The worst drinks for blood sugar control are the beverages that contain the most sugar, also known as “sugary sweetened beverages” (SSB). Period. And the beverages that contain the most sugar are sodas, blended sodas, and sweet tea.
This is not rocket science. It’s not even complicated nutrition science. Consuming too much sugar on a regular basis leads to these bona fide killers: heart disease, many cancers, and diabetes. It is an easy concept to understand.
A scientific analysis of data derived from monitoring the health of more than 90,000 nurses for eight years found that nurses who said they drank one or more servings of soda or other sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) per day were twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes like women who rarely drank SSB. That is extremely revealing.
The document, entitled “Sugar-sweetened beverages, weight gain, and incidence of type 2 diabetes in young and middle-aged women.“, appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It was authored by researchers at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health, one of whom was Walter Willet, MD, a renowned professor of epidemiology, nutrition, and medicine, who had this to say to say about sugar, obesity and chronic diseases like diabetes:
“We are in the midst of an epidemic of overweight and obesity. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Sodas and other sugary drinks are one of the main factors fueling the obesity epidemic,” he says.
Willett goes on to say that obesity leads directly to an increased risk of heart disease, many types of cancer, and type 2 diabetes and that diabetes often heralds terrifying complications like kidney failure, blindness, heart disease, and amputations. If all that doesn’t make you think twice about grabbing a soda or fruit drink today, listen to more of Willet’s warnings in this youtube video. Or take a look at our history, What happens to your body when you drink soda every day.
For more incentive, check out the following list of over-the-top sweet sodas—you’ll likely end up with a newfound appreciation for water.
mountain dew
New Mountain Dew Live Wire, a neon orange blend of high fructose corn syrup and concentrated orange juice is just as sweet as the original neon green thirst quencher. A 20-ounce single-serving bottle contains 77 grams of added sugars. Do you need an image? That’s 18 and a half teaspoons of granulated sugar. Can you imagine eating that? And that all that sugar adds up to 290 calories, which is more energy than you’d get from a regular McDonald’s hamburger.
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frozen
The ice creams are made with carbonated water and a bunch of other stuff like yucca extract. And the first ingredient on the list? High fructose corn syrup. The 20-ounce Coca-Cola Icee available at Burger King delivers 74 grams of sugar to your body on top of brain freeze. Not to be outdone, Icee Company’s Orange Crème contains 60 grams of sugar per just 12 fluid ounces of product. Do the math: That’s about 100 grams of sugar if you were to drink 20 ounces of Orange Crème Icee. That’s the sugar equivalent of almost 18 Oreo cookies.
RELATED: Just 2 Minutes of Walking After a Meal Can Lower Your Blood Sugar
Coke
Make no mistake, if you have a 20-ounce bottle of Coke in your hand, you’re going to drink it whole even though you could have gone for the 12-ounce can. Either way, it’s a serving of sugary liquid. The 20-ounce bottle contains 65 grams of added sugar and 240 calories.
The rest of the group of soft drinks
To be fair, the sugar-sweetened offerings of every soft drink brand, from A&W Root Beer to Mellow Yello, contain significantly more added sugars per serving than the American Heart Association recommends we limit our intake in an entire day. And how much is the recommended limit? About 9 teaspoons for men and 6 for women.
RELATED: The 4 Worst Alcoholic Beverages for Blood Sugar.
Sweet tea
If you’re thinking it’s time to swap your lunchtime beverage choice for iced tea, you couldn’t be more right. Or wrong. It depends on the type you select. Unsweetened Iced Tea contains no sugar. That should be your destiny. Sweet tea is on a par with sugar-sweetened soft drinks. An 18.5-ounce serving of Pure Leaf Brewed Sweet Tea contains 42 grams of sugar. That’s like swallowing 42 gummy bears.
