A recent article in the New York Times brought up something that doesn’t surprise me but I really hadn’t given all that much thought to. That being that Americans like to drink, not just alcohol, we like to drink anything and everything. We’re a thirsty group. The problem with this is that we don’t just stick to water and milk, most of what we drink is calorie laden. In fact, the average American drinks 21% of their calories. For a person eating a 2,000 calorie a day diet that’s 420 calories of beverage. Do you know what else you can have for 420 calories? I'll tell you, you can have a 10 piece McDonalds ® Chicken Nuggets, or a McDonalds ® Quarter Pounder (no cheese). That’s a lot of juice/mocha-latte/soda. In fact, each day we’re drinking a full meal. The problem with this equation is that we don’t balance it out in the foods that we eat. We see our nutritional needs coming from our foods and we don’t balance our beverages accordingly.I’ve mentioned before that I like to think back to our developmental origins when thinking about food and daily activity. Our ancestors, who spent their days looking for food (if you think you’re obsessed with food when it comes to dieting, these guys got you beat. Their whole day was built around finding food) they would drink water. That was the resource they had, and I’m guessing the lack of pollution made for some mighty tasty water. (Note: I am not suggesting anyone go around drinking water from the land. I’ve seen the East River, and want no part of it.) Perhaps they’d drink some of the dew from plants. Even when our roaming forerunners would stumble upon a tasty snack of oh, say, a honey comb and eat the whole thing which would still set them back about 800 calories. Still, sugar wasn’t really a big part of their lives except for those rare occasions. There was fruit, there was meat, and there were plants. And, that’s the way they lived. Oh, and they walked, all the time.
The idea that we drink 21% of our daily caloric intake is really astounding. What’s even more astounding is that most of those calories come from high fructose corn syrup, otherwise known as the Demon Spawn of Satan. High fructose corn syrup is evil. It’s a creation of a laboratory and it’s extremely harmful to your metabolism. Really. HFCS is this magical substance that is a sugar but reacts in your body more like fat. It is also more likely to add to your chances of obesity. HFCS has a way of completely bypassing digestion in the stomach and intestines and going straight to the liver. This results in it being distributed to your cells directly as opposed to having been broken down, the good parts used, the bad parts excreted as waste. Where do these whole globs of fructose go? A little to the brain, but mostly to the fat around your internal organs. And like inner thigh jiggle, a little padding is good, but too much is bad. In fact, the larger the amount of fat around your internal organs the higher your risk of organ failure and cancer. So, like I said, High Fructose Corn Syrup is evil.
Guess what? Water doesn’t have HFCS. Really it doesn’t, and your body needs at least 60 oz of the clear stuff a day to work at an optimal level. Juice is good, but in moderation, it’s high in sugar and as far as vitamins are concerned you’re better off with the actual fruit. The surprising winner in the article by the NYTimes was that coffee (otherwise known as my best friend in the whole wide world) is actually pretty good for you. Coffee it seems lower your risk for heart disease, type-2 diabetes, and colorectal cancer. Oh, and milk, milk is good for you (even though a lot of us can’t digest it properly), it’s actually a great way to absorb vitamins and calcium. Having said that, I’m off to absorb calcium and lower my heart disease risk, meaning: I’m getting a latte.
