Monday, May 19, 2008

A rant about soda pop.

Yep. We've all had it. I grew up, in fact, in a house were it was slightly revered even; hidden in secret places in the house by my father. We always knew where they were, of course and raided his stash all the time. He used to pop a wee bit of rum in it after a long day of work.

It's addictive, because it gets you high. They took the cocaine out almost a hundred years ago. You know why? It was superfluous. In other words - what with all the sugar and caffeine it wasn't necessary to have a similar effect.

10 teaspoons of sugar hit your blood stream 10 minutes after you drink a pop. One can has all of the daily recommended sugar. Now, try to remember that there is sugar in a lot of what we consume in a day and can be found in surprising places... start reading your labels my little angels.

Did you know that you would immediately vomit from the amount of sugar, but because phosphoric acid cuts the sweetness so you can keep it in (and this substance is p.H. 2.8. This is the substance which will dissolve a nail in 4 days... that's comforting).

After about 20 minutes, your blood sugar (not surprisingly) shoots sky high. So your liver goes into overtime and turns any sugar it can into fat. Oooh yes and it also has ethylene glycol in it, which is also used in anti-freeze.

All of your organs receive an undue amount of stress attempting to process this lovely bevvie. Undue stress can injure or scar your organs - which results in them working less effectively in your old age.

After 40 minutes, it is completely into your system. Your pupils dilate and your blood pressure shoots up.

And here's where it gets interesting....45 minutes after drinking your pop, your body ups your dopamine production. Dopamine stimulates the pleasure centers of your brain. Heroin does the same thing. Bet most of us didn't know that.

After an hour, all that delicious phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine. Then you pee it out - all of it including any water in the pop. Then comes the sugar crash. When you feel tired. Followed about an hour or so later by a caffeine crash.. but the good news is... if you have another Coke, it’ll make you feel right as rain.

It can also dehydrate you even though it is a "beverage, and that can lead to Chronic Cellular Dehydration thereby weakening your immune system. If you drink one can of cola, you will need to drink 8 glasses of water to replace the water loss.

AND - that stuff you are putting into your bloodstream is actually used to dissolve blood off of the road at accident scenes. Comforting.

And that's not just coke kids, it's all pop. And sweeteners? Don't get me started on those...

8 comments:

white rabbit said...

One North American thing I hugely don't get is root beer.

Yuck!

Tastes like dental mouthwash.

Callie said...

I know - I know. I'm killing my body slowly with all the soda.

But - I do drink a TON of water. Every day. At least 100 oz, maybe more.

I'm not even going to ask you to dissect what my run to Starbucks just did to my body. I don't want to know.

Oh - and you're neck and neck with that other fella over at Ookami's.

One more vote! That's all you need!

Verdant Earl said...

Psst - "other fella" here. It's a nice little race, eh? Good luck!

Oh, and the only soda I drink is usually has bourbon or rum in it. So that should counter all the effects on the body you mentioned.

Right?

Tamara said...

Hmmm... I must give this to hubby. The dentist ha already told him to ease off on the Coke.

XXYXX said...

Phew, I nearly feel virtuous for having no fizzy drinks in the house (we're not including Tonic Water here, right ... I mean it's got the word "Tonic" in it, which makes it nearly medicinal in my gin).

limpy99 said...

I learned a lot from this post. Mostly that I should cut out the middle-man, stop drinking coke and go right to heroin.

Anonymous said...

I didn't know it was that bad for me. I will stop buying them.

elizabeth said...

Oh my lovely blogfriends - if I stop one person from drinking pop in my lifetime my life will not have been in vain.

I've been helping birds into nests for 3 decades... I'm earning the air I'm using here folks... or at least trying.