugary beverages rises, the creators of those drinks are finding that they need to rethink their serving sizes. "For years the beverage industry considered 591-mL a multi-serve portion," says Justin Sherwood, president of the Canadian Beverage Association. "But our research shows that many consumers are now drinking it in one sitting."

Canadian men and women are receiving an alarming amount of their daily caloric intake from high-calorie beverages. Statistics Canada reports that Canadian men in their 30s and 40s are receiving 16% of their daily calories from beverages; women in the same age brackets receive 14.3% of their calories from liquids. Younger people aren't faring any better: men in their 20s are consuming 20.4% of their daily calories as liquids and women of the same age are consuming 17.9%.

We tend to consume so many calories from beverages because they don't make us feel full the way that normal, solid food does. Liquids such as sugary beverages pass quickly through the digestive system and do not trigger hormonal responses that tell us that we're full. Thus, we can consume several hundred calories from beverages without ever feeling full, and eating solid foods right after.

###