Cola: Sweet Lies, Bitter Truth

What makes cola the developed world’s most popular drink? Wily marketing (some would say big fat lies), for sure. It’s ironic that intoxicating and addictive marketing could contribute to two of America’s most worrying epidemics – obesity and diabetes.

If health experts and doctors could label the contents in a bottle of cola, this is how it would read: Pesticides; carcinogenic preservatives (sodium benzoate); toxic flavor enhancers (MSG); toxic artificial sweeteners in ‘diet beverages’ (aspartame); ladles of sugar in regular beverages (sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup); a neurotoxin (caffeine); unnatural synthetic vitamins in ‘healthful’ products; and scores of class-action lawsuits.

But why do colas make us put on weight? The answer lies in four innocuous-sounding words: high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Present in most soft drinks and processed foods, HFCS is a refined sugar that has one sole purpose: sweetening a product.

While doing so, it adds plenty of empty calories to our bodies (calories that have zero nutrition, unlike natural sugar) and makes you put on weight.

HFCS, the most popular synthetic sweetener and sugar substitute in the US, is made from corn. It is made by using genetically modified enzymes to convert corn starch into glucose, which is then converted into fructose.

It is no secret that HFCS is directly linked to weight gain. Experts also say it is the single-most significant factor contributing to America’s obesity ‘epidemic’. But how exactly does HFCS make you fat? This sweetener piles on the calories, which are directly converted into fat. It also raises the triglyceride levels in the bloodstream.

But there is something more diabolical at work. HFCS fails to trigger the satiety response that kicks in when you eat other foods. Instead, it tricks your brain into believing that the body needs to eat more. In contrast, when you eat carbohydrates that are converted into glucose, the pancreas releases insulin to metabolize the glucose. You also feel full and stop eating.

But when you drink a can of cola, the HFCS does not stimulate the pancreas to produce insulin. It also fails to raise the levels leptin, a hormone produced by the body’s fat cells. When leptin is released into the bloodstream, it acts on the hypothalamus (which regulates energy metabolism) to generate the satiety response. This signals the brain that you have ingested sufficient calories and need to stop eating. HFCS also does not lower levels of ghrelin, a growth hormone that also increases hunger and appetite.

Drinking colas therefore throws your metabolism out of gear and fails to trigger the signals that turn off appetite and control body weight. You therefore tend to crave colas and drink more and more of the deliciously deceptive sweet stuff.

Interestingly, processed food and beverage companies began to replace liquid cane sugar with HCFS in their products in the 1970s, at the same time when America’s obesity problem began to balloon. Researchers say this is no coincidence.

Corn is one of America’s three main crops (corn, cotton and soya) and promoting HFCS kept the farm lobby happy. Statistics indicate that between 1970 and 2000 (average annual consumption of HFCS was 73.5 pounds per person), obesity figures in the US went from 15 percent to engulfing one-third of the population.

Remember, cola, which contains 8-10 teaspoons of sugar or 130-150 calories, is just one of the many sources of refined sugar we ingest. Total the sugar intake of the average American, including refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners, and the shocking intake is 142 pounds a year, or roughly 2.5 pounds per week, according to a report by CBS Broadcasting in June 2007. This figure has risen 23 percent in the last 25 years and is a major cause of soaring rates of obesity and diabetes.

The good news is that HFCS is not harmful in itself. This means it does not produce permanent changes in body chemistry, should you halt its intake in time. Hence, should you kick the cola habit, the food cravings it tends to fuel will diminish.

The bad news is that even if you kick the cola habit, HFCS is hard to avoid because it is used in most processed foods. It is cheap, it blends easily with other ingredients, it extends shelf life, it prevents freezer burn, and it keeps bread soft. It is used in ketchup and even low-fat yoghurt!

Over 40,000 different food items now occupy the shelves of modern grocery stores and 98 percent of them have nothing to do with what nature intended us to eat. Our digestive system has no way to make use of foods robbed of their natural, intrinsic life energy or manipulated and processed to the point of uselessness, regardless of the wonderful ingredients listed on their product labels.

If foods are made in a laboratory, as most of them are, you can no longer consider them food. Instead, they have turned into poison. And poisoning our systems starts early in life, when we are children.

Children make up a large proportion of the sugar-consuming population. And childhood obesity figures are equally alarming. Obesity among children aged 12 to 19 went up from 4.2 percent in 1970 to 15.3 percent in 2000 (when consumption of HFCS increased).

Add to this the increasingly sedentary lifestyles among children and it paints an even unhealthier picture. Children spend an average five to six hours a day on sedentary activities, including watching television, using the computer, and playing video games. Today’s children are bombarded and brainwashed with well-crafted TV ads from fast-food chains and other purveyors of high-fat, high-sugar meals and snacks. And being untruthful to lure young addicts is a tactic major cola companies have been accused of time and again.

The bitter truth is that colas, by their very definition, contain significant amounts of preservatives, caffeine, and refined sugar, among other ingredients.

A California study, whose results were released in September 2009, concluded that drinking one or more colas a day increases your chances of obesity by 27 percent. The study also found a stunning 62 percent of adults who drink at least one cola each day are either overweight or obese.

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This is an excerpt from my book FEEL GREAT, LOSE WEIGHT