You Are What You Drink
By Dr Narinder Saini
When it comes to gaining weight, perhaps "you
are what you eat" doesn't matter as much as
"you are what you drink." Slurping soda
piles on more pounds than scarfing down the same
number of calories in solid food. According to a
study published last year in the International Journal
of Obesity, people who drink their excess calories
do not compensate for it as well as people who consume
the extra calories in food.
Study authors D.P. DiMeglio, PhD, and Richard
D. Mattes, PhD, of the department of foods and
nutrition at Purdue University in West Lafayette,
Ind., proved this in a study of 15 healthy men
and women. In the first part of the study, each
person consumed an extra 450 calories of either
jelly beans or soda each day for four weeks. Four
weeks later, those on the jelly bean diet switched
to the soda diet for another four weeks, and those
on the soda diet switched to the jelly bean diet.
When eating the jelly beans, all 15 people in
the study decreased their intake of other calories
to compensate for the jelly beans, so their total
daily calorie consumption was close to what it
would have been normally. As a result, they gained
only a small, insignificant amount of weight.
But they made no changes in their regular calorie
consumption when they drank the soda. Not surprisingly,
this led to a significant weight gain.
The increase in beverage consumption is "an
index of how our diet is changing," Mattes
says. "If we're going to drink large amounts
of beverages, we have to adjust our diet [by eating
less]. However, substituting water, diet soda,
or unsweetened coffee or tea might be the best
approach."
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